Artificially triggering blooms of plankton, like the one above off the coast of Namibia, is one of the more contentious options for reducing atmospheric CO2. Dump a load of iron into the sea and plankton proliferate like mad, absorb CO2 from the air and then die, sinking to the bottom of the ocean and taking all that nasty carbon with them. That's it in theory, but where's the evidence?Direct experiments to assess iron fertilization are few and far between and rather frowned upon, not least because we don't really know what impact adding all that iron could have on sea life. But a team of scientists have just reported findings from an area of ocean close to Antarctica that experiences natural inputs of iron from eroding rocks. They found that plankton blooms created by the iron do indeed result in carbon being buried on the ocean floor, but not as much as scientists had previously hoped...
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Image: Nasa
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As a related follow-up, Wired magazine has an article today about scientists ranking different geo-engineering solutions for climate change: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/georank.html
Although I think this sounds like such an easy way to sequester a large amount of Carbon. It just worries me that we have over looked some massive, bad consequence. Here is a good example of how, when you don't think of all the possible outcomes, things can go horribly wrong.
The controversy rumbles on...
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/39221
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