ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611190053
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
ECOLOGICAL optimists believe technological advances, spurred by growing economies, always will be at hand to right environmental wrongs before disaster arrives.
Pessimists project an environmental Armageddon as an inevitable result of humankind's failure to change its profligate ways.
Somewhere between the blind faith of one and the dire assumptions of the other lies territory where experiments in eco-engineering seek to find ecological fixes, even as serious conservation measures go on.
While countries urgently need, for example, to press ahead with commitments to reduce the burning of fossil fuels (thus reducing the high level of carbon dioxide in the air that is causing global warming), progress on that front shouldn't undermine the work of scientists who have found a way to pull carbon dioxide out of the air - by fertilizing the sea.
A load of manure? Nope. Iron.
Scientists have dumped almost 1,000 pounds of iron over 28 square miles of the Pacific Ocean, causing tiny plants known as phytoplankton to bloom extravagantly over 200 square miles of sea. Each little phytoplankton gulped up carbon dioxide, lowering levels of the climate-warming gas in the sea water more than 15 percent.
The result was promising, and warrants further study. Foes of eco-engineering are downplaying its significance, however, for fear the possibility of future technology might take the fire out of efforts now to reduce the burning of fossil fuels. That is hardly likely.
The most avid proponents of sea fertilization say that widespread, almost continuous dumping of iron into the ocean could reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 6 percent to 21 percent - helpful, but not a solution in itself to global warming.
Besides, the idea faces years of testing. No one yet knows how expensive it would be, or what effect dumping tons of iron into the sea would have on the ocean's ecology.
Like the atheist who attends church regularly - just in case - nations have to plan for the unexpected. The world must reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, no matter how much faith it has that new technology eventually will solve the problem of global warming. Just in case it can't.
LENGTH: Short : 46 linesby CNB