Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works

Never in a million years would the craziest of the mad geoengineers dream of adding a fraction of the iron the Sahara dumps on the North Atlantic every day. Adding nutrients to the ocean so tiny ocean plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is an idea that people aren’t used to. Unfamiliar ideas make us uncomfortable. That gut level “I’m not so sure about this” is natural enough. It comes out as an inchoate sense that such a thing must be risky, that we’ve never done it before and so couldn’t possibly know what the consequences would be.