“Meanwhile, a world-class, all-bells-and-whistles ocean fertilization trial might cost $150 million — that’s with an ‘m’, not a ‘b’. And yet trials on that scale are impossible to finance.”
If you are correct about this, then you or “your groups” should easily be able to find a single leftist billionaire like a Tom Steyer willing to fund such a proof of concept.
That you and they can’t means it’s likely - not guaranteed, but likely - that you are not correct.
It’d be nice if climate finance worked this way, with the best ideas rising to the top just because they’re the best. Seldom seems to work like that, for reasons I’ll definitely get into in posts to come…
Andy does have a point here. But scientists are generally not in the business of raising funds from billionaires. I suspect that scientists have no idea how to find the right one and reach them. Those very very rich people must get a lot of requests for money.
But all scientists know how to fill out their usual grant forms. And if a subject is politically too sensitive, they will move on to something else. End of story (at least for now).
Maybe a crowd funder? Unfortunately the subject is a bit obscure for most. I would be ready to put in some money, but I am not a billionaire...
You can’t cite ann amorphous “climate finance” if the numbers you are talking about are truly that small. Because all it would take would be to find a single leftist billionaire to make it happen. And whatever else they are, one cannot reasonably claim that all those leftist billionaires are simply stupid.
So my conclusion is said ideas are either not that close to best, or more likely have success probability a lot lower than you are claiming.
Yeah, the funding priorities are totally off. Still, I don't think that's the main reason why such projects aren't being persued. Just like with housing projects, it's all too easy to stop geo-engineering projects by pointing to potential marginal ecological downsides. Some people are allergic to the concept of trade-offs.
The climate movement—or at least its environmentalist predecessors—didn’t start with climate change as we know it today. Long before CO2 emissions were on the radar, figures like Paul Ehrlich in the ‘60s and groups like the Club of Rome were railing against industrialization, fossil fuels, and overpopulation. Their beef wasn’t with global warming—it was with industrial progress itself, seen as a threat to resource limits and “natural” balance. Fossil fuels were the bad guy well before the greenhouse effect hit the headlines. So, yeah, it’s fair to say they’d have pushed for bans regardless of the climate data.
### The “Pro-Science” Rebrand
The shift in the 2010s to being the “pro-science” team does feel a bit rich given that history. It’s a slick pivot, but it clashes with some of the movement’s less scientific baggage. Back in the ‘90s and ‘00s, you had corners of environmentalism flirting with anti-vax ideas, chemtrail conspiracies, and a whole buffet of “alternative” health trends—think homeopathy or raw food crazes. Then there’s organic farming and locavorism, pitched as eco-friendly but often less efficient and sometimes worse for emissions due to land use and transport quirks. Calling themselves the science champs while hauling that legacy is a stretch, and it’s understandable why you’d call it ridiculous.
### Caring About the Poor: New or Convenient?
Environmentalism has traditionally been an upper-class preoccupation—easier to obsess over carbon footprints when you’re not scrambling to pay bills. Historically, both left and right parties nodded along to these groups, but when the right started kicking them out in the 21st century, they cozied up to the left. Suddenly, it’s all about how climate change slams the global poor—floods, droughts, heatwaves—while glossing over how fossil fuels and economic growth have been game-changers for lifting millions out of poverty. Look at India or China: cheap energy fueled their rise, not wind turbines. The movement’s newfound equity angle can feel like a strategic glow-up rather than a deep-seated principle.
### The Bigger Picture
Here’s where it gets tricky. The science on CO2 and warming is legit—decarbonization matters. But the climate movement’s track record makes it a wobbly messenger. Its anti-industrial roots and selective storytelling—like downplaying fossil fuels’ role in development—muddy the waters. You’re right to question the intentions: is this about saving the planet or sticking to an old ideological grudge? The tension between green goals and economic reality is real, and the movement’s pivot to “pro-poor” rhetoric doesn’t fully square. Hosting a nuanced take isn’t going to cut through that noise—it’s a conversation worth having.
You know the craziest thing about this? I remember growing up when we still talked mostly about "preserving the environment" and "conservation efforts", real "save the whales" kinda stuff, not climate. This project could have absolutely NOTHING to do with climate or CO² and I feel like it would have been viable to get it funding back then just purely as a way to restore life to depleted patches of ocean, not really any different than all the charities directed at renewing damaged reef ecosystems. Just encouraging ocean life to flourish would once have been reason enough for people to open their wallets...
