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plankton

'Ocean seeding' plans to capture carbon in oceans draw fire

In some of the most ambitious efforts by green tech start-ups, a handful of businesses have emerged with plans to capture large amounts of carbon dioxide by stimulating the growth of ocean plankton.

On Monday, a group of watchdog environmental bodies, including Greenpeace and the ETC Group voiced their opposition to a project proposal from Australia-based Ocean Nourishment.

The company is said to be planning on "seeding" the Sulu Sea between the Philippines and Borneo with a nitrogen nutrient called urea, which would be pumped into the ocean from a special plant.

The idea behind these geo-engineering projects … Read more

Carbon, the atmosphere and our future

Carbon dioxide is known to be one of the greenhouse gases that can cause the Earth's atmosphere to retain heat. Today, two new scientific studies have been released that offer more insight into carbon and its dispersal into the air as carbon dioxide.

First, from Australia's CSIRO, the national science agency, comes a study on carbon contained within tropical forests that is thus not available to be released as CO2. This study says the current deforestation rate in the tropics releases 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually--about one-fifth of all carbon emissions caused … Read more