CATEGORY - ALT ENERGY/GEO-ENGINEERING

A comment to a posting has inspired me to create this new category.

I will give pride of place to Dave of Solarventi, who had this to say:

Re: The BBC bit on the apparent failure of the iron filings experiment in the southern ocean (Under Geo-Engineering).

So the iron filings successfully caused a phytoplankton bloom. But, the phytoplankton were rapidly eaten up by voracious copepods, which were themselves then eaten by larger amphipods.

Now, please will someone correct me if I'm wrong here. I know that the CO2 sequestered by the phytoplankton was supposed to go to the bottom of the ocean as they died, but as all the CO2 that they took on board has been reused (digested!) higher up the food chain, and will either be sequestered to the ocean floor sediments as dead exoskeletons (the amphipods and copepods) or as their faeces, surely this is going to tie up the carbon in the ocean sediments just as well?

Hasn't the carbon sequestered by the phytoplankton actually gone into the food chain to be locked up elsewhere? Or am I missing something blindingly obvious here?

...about this:

ARTICLES

BBC - Setback for climate technical fix - I think Dave has a point! I still caution on these macro-manipulations, but a bunch of dead stuff heading ocean floorwards, taking carbon with it, seems a lot better than many ideas I've seen and heard.

Guardian - Obama climate adviser open to geo-engineering to tackle global warming

Guardian - The climate engineers - Can't say finding out is such a bad thing. But the comments so far are less than stellar. Hence I bailed.

BBC - Climate fixes 'pose drought risk' - Erk. Die of climate change, or lack of water? Mess with Mother with caution...

BBC - NEW - Plan B for Planet Earth - With a very scary graph. I had to look up Afforestation just to be sure. Or... don't cut down in swathes those that currently exist and do a pretty good job. Just a thought.