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January 2008
( Vol. 46 No. 1 )

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Our Ocean. Our Planet. Our Future.

To Fertilize, or Not to Fertilize

Global warming is “unequivocal,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in November 2007. Human actions—particularly the burning of fossil fuels—have dramatically raised carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases…

Proposals Emerge to Transfer Excess Carbon into the Ocean

It’s sort of the planetary equivalent of moving clutter accumulating in the attic to other storage space in the basement: transferring excess heat-trapping carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere into the…

Dumping Iron and Trading Carbon

Debating the idea of fertilizing the ocean with iron can feel a little like riding a seesaw. On the up side is iron’s eye-catching potential to set off enormous plankton…

Lessons from Nature, Models, and the Past

The first part of biogeochemist John Martin’s famous prediction—“Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age”—has been proved partly right: Iron is the only…

What Are the Possible Side Effects?

Most of the ocean food chain is too small to see, but that doesn’t mean the effects of iron fertilization will be, too. “The purpose, if one is going to…

Will Ocean Iron Fertilization Work?

In this age of satellites, it’s fairly easy to answer the basic question of whether adding iron to the ocean can stimulate a plankton bloom. When storms over land blow…

Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron

  “Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age” may rank as the catchiest line ever uttered by a biogeochemist. The man responsible was…