Oceanus

It's sort of the planetary equivalent of moving clutter accumulating in the attic to other storage space in the basement: transferring excess heat-trapping carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere into the deep ocean. A combination of forces--including...

Profits, pollution, and politics all will play roles in ocean iron fertilizationDebating the idea of fertilizing the ocean with iron can feel a little like riding a seesaw.On the up side is iron's eye-catching potential to set off enormous plankton blooms,...

Is this a viable way to help reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere?"Give me half a tanker of iron, and I'll give you an ice age" may rank as the catchiest line ever uttered by a biogeochemist. The man responsible was the late John Martin, former...

Other lines of evidence inform the debate on ocean iron fertilizationThe first part of biogeochemist John Martin's famous prediction-"Give me half a tanker of iron, and I'll give you an ice age"-has been proved partly right: Iron is the only thing standing...

Global warming is "unequivocal," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in November 2007. Human actions--particularly the burning of fossil fuels--have dramatically raised carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,...

The uncertainties and unintended consequences of manipulating ecosystemsMost of the ocean food chain is too small to see, but that doesn't mean the effects of iron fertilization will be, too."The purpose, if one is going to do iron fertilization, is...

Getting carbon into the ocean is one thing. Keeping it there is another.In this age of satellites, it's fairly easy to answer the basic question of whether adding iron to the ocean can stimulate a plankton bloom. When storms over land blow iron-rich...