A team of scientists is looking to dump chemicals into waters off the coast of Massachusetts this summer to research whether doing so could be an effective counter to ocean acidification and climate change, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The project would see researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) pour approximately 6,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide — a component of lye — into waters ten miles away from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in August 2024, according to the WSJ. [emphasis, links added]
The research project, estimated to cost about $10 million in total, will receive taxpayer funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signs off on releasing the chemicals.
The underlying concept is to see if the basic sodium hydroxide can reduce the acidity of ocean waters and make those waters more efficient repositories of carbon dioxide, according to the WSJ.
Sodium hydroxide is a common ingredient in soaps and cleaning solutions, and it can be harmful to humans in high concentrations, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.
“When you have heartburn, you eat a Tums that dissolves and makes the liquid in your stomach less acidic,” Adam Subhas, a WHOI scientist who is poised to serve as the project’s main investigator, told the WSJ.
“By analogy, we’re adding this alkaline material to seawater, and it is letting the ocean take up more CO2 without provoking more ocean acidification. Everything that we’re seeing so far is that it is environmentally safe.”
NOAA will provide some of the funding for the project, which is also being supported financially by private donors and two philanthropic organizations, according to the WSJ.
Neither NOAA nor WHOI immediately responded to requests for comment, which included inquiries about the identities of the organizations and donors backing the project.
“EPA will follow the permitting process as described in the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act regulations before reaching a final determination to approve or deny the permit application,” a spokesperson for the agency told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Once EPA receives a complete permit application, the agency will provide notice to the public and will invite public comment on the permit application and EPA tentative determination on whether to issue a permit.”
WHOI’s intention to test the efficacy of tinkering with ocean chemistry reflects a wider emergent trend of climate scientists pushing so-called “geoengineering” projects, according to the WSJ.
The basic idea of geoengineering is altering some physical or chemical aspect of an environmental system in order to counteract climate change.
Top image of Obama’s Mansion on Martha’s Vineyard
Read rest at Daily Caller
This modern Environmentalism’s has been a scam since 1962 and Rachal Carson/Silent Spring
Yes, this experiment aims to make a pH adjustment to some ocean water and see what happens. The real beef everyone misses is why spend our money extracting CO2 from healthy air? Leave it for the trees! It makes their growth rings wider.
Like the global warming movement, ocean acidification has been a fraud from the beginning. The so called scientists picked 1988, the year when oceans were the furthest from acid, as their base line. That caused subsequent years to be closer to acid by comparison. Real world data previous to 1988 did not support their claim, so they substituted a computer simulation.
The term “acidification” was chosen for propaganda purposes. The oceans will never become acid. They are alkaline and the only change can be less alkaline.
I suspect that dumping 6,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide would be devastating to the marine life at the dumping site.
Greenpeace got fined a few years ago for leaking Fossil Fuel into a River in Alaska they got in big trouble in Peru for messing un the Nazca Plain close by the Giant Hummingbird they once left Hazardous waste on the Dock at San Pedro Cal and they have nothing to say about deforesting areas for Wind Turbines and Solar Panels
Let’s start with some facts about the “acidification” of the ocean. Neutral water has a pH of 7.0. Below that value the water is acidic. Above that value it is considered basic (or more commonly called alkaline). The ocean is NOT acidic but is instead alkaline. And although CO2 absorbed into pure water can cause what is carbolic acid between the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the vast billions (or is in trillions) of water in the ocean there is less than zero percent chance that carbolic acid from CO2 making an iota difference in ocean’s “acidification” is zero.
Fools each and every single one! So now EPA may permit nuts to pollute the ocean! Alternatively, conduct the pH trials in a lab under controlled conditions. Ocean pollution not required. Who knows, maybe this has been done. If so, publish the results so the quantity of NaOH solution needed can be extrapolated.
Idiocy knows no bounds.
Now here is something the Eco Wackos need to oppose contaminating the Oceans deliberately and its not Shell Oil either so where’s Greenpeace?