VentureBeat

updated, with corrections

Potentially throwing a wrench into future ocean fertilization trials, which are intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by storing carbon deep underwater, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity called for a moratorium yesterday on the practice of adding nutrients to the oceans.

While it may not carry any legal weight, the “de facto moratorium” could prove problematic for Climos, the San Francisco, Calif.-based startup that is exploring the use of ocean iron fertilization (OIF) — the dumping of iron into surface waters to stimulate phytoplankton blooms. The idea is to get these tiny plant-like organisms to use the extra iron to absorb more atmospheric carbon dioxide so that when they die, the carbon sinks with them and gets sequestered at the bottom of the oceans.

The problem for Climos is that investors could get cold feet. If more countries decide to adopt stringent regulations banning the practice of ocean fertilization — or even if the U.N. and other international bodies simply frown upon it — VCs may decide to shift their money to safer, less controversial ventures.

The longer Climos’ planned demonstration gets delayed, the less likely its backers are to quickly recoup their investment and turn a profit. Without the funding, it’s extremely unlikely that Climos could even manage a smaller-scale demonstration — not that it would do much good, since those haven’t worked in the past.

The fact that the U.S. rejected the moratorium could make some difference. Since regulation of the practice flows either from the flag of the ship used to dump the iron or the port at which its equipment is loaded, Climos’ venture could still fall within the new measure. Ocean Nourishment Corporation, an Australian company also trying to sequester carbon dioxide, but with urea, will likely face more scrutiny, however, since its trials occur directly offshore.

The moratorium, which was adopted by 191 countries, will be referred to the London Convention (LC), which is part of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), for guidance. The LC, which regulates the disposal of wastes at sea, established a working group in November 2007 to review the scientific basis for OIF. It held a meeting last week at which Climos made the case for OIF, arguing that past research results and the need for further independent scientific demonstrations warranted its continued exploration.

Opponents of the practice are concerned that it could make the oceans more acidic, placing marine life at risk, while its supporters argue that it could help reduce global emission levels — though they recognize the need for more research. Evidence from past OIF studies remains inconclusive.

Because most have been either too small in scale or too short (or both), the initial drawdown of carbon dioxide they fostered quickly petered out — resulting in atmospheric concentrations returning to their original levels. Many scientists believe that longer, better-designed studies would provide some clarity.

Dan Whaley, Climos’ CEO, told me his company would wait for the London Convention’s scientific working group to release its report before making any decision. Acknowledging the level of support for the CBD’s moratorium, he reiterated his company’s position that commercial OIF activities should be subject to regulation and that they should not proceed without the evidence to back them up. He was quick to point out that the moratorium did make an exception for limited scientific research and said his company would abide by the London Convention’s policy recommendations, to be revealed within the coming weeks.

Despite the setback, Whaley said Climos’ investors remained fully on-board with his venture, and that he would resume seeking funds to pay for his firm’s planned demonstration once the regulatory outlook cleared up — which, given the UN’s and IMO’s past track record, could take a long time.

Climos may eventually decide to hedge its bets and move forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale demonstration if investor support is there. Faced with a potential regulatory backlash, however, it may prefer to stay on the sidelines for now. When I talked to him, Whaley was adamant in stressing his company’s commitment to follow any future regulations.

According to Earth2Tech, the company announced a few weeks ago that it was looking to raise between $8 and $10 million for a second round of funding, which it hoped to close during the first quarter of 2009. A the time, Whaley predicted that Climos’ third round could get as high as $12 - 14 million.

A new study published in the journal Science has poured cold water on a proposed scheme to alter the planet’s climate by injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere. The unorthodox strategy, boosted by several prominent scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen, was meant to simulate the effects of a volcanic eruption: Sulfur particles released from aircraft or large balloons high in the stratosphere — like the soot and sulfur dioxide ejected by volcanoes — would scatter incoming sunlight, reducing its absorption by the planet and producing a global cooling effect.

Opponents of the scheme warned that the problems it created would far outweigh any perceived benefits: They cited records of past eruptions to show that it could result in a series of crippling large-scale droughts. The Science study, led by two researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, determined that pumping sulfur particles into the atmosphere would further weaken the Earth’s fragile ozone layer by sparking a number of destructive chemical reactions. The consequence, they concluded, would be to set back the ozone layer’s slow recovery by 2 decades.

