Hi All.
While on the subject, what happened to the theory that sprinkling enormous quantities of iron filings onto the surface of the sea would create a huge phytoplankton bloom and thus remove copious quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?
Cheers
Michael ===============================
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That’s extremely interesting Paul. Thank you for sharing this information with us. In light of all of this, I think it was a pity that ABC Catalyst only touched on one aspect of iron fertilisation. In retrospect, it would have been nice to have had a whole program (a Catalyst special) devoted to this topic.
Stephen Ambrose Ryde NSW
I’ve got lots of bits of old iron in my shed. Should I be chucking them in the sea ?
Tony
I was wondering the same thing, and found this Wikipedia page with the current state of play: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
They were talking about that on the Science Show (ABC RN, repeat 7pm tonight EST) on Sat (or it may have been an excerpt they played from the Catalyst (ABC TV1)) on Baleen Whale poo being important to provide enough iron for phytoplankton growth. The scientist was cautious about ‘seeding’ as different (larger) phytoplankton grow with artificial iron input. No (little) research has been done on the full impact of this. Problems he suggested not yet researched (from my memory) were:- impact on food chains, possible toxic algal blooms, that the phytoplankton may not be preserved (i.e CO2 be trapped) and that it possibly could even result in release of Nitrous Oxide or Methane or other worse greenhouse gases ….
Wendy