Mineral dust sprinkled in oceans could absorb vast amounts of carbon: study
Sprinkling billions of tonnes of mineral dust across the oceans could quickly remove vast quantities of climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a new study, writes Damian Carrington in The Guardian.
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.
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