Reduce CO2 With Phytoplankton Seeding

JediJeremy writes "Nature has this article on a team of scientists who want to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by increasing the amount of phytoplankton in the oceans. Phytoplankton thrive on iron, so the scientists are going to conduct a study to better grap the affect of an increase of iron in the water will be. They plan to dissolve an iron sulphate solution in a 150-200 square-kilometer patch of the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica to maximize the containment of the iron. The major flaw in the plan is it will only work if the phytoplankton die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the CO2 with them, otherwise, the carbon will be reintroduced into the ecosystem. Interesting idea, but big design flaw."

Comments

To REALLY decrease the CO2...

[Ugmo]

...they should combine this 'seeding the ocean with iron' with eliminating SUV's.

This is how you do it: You build giant wood chippers with the ejection shoots aimed out over the ocean.

Then line up all the SUV's in the USA and make people drive them into the chippers.

The steel from the SUV's will shoot out and fertilize the plankton.

To be humane you can let the drivers jump out at the last minute. Unless they're too busy talking on their cell phones to jump.

Hey, I'm sure the plankton could do with elements other than iron for fertilizer. ;)

Re:Design flaw?

[El]

Actually, there is slightly more carbon on Earth than a billion years ago due to meteorite strikes, but the important thing is how much carbon is loose in the atmosphere (C02) versus how much is tied up in the crust of the Earth itself or in other forms. Lately we have been decreasing the biomass tied up in trees (thus releasing carbon into the atmosphere), and extracting and burning hydrocarbons like they are going our of style (which in fact they are). The burning of fossil fuel has a secondary affect noone talks about -- sulpher emissions forms sulphuric acid, which then rain down on limestone and erode it at a much faster rate, thus releasing even more carbon dioxide into the air. If all the photoplankton falls to the bottom of the ocean, it'll eventually form new limestone deposits, no? Perhaps it would be more effective to prevent the limestone we have now from eroding. Ok, who's going to help me spray the Himalayas with a protective sealant?

Re:Design flaw?

[Smidge204]

If you have asteroid strikes reaching the bottom of the oceans or nuclear blasts in just about any form, CO2 probably ain't your biggest problem.

Here's a reference to the abandoned mine storage concept.
=Smidge=

I didn't hear about mines, I thought it was...

[Tau Zero]

... exhausted oil and gas wells and other deep aquifers. These have the known geological stability to be able to hold gases for aeons, and a great many of them have pipes running into them already.

The previous responder's link identifies "abandoned mine shafts" as one of the several possibilities, but I suppose those mines would have to be very deep and have few fractures, else the CO2 would leak right out again.

FWIW, one of the advantages of using "spent" oil wells is that you can't recover all of the oil just by pumping. CO2 is a nice non-polar solvent and it dissolves the remaining oil stuck in the pores of the rock, so you can circulate it and boil off the CO2 from the stuff you bring back up, leaving oil as the bottoms. This might not be economical to do for its own sake, but if you are already paying for the CO2 disposal the oil recovery would be icing on the cake.

The word is "phYtoplankton"

[Tau Zero]

The word does not derive from "photo", for light, but phyein, to bring forth via its derivative "phyton". Phytoplankton are the self-feeders, the "autotrophs"; everything else is an other-feeder, or heterotroph.

Thus endeth the grammar lesson for the day.