Enrique Gili is a freelance writer covering Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow vast floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction -- and some scholars think that is where it belongs.
"This is organic gardening, not rocket science," said Russ George, the chief executive of Planktos, the company behind the WeatherBird II project. "Can it possibly be as easy as we say it is? We're about to find out." ( NY Times)
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Comments
This is not a new Idea and if done slowly and over a wide area of the ocean using a type of one celled Alga (whose name is don't remember) it will work to some extent.
Posted by: Bill L | May 1, 2007 01:32 PM
I was surprised to see this, they are selling the carbon credits!
I actually like the idea -if done right, we might be able to absorb a few percent of the stuff we are putting into the atmosphere. Of course selling the carbon credits presents a couple of problems. The first is actually accounting for how much carbon was actually sequestered -not just an optimistic estimate of the extra algae grown. The second is that if this method does work, it is a limited scale low-hanging fruit. Perhaps we can cheaply/safely dispose of a billion tons/year this way -but we can't scale it up to cover the whole problem -so once the market (for carbon credits) expands beyond 1gigaton/year you gets to purchase the limited cheap credits, and who has to buy the more expensive ones?
Posted by: bigTom | May 1, 2007 01:56 PM
I thought I had an url on this, but cannot find it. SOmeone a week or two ago pointed me to a report on a fairly recent investigation into this. What the researchers found was that very little of the carbon made it to the ocean floor, the dead beasties were scavenged on the way down, so there was little or no net gain to be had from artificially fertilising the ocean.
I was sure I had saved it to my favourites folder, but obviously not.
Posted by: guthrie | May 1, 2007 05:36 PM
Could you perhaps be referring to this article on whales. Dead whale carcasses are the ocean's equivalent of nurse logs playing host for all kinds of sea creatures.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070322/news_lz1c22whales.html
Posted by: Enrique | May 1, 2007 08:38 PM
guthrie:
If I understood the article corectly something like 50-80% was thought to be scavenged. Twenty to fifty percent -if that much is really being sequestered
is still not a bad result. If it can be shown not to have serious side effects, it might be a useful way to sequester some carbon -but as I said in my earlier comment it could only cover a small fraction of current emissions.
Posted by: bigTom | May 1, 2007 10:29 PM
I read something about sowing the ocean with iron dust to fertilize the growth of algae. Apparently it's worked on an experimental scale but has not panned out in practice (though I don't know how they were practising).
Posted by: Monado | May 6, 2007 08:09 PM