Mineral dust sprinkled in oceans could absorb vast amounts of carbon: study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/22/mineral-dust-oceans-carbon-geoengineering?intcmp=122
Adding more silicate through mineral dust would alter the species of plankton that grows in the seas, the research shows. Photograph: Wim van Egmond/Corbis
Sprinkling billions of tonnes of mineral dust across the oceans could quickly remove a vast quantities of climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a new study.
The proposed "geoengineering" technique would also offset the acidification of the oceans and could be targeted at endangered coral reefs, but it would require a mining effort on the same scale as the world's coal industry and would alter the biology of the oceans.
"It certainly is not a simple solution against the global warming problem," said Peter Köhler, at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the study. It would require 100 large ships operating all year to distribute 1bn tonnes of the mineral olivine, although it might be possible to use the ballast water in existing shipping instead.
Geoengineering – global-scale intervention to combat climate change – is a controversial idea because of the risk of unintended consequences on a planet-wide scale. But scientists argue it needs to be researched in case international efforts to cut the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities fail to prevent dramatic changes in climate and emergency measures are needed.
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We'll never know how important the millions of species living in the oceans are until we've wiped half of them out.
It's come to needing desperate grasps at geoengineering to protect the Greatest species' existence, so we better soldier on! 
> It would require 100 large ships operating all year to distribute 1bn tonnes of the mineral olivine
Those "100 large ships operating all year" are busy burning fossil fuels.
The "1b tonnes of the mineral olivine" require extraction (using fossil fuels and large scale destruction)
as olivine weathers very rapidly on the surface (hence it's desirability for this purpose).
At least Köhler has it right: "It certainly is not a simple solution against the global warming problem"
but I bet most of the FF addicts never get to that part.