These findings will no doubt help bolster the arguments of those who have argued against the use of human technologies to tinker with the Earth’s climate — a set of proposals collectively known as “geo-engineering.” Detractors criticize the schemes as being too short-sighted and largely untested. Furthermore, they insist, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to verify their success; this, in addition to their unknown risks and potential downsides, should preclude any further consideration of their use

Those that do support further research object to the involvement of profit-seeking companies or outside backing — arguing that future trials should be devoid of any commercial motivation.

Proponents of geo-engineering, both academics and scientists who’ve made the leap to the private sector, counter that corporations have long been valuable allies in advancing research, particularly in medicine and engineering, and that to deny them a seat at the table — and a potential financial incentive — would be self-defeating.

One of the few schemes to have gained some traction over the past year is iron fertilization — currently championed by San Francisco, Calif., based Climos, which recently raised $3.5 million from Elon Musk and Braemar Energy Ventures, and previously by the now-defunct Foster City, Calif., startup Planktos. Climos’ funding will fuel an initial demonstration cruise that will be led by a team of independent oceanographers.

The objective of this cruise is to show that fertilizing iron-limited areas of the oceans can result in a drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide — and its eventual sequestration in the ocean’s depths. The strategy is relatively straightforward: Adding iron sulfate to carefully selected regions will lead to massive phytoplankton blooms, which, through photosynthesis, will take up large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Climos’ hope — and the missing piece, from a scientific standpoint — is that once the phytoplankton die, they will sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying the excess carbon dioxide with them. If that effect were to be demonstrated empirically, Climos could begin selling carbon credits and finance other cruises.

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Here’s the latest action:

News Corp makes $5 billion takeover bid for Dow Jones — If the bid is accepted, the owner of Fox News would own the old, gray business media icon, the Wall Street Journal. What next?

PropertyShark takes property snooping a step further — If you thought Zillow, the housing site that slapped a value on your house, was controversial, take a look at PropertyShark. The four-year old New York company outdoes Zillow on the snoopy factor, displaying owners’ names as well as things like title history, building permits and code violations pertaining to any property (See Mercury News story). It has launched in California, New York and 14 other states.

Google chooses to fight Viacom — Here’s the story about Google’s response to Viacom’s lawsuit for copyright infringement. The Google lawyer says the companies are not engaged in settlement talks, so looks like this is going all the way.

Google’s chief culture officer — See interview with Google’s culture czar and how she looks for “Google-y” people, or those who don’t worry about their titles but focus on getting stuff done.

Companies to use plankton to help global warming — At least two ventures are seeking to grow floating fields of plankton to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. The New York Times has the story. Foster City, Calif.’s Planktos is already working on a project in the Galápagos and the South Pacific. Planktos says corporations seeking to offset their carbon emissions under new treaties and regulations make need its services. It thinks it can make a profit if it gets $5 a ton for capturing carbon dioxide. There’s also San Francisco’s Climos, which we contacted several weeks ago, but which has remained secretive. Dan Whaley, founder of GetThere, is involved, as is a group of respected scientists on its advisory board.

Supreme Court issues ruling that reforms patents — Most experts say this was much needed. It rules that lower-court rulings have given patent holders more power than the patent law intended. Some patent awards are for innovations that are too obvious, and may stifle innovation.

Google making comeback in China? — After ceding ground to Chinese search engine Baidu over the past couple of years, Google is gaining market share, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

Meanwhile, Myspace China encourages tattlers: Members of MySpace’s new Chinese version are being told to report any “misconduct” by other users, including actions such as “endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order.”

EBuddy launches mobile application – Ebuddy, like Meebo, is a company that aggregates IM accounts, so that you can use any of them — AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc — from any Web site. Now it has taken its service mobile. Meanwhile, Meebo has decided not to do it, the company’s chief executive Seth Sternberg told us last week. GigaOm has a piece on Ebuddy’s latest momentum. We’re wondering where these stand-alone IM companies will head, now that IM aggregation is becoming easier to do and that we’re hearing of several other companies about to unveil products in this area. We’ll get back to this story shortly.

