SPRAYING the oceans with iron filings really can make them absorb more carbon dioxide from the air – but probably not enough to use as a fix for global warming.
The Bush administration, which has proposed this trick as a possible cheap solution to global warming may not be pleased by the results of two big experiments published on 16 April. When researchers in the SOFeX project fertilised 400 square kilometres of the Southern Ocean with iron, the patches of water duly responded by growing blooms of plankton that lasted for a month. The plankton absorbed CO2, and robot…
