Panel: Consider tinkering with oceans to suck up more carbon

The United States should research how to tinker with the oceans — even zapping them with electricity — to get them to suck more carbon dioxide out of the air to fight climate change, the National Academy of Sciences recommends.

The panel outlines six ways that could help oceans remove more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The scientists said the most promising possibilities include making the seas less acidic with minerals or jolts of electricity, adding phosphorous or nitrogen to spur plankton growth and creating massive seaweed farms.

But it's unknown if they would work, would cost too much or cause more harm than good. So the panel of science advisers to the federal government Wednesday proposed spending more than $1 billion over the next decade to figure out the potential pitfalls and most effective methods of getting the world’s oceans to suck up more carbon.

The issue needs to be examined, the academy said, because something more than reducing carbon emissions likely needs to be done to take heat-trapping gases out of the air if the world is to meet the 2015 Paris climate goals of limiting future warming to a few more tenths of a degree from now.

By mid-century, the world will probably need to take about 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air annually, the report said.

Previous academy reports looked at geoengineering as well as efforts to take in carbon, including planting more trees. This new report, funded by the non-profit ClimateWorks, examines what’s now absorbing most of excess carbon dioxide: the seas.

The report doesn't advocate geoengineering the oceans, just exploring how it could be done.

“We don’t answer the question, ’Should we'?” said panel chairman Scott Doney, a biogeochemist at the University of Virginia. “The...