They're Baaaaaack!

A death rattle is a gurgling or rattle-like noise produced shortly before or after death by the accumulation of excessive respiratory secretions in the throat. I could have sworn I heard one emanate a few months ago from Planktos--the San Francisco-based start-up that claimed it had the answer to fight climate change through the spurious science of iron fertilization of the oceans. But it now seems they are pulling a George Romero and refusing to go gently into that good night.

As I reported back in February, Planktos closed up shop based on lack of investor interest. Me thinks it had something to do with the poor reception of their claims by the scientific community.

But like a zombie in search of fresh brains, Planktos has risen from the grave to convince the public that it's really, really serious about its science by renaming itself Planktos Science. Oh! Well okay, then!

But don't expect to find anything remarkably new here. It's the same high-falutin' vision with little empirical validation. What you will find is a lot of new expansive rhetoric that paints Planktos as the all-things-to-all-investors answer. There's the Planktos fisheries efforts, biofuels research, and drug research. Drug research? You betcha! According to the web copy, Planktos Science intends to "create a collaborative network to speed up research on targeted compounds from the ocean realm. This network includes centers of marine biology, pharmacology, chemistry and world-class basic science and clinical research."

This "oceans as potential medicine cabinets" utilitarian argument is by no means novel. Conservationists have been making this call for preservation of biodiversity of rain forests and coral reefs as treasure troves of novel proteins and other molecules that can benefit human health. That Planktos Science intends to be seen as a preeminent player in this area makes for nice investor copy. But get in line. There are numerous research institutions and Big Pharm companies already making inroads here.

Why am I even bothering to spend my first free Saturday in nearly a month to waste electrons in writing about Planktos again? To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. But it might have something to do with the rambling, unsolicited email I received last week from Planktos founder and president, Russ George. In six turgid, purply-prosed paragraphs, he explained how coral reefs are doomed. The only glimmer of hope is, wait for it... Planktos Science and its proprietary methods of iron fertilization of oceans as a spur to phytoplankton blooms.

I'm choosing not to reprint George's email here, not simply because it's bad science or bad reasoning. Mainly, I'm not reprinting it because it's simply bad writing. Need proof? Here's just one choice, painful example. If left unchecked, ocean acidification will continue to build as, according to George, "our reef beauties cry out and dissolve like Dorothy's wicked witch in our acidifying oceans."

But didn't the Wicked Witch deserve to dissolve? At least in the movie The Wizard of Oz, not the play Wicked. I mean, she was wicked, right? Surely reefs don't deserve to dissolve? And didn't she melt? I remember her saying, "I'm melting... I'm melting!" And coral polyps can "cry out?"

Then again, maybe he is saying reefs deserve to dissolve. His parting salvo suggests that biodiversity loss may be fitting punishment, "If you are a religious person you might liken what we need to do as seeking absolution for our sins of emission by our acts of contrition and ecorestoration, otherwise the path to perdition is that of dissolution of those CO2 sins into dying oceans."

Sins of emission? As a product of catholic schooling, that only means one thing. It's hard to tell what Planktos Science is talking about. Needless to say, I suspect investors and the scientific community won't have a clue either.