Generic climate-related photo
I came across this article that I think will interest people here, and I haven’t seen anyone else post about it.
Basically, the idea is that seeding the oceans with something like iron or other chemicals can increase the ocean’s ability to serve as a carbon sink, thereby alleviating the climate crisis. The idea was most dramatically proposed by the late oceanographer John Martin, who said “Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you an ice age”. You can read more about John Martin and his Iron Hypothesis here.
The idea is controversial for several reasons, including the likelihood that alleviating some symptoms of climate change makes it harder to accomplish the real changes we need to make, like cutting back on carbon emissions. Still, desperate times…
The Smithsonian Magazine wrote a lengthy article in 2020 describing the pros and cons of the approach, but discusses it mostly in terms of old experiments in real oceans and newer theoretical lab work.
Anyway, the Science.org article I read interested me because it is a new real-world experiment in a Florida estuary.
The balmy, shallow waters of Apalachicola Bay, off Florida’s panhandle, supply about 10% of U.S. oysters. But the industry has declined in recent years, in part because the bay is warming and its waters are acidifying because of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Things got so bad that in 2020, the state banned oyster harvesting for 5 years. Soon afterward, state officials encouraged climate scientists to perform an unusual experiment to see whether they could reverse the changes in the water.
In May, at an Apalachicola estuary, the researchers injected some 2000 liters of seawater enriched with lime, an alkaline powder and a primary ingredient in cement that’s derived from chalk or limestone. They showed it neutralized some of the acidity and, in the process, drew CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Yay! But not so fast because, among other drawbacks, producing the lime generates, of course, carbon dioxide.
Anyway, I was interested to see that this idea is being pursued, and I thought others here might like to read about it too.