It's absolutely bonkers that having "also potentially saves the world" as an added benefit now makes it HARDER to fund something like this. Seriously, maybe you should just stop advertising the climate implications and pitch this as purely an ocean habitat restoration charity? Start a charitable nonprofit organization to be the public face instead of a research organization? 🤔
Well the big climate funders just hate the oil industry. They need to have the problem and they aren’t really interested in solving it.
I think this needs to be tied in to a commercial opportunity somehow- like if we fertilize this much, then we get this much fish or something. I know that is pretty hard to know without more research and trial runs, but I think it could end up being something that funds itself with the right kind of seed capital.
I mean, that silly kid got gobs of money for his ocean plastic filter idea that never had any chance of succeeding, so the right viral project might actually be what is needed here.
It is utterly sad and disappointing that such a well written presentation for your solution does not end with a list of tactics and strategies a list of calls the actions that we should try to implement or at the very least the URL were people who would like to help Solve this problem can volunteer or fund . I am one of those volunteers and reachable at gary@getcouragenow.org.
I find the arguments about the difficulty of controlling emissions very compelling. About sinking C02. Are there possible secondary effects to take into account, for example in the algae solution? Presumably increasing the number of algae may change the equilibrium of some ecosystem? In other words, do we understand risks of these and other “terraforming “ plans?
The technical term is oligotrophic subtropical gyres, as well as high nutrient, low chlorophyll areas. Will be writing tons more about this in the months to come.
We definitely need more research. But the short answer is that most of these interventions would take place in marine deserts: deep ocean areas where there’s just not that much marine life to disrupt to begin with.
Six out of the seven subtropical gyres are basically marine deserts. The seventh, the North Atlantic gyre, hosts a huge carbon synch called the Sea of Sargasso.
Why? Because it’s naturally fertilized by the iron in the dust blowing off of the Sahara.
If all seven gyres pulled as much CO2 as the North Atlantic, there would be no climate crisis to speak of.
“Meanwhile, a world-class, all-bells-and-whistles ocean fertilization trial might cost $150 million — that’s with an ‘m’, not a ‘b’. And yet trials on that scale are impossible to finance.”
If you are correct about this, then you or “your groups” should easily be able to find a single leftist billionaire like a Tom Steyer willing to fund such a proof of concept.
That you and they can’t means it’s likely - not guaranteed, but likely - that you are not correct.
It’d be nice if climate finance worked this way, with the best ideas rising to the top just because they’re the best. Seldom seems to work like that, for reasons I’ll definitely get into in posts to come…
Andy does have a point here. But scientists are generally not in the business of raising funds from billionaires. I suspect that scientists have no idea how to find the right one and reach them. Those very very rich people must get a lot of requests for money.
But all scientists know how to fill out their usual grant forms. And if a subject is politically too sensitive, they will move on to something else. End of story (at least for now).
Maybe a crowd funder? Unfortunately the subject is a bit obscure for most. I would be ready to put in some money, but I am not a billionaire...
Yeah, but that’s not my point really.
You can’t cite ann amorphous “climate finance” if the numbers you are talking about are truly that small. Because all it would take would be to find a single leftist billionaire to make it happen. And whatever else they are, one cannot reasonably claim that all those leftist billionaires are simply stupid.
So my conclusion is said ideas are either not that close to best, or more likely have success probability a lot lower than you are claiming.
Yeah, the funding priorities are totally off. Still, I don't think that's the main reason why such projects aren't being persued. Just like with housing projects, it's all too easy to stop geo-engineering projects by pointing to potential marginal ecological downsides. Some people are allergic to the concept of trade-offs.
### Historical Roots and Anti-Industrial Bias
The climate movement—or at least its environmentalist predecessors—didn’t start with climate change as we know it today. Long before CO2 emissions were on the radar, figures like Paul Ehrlich in the ‘60s and groups like the Club of Rome were railing against industrialization, fossil fuels, and overpopulation. Their beef wasn’t with global warming—it was with industrial progress itself, seen as a threat to resource limits and “natural” balance. Fossil fuels were the bad guy well before the greenhouse effect hit the headlines. So, yeah, it’s fair to say they’d have pushed for bans regardless of the climate data.
