Can tiny plankton help reverse climate change?

It seems the larger diatoms seeded in the more recent experiment may actually be better at sequestering carbon.

We need to be doing more experiments like this so we understand the processes and potential fallout before we get to a point where our survival depends on it succeeding.

I'm all for reducing carbon emissions as fast as we reasonably can, but it takes time. I don't think we should reject geoengineering out of hand, at least as a stopgap. Whether it becomes something that we wind up doing hundreds of years into the future, and what the costs of that will be if we do, remain to be seen.

I'm actually surprised we haven't started experimenting with adding sulfur to jet fuel. Nature puts sulfur in the stratosphere itself on occasion, so we have a pretty good idea that it works. The half-life is on the order of a few months, so if we overdo it a bit, all we have to do is stop. I saw a long list of objections to the use of sulfur aerosols, and the only one that seemed strong to me was that it doesn't help at all with ocean acidification. Well, okay; but iron fertilization would work for that.

Maybe using these (and possibly other) techniques in concert would mitigate the downside that each would have if you tried to solve the whole problem with it.

Or at the least they'll probably be able to just once again sequester it through the same techniques.

Or else global warming will be the least of humanity's problems in 2300.

It's fine to point out the risks of action so they can be addressed, but don't forget the risks of inaction.

1. Forming hypotheses on admittedly half-assed reasoning, performing small verification experiments, gradually scaling them up in order to see if predictions match observations, and iterating upon failure

2. Declaring that nothing we ever think of will ever work well enough to be worth trying in the first place

http://joyreactor.com/post/578357

You see #2 all the time in the media, especially in science fiction. To me it comes across as a desperate attempt by scientifically ignorant authors to extend the purpose of their story beyond that of mere entertainment. It's a noble goal to strive for, but actual safety analysis is boring, difficult, and far beyond the scope of your typical techno-thriller, so it inevitably gets half-assed into the predictable form of a bunch of chase/destruction scenes followed by the inescapable conclusion that goal X is simply too dangerous to be worth investigating -- in fact, it's so dangerous that the scientists were arrogant for investigating it in the first place. Retch. I actually wouldn't be particularly bothered by this plot device (I like dinosaur chases and zombie hunts, too) if people didn't go and project the same vapid thought process onto real-life scientists solving real-life problems. But they do. Parent post is a case-in-point.

Either do the bookwork/coursework/reviews/calculations necessary to leave constructive criticism or leave the floor to people who have. Don't stand up and claim that your ignorance is better than someone else's knowledge. That's arrogance.