Cape Cod scientists delay controversial geo-engineering project after feds raise concern

The excuse for playing such potentially damaging games is ‘climate change’, based on the notion of the trace gas CO2 controlling Earth’s temperature variations. Some governments seem to like the idea of posing as managers of the climate, however far that is from any reality.
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Cape Cod scientists are delaying a geoengineering project that looks to dump more than 60,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide into the ocean and has caught federal concerns around potential impacts on the ecosystem, says Phys.org.

Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth have pushed back the project from mid-September to next summer because they say a fully-equipped research vessel is no longer available.

Woods Hole’s decision to delay became public two days after the National Marine Fisheries published a warning that the project could “adversely affect federally-managed species and other NOAA trust resources.”

The experiment, consisting of two phases, would dump sodium hydroxide and freshwater into the Atlantic, temporarily changing the water’s chemistry—increasing carbon dioxide levels that the ocean absorbs.

Scientists say it’s an effort that could be a way to slow climate change in the long run.

The first phase of the so-called LOC-NESS project, short for “Locking away Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope,” would release 6,600 gallons of sodium hydroxide solution roughly 10 miles south of Normans Land, an island off of Martha’s Vineyard.

The release of the solution would occur over two to three hours to “create a patch of alkalinity on the ocean surface and then monitored for up to five days by an on-site scientific research team,” according to project documents.

In the second phase, pushed back to 2026, scientists would dump up to 66,000 gallons into the Wilkinson Basin, nearly 40 miles northeast of Provincetown.

Roughly 35 federally managed species have been designated “essential fish habitats” that intersect with the vicinity of the first phase project area, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has tentatively determined to issue two research permits.

Woods Hole scientists have said research activities would result in “localized changes in the carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean waters in and surrounding the release location for up to a few days” in the first phase.

But within two minutes of the initial release of the alkaline solution, pH would return to levels within federally recommended water quality standards for saltwater aquatic life, they said.

“The temporary changes in carbonate chemistry may result in localized adverse impacts to the plankton community,” scientists outlined in a project document, “but these impacts are not expected to be severe or long-lasting within the environment.”
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Environmentalists and fishermen have not taken kindly to the proposed experiment.

Full article here.