Kudos to scientists for testing the waters on mitigating warming

Huge thanks to Globe reporter Kate Selig for updating us on ocean geoengineering research by Cape Cod’s Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (“ ‘Antacid’ ocean test targets climate change,” Metro, Feb. 27).

The scientists reported preliminary success with a real-world, small-scale trial, permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency, of making the ocean absorb carbon dioxide with alkali to counter the rising atmospheric levels contributing to global climate change. At a major ocean-science meeting in Glasgow last month, Woods Hole scientists detailed capturing carbon dioxide without harming ocean life.

There are scientifically qualified skeptics who doubt this method could be scaled up, or who believe it will harm ocean life. Some feel such efforts would detract from the transition away from fossil fuels.

But a for-profit enterprise in Canada has already started employing this method to sell carbon credits. So I am happy to see the careful, stepwise scientific approach by Woods Hole experts, testing whether this could prove to be an effective preventive to global warming. In 2080, by which time average global temperatures are predicted to exceed 2 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels, the world will surely want to know which approaches to slowing further warming work and which do not.

Bill Beckett

Watertown