9/6/2019 Assignment: Climate Change

https://bconline.broward.edu/content/Courses/Oceanography/OCE1001/assignments/assignment5.html 1/5

Assignment: Climate Change

INSTRUCTIONS

Read the following article and answer the questions at the end. Submit a MS Word

document or *.pdf file with your responses to the assignment dropbox. All answers

should be in your own words (do not copy and paste definitions). Answer each question

in more than two complete sentence; some answers may require more explanation than

others. You will be deducted points for short and incomplete answers.

A ROGUE CLIMATE EXPERIMENT OUTRAGES SCIENTISTS

A California businessman chartered a fishing boat in July, loaded it with 100 tons of iron

dust and cruised through Pacific waters off western Canada, spewing his cargo into the

sea in an ecological experiment that has outraged scientists and government officials.

The entrepreneur, whose foray came to light only this week, even duped the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States into lending him ocean-

monitoring buoys for the project. Canada’s environment ministry says it is investigating

the experiment, which was carried out with no government or scientific oversight. A

spokesman said the ministry had warned the venture in advance that its plan would

violate international agreements.

Marine scientists and other experts have assailed the experiment as unscientific,

irresponsible and probably in violation of those agreements, which are intended to

prevent tampering with ocean ecosystems under the guise of trying to fight the effects

of climate change. Though the environmental impact of the foray could well prove

minimal, scientists said, it raises the specter of what they have long feared: rogue field

experiments that might unintentionally put the environment at risk.

9/6/2019 Assignment – Climate Change

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The entrepreneur, Russ George, calling it a “state-of-the-art study,” said his team

scattered iron dust several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, in

northern British Columbia, in exchange for $2.5 million from a native Canadian group.

The iron spawned the gro