John Martin (1935-1993)
by John Weier
John Martin
A little over ten years ago at a lecture at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, oceanographer John Martin stood up and said
in his best Dr. Strangelove accent, =93Give me a half tanker of iron,
and I will give you an ice age.=94
These inflammatory words centered around a theory known as the iron
hypothesis.
Martin professed that by sprinkling a relatively small amount of iron
into certain areas of the ocean, known as high-nutrient, low-
chlorophyll zones (HNLCs), one could create large blooms of those
unicellular aquatic plants commonly known as algae.
If enough of these HNLC zones were fertilized with iron, he believed
the growth in algae could take in so much carbon from the atmosphere
that they could reverse the greenhouse effect and cool the Earth.
Martin=92s theory sparked a tremendous debate. Unlike most of the
unusual, somewhat esoteric theories that float about the scientific
community at any given time, Martin=92s idea had teeth.
It could be tested and it had the potential to impact the world on a
short time scale.
Many of Martin=92s contem****aries reacted strongly by claiming his iron
hypothesis was ill founded. They felt that his =93Geritol=94 solution to
climate change was careless and hazardous for the environment.
Cor****ations and even some countries, however, embraced the idea. They
saw Martin=92s results as a way to reduce the effects of their own
carbon dioxide and bring themselves within the emissions standards set
up by the proposed Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, the press ****trayed
Martin as a renegade scientist that came out of nowhere with a mission
to prove everyone wrong, calling him =93Johnny Ironseed=94 and =93Iron
Man.=
=94
Martin, a burly, bearded oceanographer with an iconoclastic streak and
wry sense of humor, reveled in the controversy and didn=92t back down.
He stuck to his hypothesis to the end. Several months after his death
in 1993, the theory was proven to be correct by his colleagues at the
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. They spread an iron solution into an
HNLC zone near the Galapagos Islands and algae bloomed.
While the success of this contested experiment established Martin=92s
legacy, it also overshadowed his earlier work. And there was more to
Martin than just this one theory. The iron hypothesis came to him only
at the end of a rich life and a prestigious career in oceanography,
and it was just one in a long series of discoveries Martin and his
colleagues made.
In fact, Martin was among the first scientists to successfully test
and catalog a wide range of trace metals in the Earth=92s oceans. He
also demonstrated that copper and zinc could affect measurements of
phytoplankton (algae) growth. With regards to the global climate,
Martin=92s experiments into the amounts of carbon drawn into the seas by
algae formed the basis for many of the current large-scale efforts to
understand the ocean=92s role in the Earth=92s carbon budget. Throughout
his career, Martin was a scientist with strong instincts, convictions,
and ideas that altered forever how scientists regard the Earth=92s
oceans.
next: Personal life
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Martin/
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Iron fertilization
=46rom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Iron fertilization is the intentional introduction of iron to the
upper ocean to increase the marine food chain and to sequester carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere [1]. It involves encouraging the growth of
marine phytoplankton blooms by physically distributing microscopic
iron particles in otherwise nutrient-rich, but iron-deficient blue
ocean waters. An increasing number of ocean labs, scientists and
businesses are exploring it as a means to revive declining plankton
populations, restore healthy levels of marine productivity and/or
sequester millions of tons of CO2 to slow down global warming. Since
1993, ten international research teams have completed relatively small-
scale ocean trials demonstrating the effect.
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