Venture to Use Sea to Fight Warming Runs Out of Cash
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 14, 2008
Planktos, a California company that is trying to turn a profit by fertilizing the ocean with iron dust, canceled planned field tests on Wednesday, citing a lack of funds. At the company’s Web site, planktos.com, a notice blamed a “highly effective disinformation campaign” for the cancellation.
Ocean Fertilization Project Halted (February 13, 2008) The business plan had been to sell carbon offset credits earned by creating blooms of phytoplankton that, in theory, would absorb a certain amount of the climate-warming gas carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then sink to the seabed.
The credits would be sold in the growing market for such offsets to compensate for unavoidable emissions of carbon dioxide.
Plankton blooms happen naturally when dust containing iron settles on ocean waters, where a lack of iron otherwise prevents plankton from thriving. Huge blooms have resulted when dust from the Sahara Desert blows over the Atlantic, for example.
But efforts to replicate the process artificially have met with strong opposition from environmental groups and some marine and climate scientists.
Company officials said that their vessel, the Weatherbird II, has been stuck in port on the Portuguese island of Madeira after months of revised plans and failed efforts to attract more investors. On Wednesday, the company said it had called back the vessel and its crew.
The statement said that the company’s board “continues to believe in the urgent ecological necessity” of its plans, but that “ideological hostility” and “misrepresentations” would continue to stymie progress.
nytimes.com |
