Hawk, you need to write the Wegener Institute. They have obviously thought about both the problem and the possibility of the Iron Hypothesis solution. And, BTW, responding to your earlier remark that there is "no money to made" from such a simple solution--actually, there is a lot of money to be made, not only for iron producers, but from fisheries (more plankton will lead in time to more fish as the bottom of the food chain is strengthened), and from carbon offsets (also making continuing use of fossil fuels more palatable). Not to mention the interests of the world in reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and avoiding the possible catastrophes that could result from it.
Twelve oceanographic expeditions were carried out between 1993 and 2005 is the North Pacific, the Equatorial Pacific and the Southern Ocean to test the iron fertilization hypothesis. However, as pointed out by Hein de Baar, from the Netherlands Institut voor Onderzoek der Zee (NIOZ, Texel, The Netherlands), today after all those experiments we know that they are many losses and that this manipulation is not a real efficient way to capture and store CO2 into the deep ocean. Much more iron is needed that had originally been suggested for algae to bring down a certain amount of CO2 from the atmosphere.
The idea of seeding iron on the oceans to cool down the Earth on large scale may not be operationally possible. But some scientists think that locally this strategy could be feasible.(”More arguments have to be evaluated about artificial iron fertilizations of the ocean before final conclusions can be drawn”, says Prof. Ulrich Bathmann from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI, Bremerhaven, Germnany). Hence, research continues and further studies are required to be able help better understand the processes of the production and export of organic matter related to these iron fertilization experiments as well as their consequences on the food web.
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Despite the great natural potential of the oceans to uptake atmospheric CO2, our current knowledge indicates that seeding iron on the oceans or dissolving more carbon dioxide into the depths do not seem conceivable solutions to solve our CO2 problem. However, given the current situation, taking no action may lead to even greater risks. We need to decrease our emissions of carbon dioxide and will probably have to adopt multiple strategies.
sciencedaily.com
The article was written just a few weeks ago, in case you didn't notice the date. |