Phenomenal growth of Zwinky and Gaia, virtual worlds for kids — Zwinky, part of the Fun Webs group at conglomerate IAC, is the latest virtual world to explode in popularity. It has 4.7 million worldwide unique visitors in March. Techcrunch has the latest on Zwinktopia - where users can use their avatars to roam around the world, chat and earn Zbucks, a virtual currency.

Targetspot to let advertisers create commercials for Internet radio — Advertisers can create ads for their tailored audience. It is financed by CBS radio. (Times has the story).

4Info creates SMS ad marketplace — Speaking of new advertising models, Palo Alto company, 4Info, has launched a test program for an SMS marketplace. Chief exec Zaw Thet tells us his is the only company offering a market place. Because of 4Info’s bulk SMS activities, it doesn’t have to pay carriers for the service, meaning it is free for a company like Evite to send out SMS alerts to users, containing ads. 4Info splits the revenue 50-50 with the publisher. Question is, are SMS ads going to be pretty enough?

The Army’s plasma shield — The Army hopes soon to deploy a machine that generates a protective screen of dazzling mid-air explosions – to stun and disorient an enemy. It uses a laser pulse that creates a ball of plasma, and a second pulse that generates a shockwave. It is being build by a company called Stellar Photonics, about which we know very little. Its apparently also working on a portable laser rifle weighing fifteen kilograms with a range of more than an mile. Anyone know more about this company? Send email or leave comment, please.

Jobs disses subscription/rental music model — “Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” Jobs told Reuters in an interview, with new authority in the wake of Apple’s stellar earnings report. “The subscription model has failed so far.” People want to own their music, he said.

Jason Calacanis’ real project, a search engine — Calacanis, a media entrepreneur who sold a group of weblogs to AOL for $25m, has a new search engine project, backed by Sequoia Capital. It’s a cross between Wikipedia and Google, says Valleywag, which carries the speculative piece. Sounds a lot like Wikia’s search project, which has gotten a lot of attention. So it would make sense, though VentureBeat hasn’t confirmed any of this.

Microsoft releases more info on Silverlight — Nik Cubrilovic has a good review of the announcement, explaining how Silverlight includes a mini-CLR (Common Language Runtime) for the .NET platform that can be accessed from within the browser. As with the usual .NET runtime, it can support a number of programming languages, including Python and Ruby. Says Cubrilovic: The most remarkable part of the CLR are its speed and its size. First of all, the full Silverlight download with CLR and everything else will weigh in at around 4MB - which with current broadband penetration is effortless….

Jeff Nolan leaves Teqlo, a mashup company –The Silicon Valley start-up Teqlo just wasn’t ready to go to market, and chief executive Jeff Nolan explains his departure today. In remarks to us, the former SAP executive noted that companies delivering APIs as part of their offering find it difficult to make money. How will they share revenue? Moreover, for any of these businesses to achieve scale, as a platform, a significant amount of capital, “upwards of $60 million,” will have to be invested. Moreover, what happens when Microsoft, Google and Yahoo enter the area (indeed, Yahoo already has Pipes, and Google has entered with My Maps)? Not to mention SAP, Oracle and IBM, all of which are heading there too.

Mohr Davidow Ventures hires software entrepreneur Bryan Stolle as partner — This is the latest in several hires recently by the Silicon Valley venture firm. Stolle is co-founder of Agile Software, a company backed by MDV.

See our latest news stories in VentureBeat’s News Wire — including the latest on mobile wireless network company Sonopia, and all the clean-tech deals lately, such as Vinod Khosla’s latest investment.

Venture capital performance turns positive — At least, according to the latest day released by Thomson Financial, for the period ending December last year. Overall, venture capitalists investing over the past five year years saw a 1 percent annual return each year — not very good, but positive for the first time since 2003. The only people losing money, according to the survey, are early/seed-stage investors who have been investing for the last five years. Everyone else is making dough. However, these numbers should be taken with skepticism. The data has long been criticized for being too rosy, i.e, not factoring in the results of firms doing so terribly that they’ve shut their doors. See table below for the performance of VCs over different time horizons.