iron’t you glad we didn’t follow through
January 29, 2009 by admin
Filed under climate change
We have been closely following developments of the ship that has been heading to the Antarctic to dump loads of iron into the ocean.
About a month ago, researchers had discovered that by dumping iron into the ocean, may create an algae bloom, that would then suck up a whole bunch of carbon dioxide. Obviously, the idea of this working would be fantastic. But many people voiced concern ranging from what it would do to the ecosystem all the way to was it even legal under international law.
Well, all of the discussion may not make much of a difference. New evidence is emerging that the iron may not suck up as much carbon dioxide as originally hoped, according to the New Scientist.
In fact it may be 80 times less effective than originally assumed. There are some cases in which bloom is limited because of too much iron in the water, thereby not working to trap carbon.
What this all means, at least to us, is that much more research needs to be done to determine the efficacy of such an experiment.
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algal bloom dumps toxins into ocean | The Golden Spiral on Tue, 24th Mar 2009 11:18 am
[...] A few months back, we published a few articles about the German ship that was going to go to the Antarctic to dump iron into the sea that would create and algal bloom that would suck up CO2 and save the planet for all of eternity. [...]