I had my doubts all along, and new science confirms. Adding iron to oceans is not the magic solution to excess CO2 and climate change. So much for John Martin's famous quote "give me a half tanker of iron and I'll give you an ice age." He was right that iron can cause plankton blooms, but wrong about taking his results to geo-engineering.
"Ocean iron fertilization is simply no longer to be taken as a viable option for mitigation of the CO2 problem," says Hein de Baar, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel. Tweet
2 comments:
Too bad this study came out AFTER Germany allowed their big iron fertilization study to go ahead.
The Montreal Declaration released today also warns that fertilization projects may increase ocean acidification.
Of course neither of these things means that people will necessarily give up on the idea, unfortunately.
Interesting... we just learned about this iron fertilization hypothesis in my Masters-level oceanography class. I shall send this paper to the professor. Thanks for the tip!
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