Again greenpeace is against carbon sequestration, we must stop our sin of fossil fuels.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07...iron_research/
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GB003410.shtml
Icelandic phytoplankton starved of iron, seemingly

By Lewis Page . Get more from this author

Posted in Environment, 8th July 2009 15:40 GMT

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British oceanographers say they have found evidence that phytoplankton growth in the north Atlantic
is sharply limited by the availability of iron. The seagoing boffins suggest that their research
could have important implications for efforts to fight climate change, as phytoplankton can absorb
large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.

The new findings are based on measurements carried out in the central Iceland Basin by scientists
from the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in the summer of 2007. The NOC boffins travelled
aboard the Royal Research Ship Discovery, a British government scientific vessel.

The NOC scientists found very low levels of iron in the North Atlantic seawater, while other
essential nutrients that would normally turn into phytoplankton remained unused. Adding small
concentrations of dissolved iron to sample bottles taken from the sea resulted in more
phytoplankton, more chlorophyll, and better photosynthesis - the sunlight-driven process by which
plants remove carbon from the atmosphere.

"These results, backed up by additional experiments, are extremely exciting," says the NOC's Maria
Nielsdottir.

"They provide strong evidence that low iron availability limits summer biological production in the
high-latitude North Atlantic. This has only previously been suspected, but helps explain why the
spring phytoplankton bloom does not continue well into the summer and why residual amounts of
nitrate remain unused."

Some scientists have suggested that it would be possible to remove significant amounts of CO2 from
the atmosphere by seeding suitable ocean regions with iron - the amounts of metal involved are
small. This would allow the iron-starved, plant-like phytoplankton to increase in numbers to the
full potential of their nutrient supplies, so aborbing massive amounts of carbon and presumably
easing the greenhouse effect.

There has been a hotly-debated argument as to whether such efforts should qualify for valuable
carbon credits under governmental schemes like those planned in the European Union. Critics of the
idea say that the effects of such "geoengineering" are unproven, and that in any case the focus
should be on humanity emitting less carbon rather than on sequestering it in the oceans afterwards.

Nielsdottir doesn't go as far as to say that iron-powered ocean sequestration is a good idea, but
she does drop a hint.

"[This research] is important," she says, "because the high-latitude North Atlantic is second only
to the Southern Ocean in its potential to lower atmospheric carbon dioxide and unused nitrate in
the surface highlight the potential for even higher CO2 drawdown, high levels of which are an
important cause of global climate warming."

Details on the resulting scholarly paper, Iron limitation of the postbloom phytoplankton
communities in the Iceland Basin, can be found here. ®