Ocean geoengineering to suck carbon out of the atmosphere is controversial but at some point we’ll have to weigh the risks against those posed by unchecked climate change
A SPRINKLING of iron ore “glued” onto rice husks using goo from plants hardly sounds like a recipe for saving the planet. Not to mention the fact that the mixture is designed to mimic whale faeces.
And yet if a team of researchers backed by a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government crack this, it could be coming to an ocean near you soon. Theirs is just one of several projects across the world, small in scale but big in vision, looking at a new way to stave off the worst effects of climate change: engineering the oceans.
Similar “geoengineering” proposals are highly controversial, and this idea is no different, horrifying those who warn of the potential unintended consequences of fiddling with sensitive marine environments. But the world’s lack of progress on curbing carbon emissions might make it necessary. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change