OIF gets an opinion piece in the New York Times,,
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All of these prior experiments, however, were short-term, lasting only months, and tiny relative to the vastness and variability of the ocean. Key questions remain, including how long the carbon would stay in the ocean. A new round of experiments needs to cover a much bigger area, patches at least 200 to 500 miles in diameter, and continue over multiple years.
If we did several of these experiments in parallel, in multiple oceans, we could potentially have answers within a decade or less. That would give us the best shot we’ve got against the catastrophic effects of climate change.
This kind of geoengineering has prompted two kinds of worries, both legitimate. First, activists and scientists feared geoengineering might give industries an excuse not to adopt cleaner technologies. Also, there was concern about inadvertent effects, including toxic algae blooms and impacts on commercially important fish species. In 2012 an entrepreneur added 100 tons of iron to the ocean and created a substantial short-term plankton bloom. Many scientists and policymakers worried about what else could happen if commercial entities scaled up without government oversight. By 2013 a de facto ban on this research was in place.
But today with the impacts of climate change around the world growing ever more dangerous, the most important question is how potential consequences of ocean fertilization compare to the damage we are already doing to the oceans and the rest of the planet by burning huge quantities of fossil fuels. The oceans are warming rapidly.
A recent study, published in Nature Climate Change, estimated that even under a low-emission scenario, more than half of marine species are at high or critical risk of extinction by 2100. Coral reefs are at risk from acidification and warming of the ocean surface.
The National Academies recently recommended that we study this and other approaches, and the U.S. government has the capacity to support these studies at scale. It only needs the will and the budget.
The good news is that ocean fertilization should cost less than other options like solar radiation management, a geoengineering approach that has received far more attention, including a recent report from the White House. Ocean fertilization also reduces the ocean acidification that plagues coral reefs and shellfish and should have more long-lasting effects than solar radiation management.
We urgently need more aggressive measures to reduce atmospheric carbon on a large scale. Whatever questions ocean fertilization presents, they pale compared with what we already know about the escalating climate catastrophe if we continue on our current path.
More on oceans and climate change
By John T. Preston, Dennis Bushnell and Anthony Michaels Mr. Preston is an investor and was the director of technology development at M.I.T. in the 1990s. Mr. Bushnell was the chief scientist at NASA Langley Research Center from 1995 to 2023. Dr. Michaels is an oceanographer and farmer who has conducted research on global ocean carbon and nutrient cycles since 1982.