We’ve seen what their fertilizers are doing to the outlet of the Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico; creating a red tide larger than the state of Rhode Island. Continued expansion has seen native lands destroyed and in such carbon sinks and vital ecosystems disappear.

But now, according to new research published in a special issue of Waste Management & Research, organic fertilizers could help agricultural land increase the amount of carbon stored in their soils.

All of that may sound technical, but the long and the short of it is that composting could help keep carbon inside the soils, rather than letting it escape.

God Bless Compost!

This avenue of carbon sequestration is not only ancient years old, but recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the European Commission; nice of them to catch on!

OK, I could be being a little bit snarky, but the point is that something many of us have been doing in our own small way simply because we knew it was good for our gardens is now good for the environment as a whole.

At least one estimate of the impact this approach could yield shows that assuming 20% of the surface agricultural land in the European Union was used as a carbon sink it could contribute 8.6% to the total EY emission-reduction objective.

“An increase of just 0.15% in organic carbon in arable soils in a country like Italy would effectively imply the sequestration of the same amount of carbon within soil that is currently released into the atmosphere in a period of one year through the use of fossil fuels,” write Enzo Favoino and Dominic Hogg, authors of the paper.“Furthermore, increasing organic matter in soils may cause other greenhouse gas-saving effects, such as improved workability of soils, better water retention, less production and use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides, and reduced release of nitrous oxide.”

This is all good and well though, but as with many discoveries of late, it is just that, a discovery, and nothing more. Capitalizing on this however is an entirely different matter, considering that the current agricultural trends actually end up depleting the soils ability to hold carbon.

But according to the authors of the article, this loss of carbon sink is not an unsolvable problem. Composting could actually contribute in two ways; increasing the chance of sequestering carbon within the soil as well as building up the soils quality. All that is needed is the application of organic fertilizers.

“What organic fertilizers can do is reverse the decline in soil organic matter that has occurred in relatively recent decades by contributing to the build-up in the stable organic fraction in soils, and having the effect, in any given year, of ensuring that more carbon is held within the soil,” they explain.

Of course, it is not as simple as throwing your scraps to the garden instead of the dog, but hopefully in time, people like Favoino and Hogg will be able to turn this in to a plan that has viable outcomes. In the meantime, I have to go take the compost out!

Take, for example, one of the hot new technology fixes being proposed for global warming: ocean fertilization. The idea is to seed the oceans with iron or other nutrients to encourage naturally occurring algae to go into photosynthetic overdrive. Algae absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, in theory, dump it safely away deep underwater when they die. More algae = less carbon = global warming, solved.

Except that Mother Nature and real life might not work that way. A new study just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that, when natural algal blooms are at their peak during the summertime, less carbon — not more — actually sinks below the surface than during other times of the year.

Researchers from Stanford University and Oregon State University set out to test how effective ocean fertilization might be by measuring seasonal variations in both natural algae abundance and carbon sinking rates. Using specially designed mathematical algorithms to conduct this first-ever analysis, they ended up an unexpected result: when algae is at its peak, carbon sinking is at its lowest.

“This discovery is very surprising,” said Michael Lutz, a lead author of the study. It also indicates ocean fertilization schemes might not work as well as presumed, he said, “because they ignore the natural processes revealed by this research.”

So why does less carbon sink when more algae blooms? The reason appears to be that algal blooms are like “ringing the marine ecosystem dinner bell,” Lutz said. Everything from microbes on up move in to eat the abundant algae while it’s fresh, leaving less to die a natural death and sink to the bottom with its carbon.

The finding “makes sense if you consider how this ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss,” Lutz said. “Our study highlights the need to understand natural ecosystem processes, especially in a world where change is occurring so rapidly.”

The discovery is especially timely, considering ocean fertilization is one of the topics on the agenda for next month’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali. Maybe attendees should take a cue from the London Convention, which earlier this month warned that ocean fertilization experiments “are currently not justified.”

