I apologize because I don’t have a source in mind, but my recollection from studying this in grad school (which was admittedly about a decade ago) was that sequestration was one of the hardest parts of this. Creating a bloom of algae was feasible, but even if we ignore a lot of other ecosystem management complications that others have pointed out, there wasn’t a reliable mechanism to convert a bloom of algae into a long-term carbon store.
I could be mistaken here. I’m open-minded towards this kind of geoengineering. But I’m also very skeptical that if this could work, it could do so at a rate that would enable us to continue burning fossil fuels at scale, and there is a strong base of support for this technology among people with that attitude.
The hope is the phytoplankton are in an area where iron is scarce and they die and sink to the seabed. One experiment in 2009 ended up with zooplankton consuming the bloom, so it has definitely failed at times.
I apologize because I don’t have a source in mind, but my recollection from studying this in grad school (which was admittedly about a decade ago) was that sequestration was one of the hardest parts of this. Creating a bloom of algae was feasible, but even if we ignore a lot of other ecosystem management complications that others have pointed out, there wasn’t a reliable mechanism to convert a bloom of algae into a long-term carbon store.
I could be mistaken here. I’m open-minded towards this kind of geoengineering. But I’m also very skeptical that if this could work, it could do so at a rate that would enable us to continue burning fossil fuels at scale, and there is a strong base of support for this technology among people with that attitude.
The hope is the phytoplankton are in an area where iron is scarce and they die and sink to the seabed. One experiment in 2009 ended up with zooplankton consuming the bloom, so it has definitely failed at times.
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