Carbon Capture Made Simple

novy.

Posted to SciTech on Mon Jul 23, 2012 at 09:51:16 AM EST (promoted from Diaries by port1080). RSS.

"Dumping iron into the sea can bury carbon dioxide for centuries, potentially helping reduce the impact of climate change, according to a major new study. The work shows for the first time that much of the algae that blooms when iron filings are added dies and falls into the deep ocean."

Geoengineering, they call it, and it comes with "uncertainties and risks". Ken Buesseler, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, commented,

"Most scientists would agree that we are nowhere near the point of recommending [iron fertilization of the oceans] as a geoengineering tool. But many think that larger and longer [iron fertilization] experiments should be performed to help us to decide which, if any, of the many geoengineering options at hand should be deployed."

Of course, not everyone takes that sort of cautious approach. Forbes magazine, for example, apparently thinks we should do this immediately, mostly because it figures governments will be trying to stop global warming whether conservatives believe it exists or not and so they might as well do something cheap.

"Give me half a tanker of iron and I'll give you the next ice age", it has been said. But I don't really want another ice age, especially given that "we are still in the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch." Furthermore, "[t]here have been at least five major ice ages in the Earth's past (the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, Karoo Ice Age and the Quaternary glaciation). Outside these ages, the Earth seems to have been ice-free even in high latitudes."

I think it could be that way again, and humans would be just fine. Who really needs all that ice anyway (except maybe hockey players)? I wish Forbes could seed his planet's oceans with iron and freeze his arse off and still leave MY planet alone.