### The “Pro-Science” Rebrand
The shift in the 2010s to being the “pro-science” team does feel a bit rich given that history. It’s a slick pivot, but it clashes with some of the movement’s less scientific baggage. Back in the ‘90s and ‘00s, you had corners of environmentalism flirting with anti-vax ideas, chemtrail conspiracies, and a whole buffet of “alternative” health trends—think homeopathy or raw food crazes. Then there’s organic farming and locavorism, pitched as eco-friendly but often less efficient and sometimes worse for emissions due to land use and transport quirks. Calling themselves the science champs while hauling that legacy is a stretch, and it’s understandable why you’d call it ridiculous.
### Caring About the Poor: New or Convenient?
Environmentalism has traditionally been an upper-class preoccupation—easier to obsess over carbon footprints when you’re not scrambling to pay bills. Historically, both left and right parties nodded along to these groups, but when the right started kicking them out in the 21st century, they cozied up to the left. Suddenly, it’s all about how climate change slams the global poor—floods, droughts, heatwaves—while glossing over how fossil fuels and economic growth have been game-changers for lifting millions out of poverty. Look at India or China: cheap energy fueled their rise, not wind turbines. The movement’s newfound equity angle can feel like a strategic glow-up rather than a deep-seated principle.
### The Bigger Picture
Here’s where it gets tricky. The science on CO2 and warming is legit—decarbonization matters. But the climate movement’s track record makes it a wobbly messenger. Its anti-industrial roots and selective storytelling—like downplaying fossil fuels’ role in development—muddy the waters. You’re right to question the intentions: is this about saving the planet or sticking to an old ideological grudge? The tension between green goals and economic reality is real, and the movement’s pivot to “pro-poor” rhetoric doesn’t fully square. Hosting a nuanced take isn’t going to cut through that noise—it’s a conversation worth having.
You know the craziest thing about this? I remember growing up when we still talked mostly about "preserving the environment" and "conservation efforts", real "save the whales" kinda stuff, not climate. This project could have absolutely NOTHING to do with climate or CO² and I feel like it would have been viable to get it funding back then just purely as a way to restore life to depleted patches of ocean, not really any different than all the charities directed at renewing damaged reef ecosystems. Just encouraging ocean life to flourish would once have been reason enough for people to open their wallets...
It's absolutely bonkers that having "also potentially saves the world" as an added benefit now makes it HARDER to fund something like this. Seriously, maybe you should just stop advertising the climate implications and pitch this as purely an ocean habitat restoration charity? Start a charitable nonprofit organization to be the public face instead of a research organization? 🤔
Well the big climate funders just hate the oil industry. They need to have the problem and they aren’t really interested in solving it.
I think this needs to be tied in to a commercial opportunity somehow- like if we fertilize this much, then we get this much fish or something. I know that is pretty hard to know without more research and trial runs, but I think it could end up being something that funds itself with the right kind of seed capital.
I mean, that silly kid got gobs of money for his ocean plastic filter idea that never had any chance of succeeding, so the right viral project might actually be what is needed here.
It is utterly sad and disappointing that such a well written presentation for your solution does not end with a list of tactics and strategies a list of calls the actions that we should try to implement or at the very least the URL were people who would like to help Solve this problem can volunteer or fund . I am one of those volunteers and reachable at gary@getcouragenow.org.
Hey give a guy a break: there’s tons more posts coming where this once came from
I find the arguments about the difficulty of controlling emissions very compelling. About sinking C02. Are there possible secondary effects to take into account, for example in the algae solution? Presumably increasing the number of algae may change the equilibrium of some ecosystem? In other words, do we understand risks of these and other “terraforming “ plans?
The technical term is oligotrophic subtropical gyres, as well as high nutrient, low chlorophyll areas. Will be writing tons more about this in the months to come.
We definitely need more research. But the short answer is that most of these interventions would take place in marine deserts: deep ocean areas where there’s just not that much marine life to disrupt to begin with.
Very interesting. Do you have a reference to recommend? Thanks!
Six out of the seven subtropical gyres are basically marine deserts. The seventh, the North Atlantic gyre, hosts a huge carbon synch called the Sea of Sargasso.
Why? Because it’s naturally fertilized by the iron in the dust blowing off of the Sahara.
If all seven gyres pulled as much CO2 as the North Atlantic, there would be no climate crisis to speak of.