http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization

I like it.
Use the iron to increase the cyanobacteria,
which absorbs carbon, and provides food for krill,
that supports larger marine animals.

I don't think anyone has explicitly said this, but the iron seeding idea has been tested. My memory is that it worked, but not particularly well. Here is an article from National Geographic that states that, based on results from that experiment, that such a program would only remove a couple of percent of the CO2 that humans put in the air. This is a much more detailed review of the various experiments that have been conducted.

I think it is important that the we explore these various ideas, including the iron seeding, the sulfur idea, etc., but as Ronald Brak very nicely put it, we need to stop the bleeding first, before we worry about transfusions. Even if human-caused climate change is not true (though I think it is), increasing energy efficiency, conserving fossil fuels, and working on alternative energy sources (including nuclear) are all good ideas for a variety of reasons, IMHO.

Oh, and back to the OP, I don't usually look at the chemtrail or other woowoo sites, but I also have not seen anyone make the connection between the sulfur proposal and chemtrails. However, it would seem to be exactly the kind of thing someone would say.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Sounds great. What's the catch? There's gotta be a catch.

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

Sooner or later it is going to dawn on the world, and America in particular: preserving this planet is going to be the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. We had the "Greatest Generation" that won a world war, and another that put a man on the moon. Both of these were big moral crusades.. But even those are nothing compared to the moral imperative of keeping Earth livable. There was a time when Americans put aside their selfish materialism and worked for a greater cause. There will have to be another time like that. Will the generations living now be regarded by their descendants as the greatest who ever lived.... or the worst???

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

Seeding areas of ocean with iron may be worthwhile even if it can only remove a small percentage of the CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere, if the price per ton of carbon absorbed is low enough.

The problem I see is in the trade off between acquiring and dispersing the iron and the carbon absorbed by the bacteria. Those actions, mining the iron and moving it to the south seas will release carbon into the environment. What is the trade off? Could we just float large masses of scrap iron in the south seas and attain the same ends? I am thinking of large plastic or concrete floats with scrap iron just under the surface corroding. Even that could leave a positive carbon attrition.

The other issue is we know so little about the complex interaction between atmosphere and ocean, climate and world. Considering the size of the area, how well could we affect the final result. Could an ant move a mountain?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

You're right that we'd have to be sure that the entire process of seeding the ocean doesn't add more carbon to the atmosphere than it traps. However it is possible to determine how much carbon would be released doing it. A cabon tax that was equal to the marginal cost of sequestoring carbon from the atmosphere would help. That way the cost of releasing carbon would be built into prices. But more research will need to be done and there may be cheaper ways to trap carbon.

As for can an ant move a mountain, definitely - if the ant has friends. While the details of interaction between the atmosphere and ocean and climate are complex, overall it is quite simple. More carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases result in a warmer earth, less results in a cooler earth. Provided the process traps more greenhouse gas than it releases we will be slowing human made change in the atmosphere. I have heard some people wonder how humans could affect something as large as the earth, but we have been affecting the earth for a long time. If you take a map of the earth and color in all the land that is towns, cities and farms and fishing grounds you will see there isn't that much that earth left that humans don't directly affect.

I have a question. Exacly how much carbon and greenhouse gasses has the human race put into the environment? Has someone estimated that?

How does that compare with other sources?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

About a third of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is there as a result of human activity.

Location and project of glacial sampling.

Graph of results.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over Svalbard, last two decades.

Energy Information Administration, (if you trust the source), has a more overall picture of the numbers.

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Democracy Now! - The lost art of investigative news reporting.

So, this topic has ranged way away from the original question and I got involved in an allied topic about the hockey stick graph, where I picked up a bunch of usefull cites and links.

I watched the History Channel program on the little ice age, called LIA in that other topic list. Towards the end of the program there was a short section about why the LIA ended. One man suggested it was an increase in greenhouse gasses due to human activity that killed it and allowed the climate to calm down.

