This is just a band aid but it could be benificial. It could buy us more time so we can continue our carbon emissions.

The only fix is (over-simplified) to stop driving and plant more trees.

Really seems like an easy thing to try. Lets just take a tanker and sink it. We spend alot of money on a lot of ridiculous "pet" projects, or pork barrel waste. lets find a senator with an iron mine in his state and get this going. whats the MAX cost for this amount of iron anyway?

Iron Ore ships have sunk before. The Edmond Fitzgerald on Lake Superior comes to mind. Is there any way to see how CO2 in the area around those wrecks might have changed? I realize Lake Superior is fresh water, but it can't be the only iron ore wreck.

Although this article does not identify the barren areas of the ocean, most of the warm tropical belt between the tropics of cancer and capricorn are considered the 'desert' of the ocean. James Lovelock discusses this in 'Revenge of Gaia'. His reasoning includes a very strong thermocline due to suns heating of the water. This thermocline inhibits mixing of the cooler, nutrient rich water below with the warmer water above that becomes depleted of nutrients.
Simple fixes often appear that way because not all aspects of the problems have been considered. Americans have a fondness for simple fixes, but the side effects often get out of hand.
I would advise caution and prudence, and of course, conservation of energy use by humans.

Again, what is the absolute worse thing that can happen by sinking a single ore ship? Taking "time to learn about science" is purely economics talking (in this case.) Its not like someone is advocating droping nuclear waste in the water and seeing if it helps climate change.. its just iron!! Drop the ship, pay some university to watch it. If we can fund studies into the behavior of fruit flies, this would have at least the same amount of scientific value if absolutely nothing happened to the iron.

It is curious to find sunken ships in somewhat shallow water can attrack a lot of fish and become the basis of a lot of sea life. It is because of the Iron?
Jonathan mentioned something dropping nuclear waste help global warming. I am an advocate of a company that can package high level nuclear waste and drop it in very specific parts of the ocean. Given that nuclear power adds no carbon at all but there is a lot of concern about what to do with the waste.
It cost nothing to log on to: PermanentRadWasteSolutions.com to find out more.

Sorry…this is a long one!

I have just completed my Ph.D. in Oceanography and have worked with Tony Michaels, among others, on the role of iron in the open ocean. I do not agree that iron fertilization is a viable option. Iron fertilization is a very contentious topic in the world of oceanography. I urge people to read the Living on Earth article linked to in the posting to which we are all responding. The author does a great job of listing all the very renowned and respected scientists who do not think iron fertilization will be an effective method. Unfortunately many of the original articles are buried in the journal Science, but the author does a good of summing up the main points.

Some other issues not mentioned in the Living on Earth article are:

If the iron does its job, this will stimulate phytoplankton growth in an area that doesn't normally have phytoplankton growing. For this method to work, the phytoplankton has to take up the CO2 and sink out very quickly. But the research hasn't shown this to be the case. The issue is that if the phytoplankton don't sink out quickly, they attract organisms, such as bacteria and zooplankton, that feed on them -- organisms that respire CO2 (like us). If this occurs, the feeding organisms may actually offset the CO2 reductions from the phytoplankton (and potentially even lead to an increase in CO2!).

It is also purported that when iron enrichment experiments occur along the coast, they stimulate the growth of one particular phytoplankton that produces domoic acid, a neurotoxin, which can lead to symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, headache, dizziness and confusion. Difficulty breathing, seizures, coma and death can occur in severe cases. Survivors of severe cases have suffered permanent loss of short-term memory, a condition known as amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) (http://seafood.ucdavis.edu/Pubs/natural.htm).

The ocean ecosystem is so complex. We really just still don't know enough to be playing at such a large scale. There's still a lot to be learned from controlled bottle experiments on the deck of a research vessel.

Additionally, this cruise plans to go from Florida, by the Galapagos, then on to the South Pacific. For science which is still controversial and for a project whose goal is "to find out what happens", perhaps they should consider not going by one of the most unique and protected areas in this world.