So what do you think? Is ocean fertilization still worth investigating? Or is it, as Law of the Sea expert Rosemary Rayfuse put it, “dumping”? I think she makes a strong case when she says, “There is no point trying to ameliorate the effects of climate change by destroying the oceans — the very cradle of life on earth. Simply doing more and bigger of that which has already been demonstrated to be ineffective and potentially more harmful than good is counter-intuitive at best.”

One of those mechanisms, it turns out, is drought. Which is a real cause for concern, considering how much of the U.S. and other regions of the globe are seeing record-breaking dry weather year after year.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this week announced that, using data from its CarbonTracker modeling system, the North American drought in 2002 had as bad an impact on the atmosphere as year’s worth of emissions from 200 million cars.

During 2002, some 45 percent of the U.S. alone experienced “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. Drought means less water for healthy soils, plants and trees, which is bad for global warming because soils, plants and trees are natural carbon sinks. Under normal conditions, they take up about one-third of the carbon dioxide we in the States pump into the air every year. But not during droughts.

The 2002 drought reduced the effectiveness of North America’s natural carbon sinks by half, according to NOAA. That meant that 320 million of the 650 million metric tons of carbon dioxide normally absorbed by vegetation and soil stayed in the air instead.

Considering this year’s drought conditions, it’s likely we’ll soon be hearing similar stats for 2007 carbon absorption rates. As of the end of October, for example, a full two-thirds of the southeastern U.S. was in “moderate” to “exceptional” drought. Parts of Australia, China, South America and southern Africa were also experiencing exceptional drought conditions.

The impact on natural carbon sinks is a concern because it could nullify any actions we take to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to Wouter Peters, the scientist who led the NOAA study.

“Disruptions to natural carbon uptake can have enormous environmental and economic effects, possibly even erasing efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions in a given year,” Peters said. “Climate extremes can have a major affect on the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.”

Still, there’s almost always a flipside to technological advances. The wheel improved not only travel, but warfare. Agriculture made food more reliable for humans … but also, eventually, helped give rise to confined animal feeding operations, the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone and, for better or worse, the Hardee’s Thickburger. As for email? I have one word for you: Spam.

So when it comes to the fixes being offered for climate change, it’s wise to approach technology warily. Yes, in theory, we could erase our ever-growing greenhouse gas problem if we perfect carbon capture and storage … but that won’t eliminate the environmental degradation wrought by coal mining or the threat of peak oil. And, yes, more nuclear power might reduce our dependence on foreign oil … but it could only increase threats of sabotage or terrorism.

Even more troubling are the global warming “solutions” being offered by fans of geoengineering. This is the idea of seeding the oceans with iron to encourage plankton growth that absorbs carbon dioxide. Of course, too many nutrients in the ocean also cause algal blooms that suck up oxygen, making vast areas unlivable for marine species — again, think the Dead Zone. That’s why it was encouraging this week to hear one international organization come out against geoengineering experiments in the world’s oceans.

The International Maritime Convention (IMO), a United Nations agency with 167 member-states (including the U.S.) makes its primary focus maritime safety. This week, though, members of the IMO’s London Convention, a 1972 treaty on marine pollution, said they also have authority over geoengineering experiments at sea. Their “statement of concern” warned that, given our current knowledge of how ocean fertilization works, large-scale experiments of that nature “are currently not justified.”

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And that works well right now, considering that Inez Fung, a professor of atmospheric sciences and co-director of the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of the Environment, has provided a link that has hitherto been ignored.

I’ve brought you stories on increased carbon emissions, our oceans not absorbing enough, rising levels, etc. The problem is, that there is a link between all of these that is scary, and we’ve just sort of missed it.

Until recently, our lovely Earth has had two major carbon sinks. First of all, being made up of 70% water was a definite bonus. It would absorb the carbon, draw it down, and lock it away from the atmosphere. But as the waters have warmed, and there has been a lack of mixing between the upper warmer layer and the lower colder layer, the oceans ability to absorb carbon decreases.

The second problem that many may not be aware of is photosynthesis. And by “be aware of”, I mean, probably forgot from your primary school days. We all know that forests are massive carbon sinks, and with being trimmed back like a bad mullet and suffering from increasing drought across the planet, the amount that is absorbed through photosynthesis is also diminishing.

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