Dee Breger, Drexel University
Assumptions that tiny diatoms such as the ones shown above could fix carbon from the air and sink it to the bottom of the ocean have been hard to prove.
The US Department of Energy has taken an interest in carbon sequestration, but a grand scheme to induce thick blooms of carbon-fixing algae has yet to bear fruit in early studies. The DOE directs a large share of its global warming budget to carbon-sequestration research, drawing on biologists in hopes of enlisting algae, microbes, or plants to fix and store excess carbon created by the fossil-fuel economy. It has awarded tens of millions of dollars in biology-based research grants to geneticists, bioinformaticians, and cell biologists across the country.
By far the most ambitious and most expensive part of the program is a plan to seed the ocean with iron dust in order to induce phytoplankton blooms, ...
