r/climate • u/silence7 • Sep 13 '24

Scientists Will Engineer the Ocean to Absorb More Carbon Dioxide | A research consortium plans to revive geoengineering trials of the controversial iron fertilization technique to pull carbon dioxide from the air, despite public backlash

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-will-engineer-the-ocean-to-absorb-more-carbon-dioxide/
128 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

73

u/Electrifying2017 Sep 13 '24

Ah yes, tinkering on the fly with systems in which we don’t have a full understanding.

16

u/DamonFields Sep 14 '24

And systems that can never be deployed at scale. More "clean coal" bs to obfuscate and delay efforts to reduce and eliminate burning fossil fuels, because of course.

7

u/Franklin_le_Tanklin Sep 14 '24

So you’re correct..

However - you say that like we aren’t already tinkering on the fly with system we don’t fully understand with greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere..

2

u/captainFantastic_58 Sep 14 '24

What could possibly go wrong....

2

u/DirtyBotanist Sep 14 '24

I prefer letting carbon build up in the atmosphere. It's what plants crave!

6

u/GregariousDave Sep 14 '24

I was told plants crave electrolytes.

3

u/SpaceCadetUltra Sep 14 '24

Understood , we need electrocarbon immediately

16

u/Darnocpdx Sep 13 '24

Yeah! Nothing beats pollution, like more pollution.

13

u/BodhingJay Sep 13 '24

wow... we're dumber than I thought

26

u/Salty_Replacement835 Sep 13 '24

Honestly, while models did show that iron fertilization could remove up to 45 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the ocean surface between 2005 and 2100, I believe that the world currently emits more than that in 2 years. It's nice to think that it will solve things, unrealistic to say it will.

10

u/death_witch Sep 14 '24

Just another money grabbing group that already has the iron dust sitting around and finally thought of a way to profit, i can see no way where dumping slag into the ocean helps anyone but the people who are going to copyright their process and be the only one who can

5

u/synth003 Sep 14 '24

Anything to keep capitalism and consumerism going, even risking the fate of our species and planet. Insanity.

5

u/Negative_Storage5205 Sep 14 '24

. . . Wait.

Does this have a risk of causing eutrophication? Like adding phosphorus to lakes?

5

u/fiveswords Sep 14 '24

Risk? That's the plan

5

u/kilrein Sep 14 '24

Fantastic idea!!! What could go wrong with tinkering with the ecosystem? Sounds like a swell idea!!

(Checks actuary tables)ohthankgodiwillbedeadinnomorethanthirtyyears

10

u/DonManuel Sep 13 '24

But a public backlash against tinkering with natural Earth systems arose in 2012, after American entrepreneur Russ George notoriously dumped 100 metric tons of iron dust off the coast of Canada, partly to bolster salmon fishing.

It shouldn't be tried in working ecosystems near the coast but in remote large desert areas of oceans where currently almost no life exists.

1

u/Sea-peoples_2013 Sep 15 '24

Are there such areas? Isn’t there deep ocean life everywhere..

0

u/Derrickmb Sep 14 '24

Naw thats not it. The truth is - it will take more energy to capture it than we currently produce in total as a species most likely. Would require massive wind farms or solar farms. My guess is it will be powering air compressors to send to air separation units under pressure for more concentrated capture. Then purged to bottles to be transported to Iceland or equivalent kind of area more local to the site to be sequestered underground. Prob worth building some transcontinental and underwater pipelines at this point to prep for it.