As a scientist, I'm not opposed to having more experiments to get at some of the things we don't understand. But, as a conservationist, I'm terrified of putting this into the hands of a private company whose real goal is not reducing carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, but rather capitalizing on those reductions. Will this company back off if the results look promising for reducing CO2 and increasing profits, but ultimately damages the ocean ecosystem? The ocean already plays an effective and vital role in stabilizing the atmosphere and absorbing our carbon dioxide emissions…let's let it do its job - at least until we understand all this just a bit better.

(One last note -- I wasn't clear from the comments if people understood that these scientists are not talking about dumping an old tanker…they will be releasing dissolved iron at a controlled rate.)

Another long one, I'm also in oceanography (working towards my PhD) and agree that there is far more work to be done on the iron fertilization idea before its tried on a large scale by a corporation. Also to correct a misunderstanding in a comment above not all of the open ocean is iron limited, the tropics are largely nutrient (mainly nitrogen but sometimes phosphorus or silica) limited.

The key area that this is being proposed for is the Southern Ocean. It has to be done in very deep water so that (in theory) the carbon would sink all the way to the bottom and be buried. It was not established that in the experiments that were done that the carbon actually reaches deep water rather than being used and respired by other organisms at the surface.

As pointed out above they aren't talking about sinking whole ships but rather releasing dissolved iron into surface waters. One major problem is that dissolved iron quickly becomes oxidized (less technical this what happens to iron when it rusts), which makes it insoluble, and not biologically available, and therefore it sinks out of the surface water, so you would have to continually have a ship on site releasing dissolved iron.

An additional problem is that while iron can stimulate a bloom of phytoplankton, they may fairly quickly use up all the available nitrogen, phosphorus and silica and the bloom would then end despite having available iron in the water. Fertilizers containing these nutrients are very fossil fuel intensive to produce and massive amounts would be need to keep a bloom going, making that aspect not economically feasible at all.

A major conservation concern is that the oceans are already taking up massive amounts of our CO2 naturally, and this has resulted in the ocean becoming more acidic, which could lead to problems for corals and other calcium carbonate containing organisms because acid causes calcium carbonate to dissolve. This includes some plankton currently responsible for removing carbon from surface waters by sinking.

It's much more complex than what people who stand to make money off the idea would like people to believe.

Wasn't there a similar idea many years ago and the thought was that if sunk a bunch of old tires that were bound together they would do the same thing and we would also be keeping tires out of the landfills? Now there are major cleanup efforts taking place because the tires aren't doing what researchers had hoped and actually the tires are coming unbound and ending up on beaches all over the place. I guess my point is not that the ship is going to end up on a beach somewhere but that there is no way to tell what the long term ramifications are of something like this. For all we know, after being underwater for 30 years the ship could cause a strange chemical reaction with something in the ocean and start putting off toxic chemicals into the ocean and start killing off underwater life. That may be a bit extreme but there are many questions with a project like this that need to be answered.

Clearly more research is in order, though I don't find the profit motive here quite so tainted as the scientists seem to. Climate change presents many opportunities for "doing well by doing good," and this may be one of them.

Since encountering this idea a decade ago, I've felt that its likely best use was not as part of an ongoing mitigation strategy, but as an emergency backup in case we got into a "runaway greenhouse." In that case, any side effects might still be better than doing nothing, and taking a few GT of carbon out of the atmosphere in a hurry might help put on the brakes on a temperature spike.

The easiest way to keep this program from getting out of hand would be to work with the IPCC to ensure that offsets from ocean fertilization wouldn't be counted as tradable credits within the Kyoto system, until the systemic consequences are much better understood.

We are not talking about sinking any ships people. The plankton lives on the surface therefore the iron must be in a fine powder form so as to remain near the surface of the ocean long enough for the plankton to form and begin its life cycle. Sunken iron ore ships or just sunken ships made of iron will not stimulate plankton blooms to form on the bottom of the ocean. These two points cannot be compared.

