AT Iron fertilization
Foster 22 [John Bellamy Foster is an American professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the Monthly Review. He writes about political economy of capitalism and economic crisis, ecology and ecological crisis, and Marxist theory.; “Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution”; Monthly Review Press; August 23, 2022]//eleanor
The first form of CDR to attract significant attention from economic interests and investors was the idea of fertilizing the ocean with iron, thereby boosting the growth of phytoplankton so as to promote greater ocean uptake of carbon. There have been a dozen experiments in this area and the difficulties attending this scheme have proven to be legion. The effects on the ecological cycles of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and a host of other marine species all the way up to whales at the top of the food chain are indeterminate. Although some parts of the ocean would become greener due to the additional iron, other parts would become bluer, more devoid of life, because they would be deprived of the nutrients—nitrate, phosphorus, and silica—needed for growth. 14 Evidence suggests that the vast portion of the carbon taken in by the ocean would stay on the surface or the intermediate levels of the ocean, with only a tiny part entering the ocean depths, where it would be naturally sequestered. 15