Having spent on a lot of time discussing this topic in a series of blog articles, I'd have to disagree with your point.  The majority of scientists don't disagree with this idea.  There have been a lot people doing studies just like Planktos.  

However, there are some scientists who are ideologically or politically opposed to iron fertilization science, and have been working over time in the past 15 years to try to block any and all study of the subject.  This was a topic that we did a long expose about last year...the attempts by some scientists to retard the progress of this science.

And yes, the nice folks at RealClimate.org are very negative. I'm sorry to see that, because that kind of negativity is exactly what the climate change community doesn't need, if it wants to convince the public that it's serious about encouraging innovation.

In reality, most qualified scientists who I've talked to agree that this is potentially scientifically important work.  Thus my position still is:

Let Planktos do their study, but watch them carefully and ensure that the work is done in a scientifically valid, ecologically cautious, transparent way.

These are the standards that we apply to most if not all other ecological work, commercial or not, and these standards work well.  There is no reason to do otherwise.

This touches a little bit on one of my big fears about sequestration, versus avoiding putting the carbon up in the first place.

That taking some carbon down, isn't equivalent to blocking carbon from going up.

Because while over a geologic timescale it works great, from a year to year timescale you run up against the 100 year timeframe that the carbon says up in the troposphere.

Haven't quite confirmed this yet, but it scares me that we could be doing something on a large scale which is merely encouraging higher atmospheric levels of carbon in the troposphere.

Yes, let's look at what they say.

They say it's unproven.  I agree.  

They say it's speculative.  Right again.

They say there are risks of unknown side effects.  Yes of course.  Anything new has risks.  The goal of research is to uncover and understand those risks.

Where do they say they "don't approve?"  I don't see that.  What they say is that it's unproven.  Which would imply that someone should do the research to prove or disprove it.  

Which is exactly what Planktos proposes to do.  More research, in this case, funded by carbon credits.  A rather clever way to fund scientific work.  

And yes, the majority of ocean scientists do support more research, once it is presented to them without the emotional and political baggage that so many people want to throw on it.  

The Planktos proposal seems to have been mislabeled. It seems to be more about restoration ecology than geoengineering.

Restoration ecology (and its companion science conservation biology) has a decades-long history of contributing improved environmental quality on land -- reclaiming wetlands to support biodiversity and water quality goals, expanding populations of rare or endangered species, returning watersheds to near-pristine conditions. The methods are based on applying key concepts that mirror ecosystem structure & function. I don't see any reason in principle that these same methods can't be applied in the ocean where Planktos will be working.

Should the ocean be a target for restoration? If you look into the issues you'll discover that declines of pelagic ocean water quality and biodiversity are of a global scale too.  With implications for ocean ecosystems and commercial fisheries. The two issues are clearly related.

Loss of open ocean plankton is an alarming idea to confront. Whole regions of the world's oceans seem to be facing `desertification' because of changing land use patterns, shifting currents & winds. Returning nutrients like iron to small patches of the ocean -- and carefully measuring the results -- seems to be one way we can address the problem. Otherwise, what is our alternative?

It seems to me that preventing pollution by reducing emissions is only part of the answer.  The curative approach, via sequestration and ecosystem restoration, where we remediate damage already done to ocean and atmosphere, has an equally important role to play.

Tina M.

If it were clear that this is proposed as a restoration project that may have some carbon sequestration benefits as a side effect, all well and good. But it's not. And there's way to much money hanging off the carbon-trading end of this for us to be able to take Planktos' purity of purpose on trust.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.