I understand at least one plan (University of Otago) was to dump Iron Sulphate (iron sand from NZ west coast beaches mixed with sulphuric acid) into the southern ocean. Tests of this showed long lasting bloom visible from space (this from a hundred litres or so from a fishing boat research vessel) Plankton bloom, then krill eat plankton, eventually die and fall to seabed releasing the iron sulphate catalyst and so it starts again.
Same effect as the the claimed historical Aust desert dust fertilising the southern oceans triggering a cooling off.
All fine except that temp/CO2 traces show CO2 indicate temp changes, not cause them. (Vostok cores)Climate change will happen but just like the castle coal and wood fires did not cause the medieval warm period, we have not caused the small warming of the last 50 years.

We need to know the Iron Ore concept and its nuances on an intimate basis. The rate of land based Ice melt is happening faster than we thought. Therefore, we need a quick fix and if this theory has that potential, we must understand the ins and outs of it. Conserving energy and changing light bulbs is simply not proactive enough to undo the current climate trends.

That being said, the application of ocean seeding via iron ore does not have to be done all at one time. It could be staggered in small quantities and spread over a decade. This would give us some time to study the immediate effect. Unfortunately, I don't think we have the time to study its long term effects.

If we look at the normal patterns of alga blooms and zooplankton consumption of phytoplankton, we have a natural mechanism for carbon sequestration. All we need to do is slightly seed the natural occurring phytoplankton blooms so they are, say 10% bigger than the normal. Massive Zooplankton blooms follow the natural occurring phytoplankton blooms. Massive small fish runs (anchovies, sardines, krill, etc., in schools that stretch for miles) always follow the resultant zooplankton explosion. Larger predators and so on follow these runs. The use of iron ore powder just prior to the time of the greatest phytoplankton bloom gives us the clean-up/carbon sequestration mechanism via the natural food chain.

This can be done in many key locations (always using very small and conservative amounts of iron ore powder based on predetermined guidelines) and timed to coincide with anticipated zooplankton cycles.

One of the unfortunate objections to the iron ore idea is the ‘temporary fix' criticism. That zooplankton consuming the phytoplankton will emit the carbon back into the air. First, algae converts CO2 plus other compounds into tissue via photosynthesis. Plants (algae) do no expel CO2 back into the air. Second, zooplankton convert food into tissue. They will expel some CO2 but, the plant matter taken in will be both eliminated as waste (sinks and food for other things) and converted into zooplankton tissue. Will they breathe some of it back into the environment? Yes. But, the rest is being locked away via the food chain. Studies of many zooplankton show squid and octopus convert 50% of their food into body mass. I am guessing that this high rate of food conversion is true for many marine zooplankton. Therefor, a huge amount of locked away CO2.

For those of you who dive, you know that at about 15 feet under water you are compressed to the point where air in your buoyancy jacket displaces half of the space it did on the surface. Go a little deeper and it feels easier to keep on sinking. This compression is also what happens to soft body tissue like plankton. Beyond a certain point, if algae is not consumed on the surface, a down draft of current can cause it to compress enough to start sinking. This becomes what is knows as ‘snow'.

As snow falls it can be consumed by different zooplankton at different levels but a great deal still makes it to the ocean floor. This natural occurring snow will settle on the ocean bottom and become oil in a few million years. This natural system generates massive amounts of natural carbon sequestration. But, could we add to it by generating algae blooms in areas with enough ‘down-welling' of water to take surface algae deep enough to turn it into snow. This is a matter of research and mapping the areas with currents that can pull from the surface, with enough power to sink surface algae (making snow).

Although I am for private industry, this would seem to be a job for (dare I say it) the Army Core of Engineers. My fear of a United Nations body doing this is the time wasted dithering that would ensue if left to this organization. The idea needs an executing body large enough to coordinate all of the pieces and measure results. Plus, due to the freedom of information act, we get a certain level of transparency not granted to us if done via private enterprise.