News Cut

Breathe in. Hold it.

Posted at 11:51 AM on November 19, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

In a conversation with MPR Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer this morning (and also on his blog) , MPR meteorologist Paul Huttner painted a gloomy picture of the planet's oceans and their ability to inhale what we exhale.

Paul noted that over the weekend, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the oceans are becoming too acidic to absorb carbon dioxide.

What hope is there now? This month, a California firm is testing out an "ocean seeding" idea, not far removed from cloud seeding. The firm is dumping tons of pulverized iron into the ocean, to stimulate the growth of algae, that will suck more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

If it works, the company will sell the carbon credits to utilities, trading the pollution the utilities are putting into the atmosphere, for the pollution the algae is taking out. This same idea is Pretty much the same idea for foresters in Minnesota.

Wall Street is putting its money on the carbon. The firm is getting killed..

There's always the giant sun shade.


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