Dumping Iron in the Ocean Could Slow Global Warming, Say Scientists
Dumping iron in the seas can help transfer carbon from the atmosphere and bury it on the ocean floor for centuries, helping to fight climate change, according to a study released on Wednesday.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of SuperFreakonomics, argue that the simplest solution to global warming involves geoengineering technologies that reflect a percentage of sunlight away from the Earth. Levitt describes why he prioritizes this technological solution over carbon reduction.
The report, by an international team of experts, provided a boost for the disputed use of such ocean fertilisation for combating global warming. But it failed to answer questions over possible damage to marine life.
When dumped into the ocean, the iron can spur growth of tiny plants that carry heat-trapping carbon to the ocean floor when they die, the study said.
Scientists dumped seven tonnes of iron sulphate, a vital nutrient for marine plants, into the Southern Ocean in 2004. At least half of the heat-trapping carbon in the resulting bloom of diatoms, a type of algae, sank below 1,000 metres (3,300 ft).
“Iron-fertilised diatom blooms may sequester carbon for timescales of centuries in ocean bottom water and for longer in the sediments,” the team from more than a dozen nations wrote in the journal Nature.
Burying carbon in the oceans would help the fight against climate change, caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists say is raising temperatures and causing more floods, mudslides,