Only mother nature knows how to fertilize the ocean (Nature)

[jpak]

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070423/full/070423-8.html

Blooms of algae created by pumping nutrients into the ocean can suck up at least ten times more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere than was previously thought. But the findings lend no support to controversial schemes to encourage such blooms in order to reduce global warming, the authors warn.

The conclusion comes from a survey of a large, annually recurring natural algal bloom near Kerguelen, an archipelago halfway between South Africa and Australia. Natural vertical mixing of the ocean there steadily supplies iron and other nutrients from sediments at the ocean floor to the surface waters, encouraging phytoplankton growth. This growth converts carbon in the air (as CO2) to organic matter, thus reducing the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and alleviating climate warming.

Stephane Blain, a chemical oceanographer at the Oceanography and Biogeochemistry Laboratory in Marseille, France, led a 47-strong international team to investigate this bloom in detail in early 2005. Their results show that the ability of such blooms to suck up CO2, and to carry that carbon to the ocean floor when the organisms die, is much greater than previous field studies had suggested.

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Geo-engineering the ocean won't work

In 12 previous experiments carried out since 1993, during which scientists had artificially 'fertilized' small patches of ocean with iron nutrient, the observed amount of carbon exported to the deep ocean per amount of iron supplied had been around one magnitude lower2.

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[applegrove]

1. I'm hopefull about this. Not that I want the oceans to be disturbed..but that

we can capture some CO2 permanently and send it to the ocean floor where it will stay forever.

[pansypoo53219]

no-always unintended consequences

don't fuck with your mother.

can't get to that other planet yet and it probably has people there already.

[pansypoo53219]

no-always unintended consequences

don't fuck with your mother.

can't get to that other planet yet and it probably has people there already.

[pansypoo53219]

2. no-always unintended consequences

don't fuck with your mother.

can't get to that other planet yet and it probably has people there already.

[Javaman]

3. got it the first time LOL nt

[Odin2005]

4. We've been "fucking with our mother" ever since we started farming. Your point?

I hate this "we shouldn't mess with nature" attitude, it is based on the same "humans are separate from nature" rhetoric us enviromentalists are supposed to be against. I've seem the evolution of humans referred to as "Gaia growing a brain." Yes, human ingenuity got us into this mess, but human ingenuity can get us back out, too.