Ms Bethune, your hypothetical ‘if this and then iron in seas bad’ stipulation is a rhetorical manipulation and you know it. There is no evidence whatsoever anywhere that fertilizing the oceans will lead to more carbon pollution. Goodness, have you even read the projections for international carbon emissions over next decade? They are projected to increase dramatically with NO ATTACHMENT to iron fertilization.

Talk about a weak argument.

Stanford has examined this, and it does not seem to result in a net benefit: “In the context of a carbon-emission offset scheme, ocean iron fertilization could lead to further acidification of the deep ocean without mitigating surface ocean chemistry change. Small-scale fertilization experiments can be useful to help understand the role of nutrients in the marine biogeochemical cycles. However, as suggested by our simulations ocean iron fertilization is unlikely to be effective for either climate or ocean chemistry mitigation. If ocean iron fertilization is implemented in generating carbon which lead to a corresponding increase in fossil-fuel emissions, it would cause further pollution to the deep ocean without conferring any environmental benefit.”

http://web.stanford.edu/~longcao/Cao&Caldeira(2010).pdf

This too: http://www.cbd.int/doc/publications/cbd-ts-45-en.pdf