Venture to Use Sea to Fight Warming Runs Out of Cash

[jpak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/technology/14planktos.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Planktos, a California company that is trying to turn a profit by fertilizing the ocean with iron dust, canceled planned field tests on Wednesday, citing a lack of funds. At the company’s Web site, planktos.com, a notice blamed a “highly effective disinformation campaign” for the cancellation.

The business plan had been to sell carbon offset credits earned by creating blooms of phytoplankton that, in theory, would absorb a certain amount of the climate-warming gas carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then sink to the seabed.

The credits would be sold in the growing market for such offsets to compensate for unavoidable emissions of carbon dioxide.

Plankton blooms happen naturally when dust containing iron settles on ocean waters, where a lack of iron otherwise prevents plankton from thriving. Huge blooms have resulted when dust from the Sahara Desert blows over the Atlantic, for example.

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edit: good riddance...

[GliderGuider]

1. I think we just dodged another bullet.

This is good news.

[Nihil]

2. Good!

Let's hope that no-one else tries such a dangerously dumb plan.