Could it be that the increase we probably have caused could offset the projected slowing of the Thermohaline cycle with a net result of zero? That is, have we built a barrier against future ice ages?

How about those european ski resorts?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

There is an opinion global warming, (IF managed carefully), can prevent the next BIG ice age cycle which would be occurring soon, geologically speaking, if the past is any indication of the future.

WikipediaI don't think there is evidence the ocean currents change on the same regular basis as the ice age cycles. There is probably good evidence messing with melting freshwater ice and plate movements that muck with the deep ocean currents have major impacts on climate. But it isn't well understood what exactly causes the regular ice ages the Earth's geologic history reveals occur.

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibi...l_periods.html

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~~ ><>><> ~~ ><,,> ><,,> ...`;=;p d;=;' /\/\^/\ ^^ ^/\/\_
Democracy Now! - The lost art of investigative news reporting.

I read one climatologist's opinion that if we lose the icecaps this millenium we will never get them back, or at least not for over a hundred million years, as the lack of ice to reflect sunlight would prevent the earth from entering further periods of glaciation. The piece was speculative in tone.

Two very interesting programs on History Channel a day or so ago. One talked about the oceans and suggested the ice caps were self perpetuating. At least that is how I saw it. Fresh water on the surface of the ocean at the poles froze and created an ice sheet. The gulf stream delivered moisture which fell as rain and snow and created / thickened that ice sheet. The white of the sheet reflected the sun and reduced melt.

I have a hard time believing a permanent loss of the polar ice cap. I could see it becoming seasonal and waxing and waining due to fluctuations in rain fall.

The other program talked about the volcanism of the planet, much of which is hidden under the ocean. When the levels for carbon from volcanoes was calculated how was this hidden volcanism handled?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

Isn't the cheapest way to remove carbon still.... PLANTS?
Do lawns remove more carbon than forests?
How about algae?

Maybe someday there'll be a form of algae "paint" that we can use to cover the roofs of our cars & houses. Think of all the surfaces we could cover with carbon-eating algae instead of heat-absorbing metals and tars (or whatever roofs are made of). Maybe someone could invent a form of algae/cyanobacteria that we could cover parking lots with. Hey, we can drive on turf, so why not? Put your brains to work on it, Science Guys. I only wish I could be 20 again and go to college and research things like this myself.

Can an ant move a mountain? No, but billions could. Billions of bacteria made our planet liveable.

BTW, how can we remove or sequester all that Methane that's coming out of the Siberian permafrost?

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

Where is this iron going to come from? Could they, like, get it from recycling junk people throw out? Or maybe junk cars?

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

Are you talking about TREES? Say yes and I'll plant something.

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

The best thing to do with methane is to Burn it and sequester the carbon as wood, and build something nice with the wood.
Nothing like a beautifull walnut tree.
Best regards, Dan

There are turf roofs (sometimes also called green roofs). There is a park near my house with a building with a turf roof.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

They certainly could use scrap iron. However the cheapest place to get it is likely to be from iron deposits in Australia as this will actually be cheaper than scrap iron. Existing infrastructure will be used to transport it to ports in Southern Australia and then it will be taken to a good location and scattered over the ocean.

Well, whatever weighs the most will trap the most carbon while it is alive, so a forest will trap more carbon than a similar sized field of grass. But if the plants or plankton trap carbon in other ways such as adding it to the soil or dropping it on the ocean bottom, then additional carbon can be trapped that way. For example in Australia there are frequent bushfires. In some areas ash from these fires remains in the soil and slowly increases the amount of carbon in the soil, so these forests are trapping carbon in a long term way using that process.

After ten years most of the methane molecules will have reacted with oxygen to form CO2 and water, so we are probably better off trying to trap carbon from the atmosphere as the methane isn't going to be around that long anyway. So to reduce the amount of methane being released we could slow the increase in temperature by reducing the amount of CO2 released.

The recipe includes a spare MT Pinatubo, Hood or Erebus and those are inconvenient to find...