Excuse us while we shriek with laughter

We’ve spent at least a decade pointing out that iron fertilisation of the ocean is a possibly useful, if partial, reponse to the dangers of climate change. We’ve also been pointing out that it is, by the usual readings of international law, illegal to even experiment to find out how useful, how partial, an aid to a solution iron fertilisation is.

Over that time more theoretical work has been done but no practical, at least as far as we know. That paucity of iron in the Southern Ocean is now thought to be a driver of the glacial cycle for example.

And then there’s this:

The creeping threat of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt

Visible from space, an explosion of harmful seaweed now stretches like a sea monster across the ocean. Could robots save us from it – and store carbon in the process?

Yes, a part of this is indeed from iron fertilisation - naturally:

Increased sea surface temperatures, upwelling and changing currents have combined with nutrients caused by human activity such as sewage and soya farming in the basins of the great rivers of North and South America, and Africa. Sand blown from the Sahara also brings with it iron and other essential minerals.

More biomass, more fish, some at least CO2 sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The basic premise does stand up, even if we’ve a natural experiment here, not a controlled one.

And sargassum’s ability to suck up carbon is behind what it probably the wildest and most ambitious plan to date: capture it using robots, bundle it up and sink it to the bottom of the sea.

Well, one of the things we really would like to do is work out whether other biological routes work better at that carbon sequestration thing. Maybe diatoms for example,. Or plankton. Does deliberately adding iron (probably ferrous sulphate, free from a number of people, the distribution method being a lascar shovelling it over the side) aid in creating more of this benefit and by which biological route?

Oh yes, that’s right, isn’t it? We’re not allowed to go and test any of these things because ferrous sulphate into the oceans is dumping waste at sea and that’s far more important than actually solving climate change. Silly us we forgot that.

Alternatively, we might start wondering whether there are those who don’t want to actually solve climate change. The alarum is far too convenient a political power to lose. But to think that would be cynical now, wouldn’t it?