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A deep‑ocean climate plan wins rare EPA approval, but is sinking plants in the sea the answer?

Phys · · 1111 words · By Wil Burns

The article discusses the EPA's approval of a research permit for Carboniferous, a startup testing the sinking of biomass to the ocean floor for carbon sequestration. It outlines the mechanics of ocean biomass sinking and presents both the potential benefits and the ecological risks associated with the practice.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-deepocean-climate-rare-epa-sea.html

analyticsAnalysis

10%
Propaganda Score
confidence: 95%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkFact-Check Results

15 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

check_circle Corroborated 5
schedule Pending 5
info Single Source 2
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verified Verified By Reference 1
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“Microsoft, recently began telling partners that it is pausing its carbon removal purchases.”
SINGLE SOURCE
Only one web search result ('Stop Relying on the Kindness of Strangers...') mentions Microsoft pausing carbon removal purchases. Other results are generic company pages or stock prices.
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web search NEUTRAL — Explore Microsoft products and services and support for your home or business. Shop Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams, Xbox, Windows, Azure, Surface and more.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us
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web search NEUTRAL — Create your Microsoft account to access various services and features.
https://signup.live.com/
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web search NEUTRAL — View the latest Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) stock price, news, historical charts, analyst ratings and financial information from WSJ.
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/MSFT
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“The tech company alone has purchased approximately 80% of the contracted cumulative volume of carbon removals to date.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific figure of 80% of contracted cumulative volume is mentioned in only one source ('Stop Relying on the Kindness of Strangers...'). Other sources discuss Microsoft's portfolio generally but not this specific percentage.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. The company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Microsoft Excel, or simply Excel, is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Windows is a proprietary graphical operating system developed and marketed by Microsoft. Windows is grouped into families that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows for perso…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency quietly decided in March to grant a research permit under the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act to a Houston-based carbon removal startup.”
CORROBORATED
The EPA's issuance of an MPRSA research permit to Carboniferous in March is confirmed by multiple sources, including a direct EPA permit reference and news reports.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (MPRSA), Ocean Dumping Act is one of several key environmental laws passed by the US Congress in 1972. The Act has two essential aims: to regul…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Protection,_Research,_a…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, 598 U.S. 651 (2023), also known as Sackett II (to distinguish it from the 2012 case), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that th…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackett_v._Environmental_Prote…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of E…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Pr…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“The company, Carboniferous, aims to assess the potential to durably lock up greenhouse gases by harvesting plants that took in carbon dioxide on land and sinking them to the bottom of the ocean.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources describe Carboniferous's goal of sinking land-harvested plants (biomass) to the ocean floor to lock up greenhouse gases.
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web search NEUTRAL — Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect.[1] The Earth is warmed by sunlight, causing its surface to radiate heat, which is th…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
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web search NEUTRAL — The company, Carboniferous, aims to assess the potential to durably lock up greenhouse gases by harvesting plants that took in carbon dioxide on land and sinking them to the bottom of the ocean. This …
https://theconversation.com/a-deep-ocean-climate-plan-wins-r…
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web search NEUTRAL — King Tide Carbon Canada Ltd: Growing and sinking kelp in the Gulf of Maine. This company aims to work with seaweed producers to grow algal biomass and sell carbon credits. The harvested seaweed (kelp)…
https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/marine-geo-biomass-sin…
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“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change... calls carbon dioxide removal "unavoidable" if the world hopes to keep rising temperatures in check and achieving the targets of the Paris climate agreement.”
CORROBORATED
Scientific American and other sources confirm that the IPCC report describes carbon dioxide removal as essential/unavoidable to meet Paris Agreement targets.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also inclu…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Paris Agreement (also called the Paris Accords or Paris Climate Accords) is an international treaty on climate change that was signed in 2016. The treaty covers climate change mitigation, adaptati…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — In April 2016, the United States became a signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, and accepted it by executive order in September 2016. President Barack Obama committed the Unit…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Paris_Ag…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“Carboniferous plans to carry out its field experiment in the Orca Basin off the coast of Louisiana.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources, including the 'Orca Basin Research' project page and news reports, confirm the field experiment is planned for the Orca Basin off Louisiana.
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web search NEUTRAL — Orca Basin Research Project. Proposed 20-Tonne Test of Marine Anoxic Carbon Storage (MACS).Explore the goals, methods, and importance of our upcoming 20-tonne field test in the Orca Basin, off the coa…
https://www.carboniferous.co/orca-basin-research
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web search NEUTRAL — In May, a company called Carboniferous applied for a research permit from the EPA to drop 20 metric tons of sugar cane bagasse — the fibrous material left after crushing stalks to get juice — into the…
https://ambrook.com/offrange/sustainability/just-throw-it-in…
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web search NEUTRAL — The Carboniferous experiment proposes to deposit twenty biomass packages (~1 metric ton each), along with large anchoring systems, into a concentrated area of the Orca Basin seafloor.
https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Public-Comment-fr…
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“The basin is anoxic, meaning devoid of oxygen, and has a higher concentration of salt that most seawater.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia explicitly defines the Orca Basin as containing a large brine pool (higher salt concentration) and being anoxic.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Orcas, or killer whales, are large predatory cetaceans that were first captured live and displayed in exhibitions in the 1960s. They soon became popular attractions at public aquariums and aquatic the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_captive_orcas
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Orca Basin is a mid-slope, silled, mini-basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico some 300 km southwest of the Mississippi River mouth on the Louisiana continental slope. It is unique amongst the mini-…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_Basin
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Orcas are large, powerful aquatic apex predators. There have been incidents where orcas were perceived to attack humans in the wild, but such attacks are less common than those by captive orcas. In ca…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attacks
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“The EPA permit lets the company sink 20 burlap sacks containing sugarcane residue and monitoring equipment to the bottom of the sea there to study what happens.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources confirm the permit allows for the sinking of 20 burlap sacks/bales of sugarcane residue (bagasse) and monitoring equipment.
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web search NEUTRAL — The EPA permit lets the company sink 20 burlap sacks containing sugarcane residue and monitoring equipment to the bottom of the sea there to study what happens.
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-deepocean-climate-rare-epa-sea…
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web search NEUTRAL — In March 2026, the EPA issued an MPRSA research permit for the transportation and disposition activities for the Carboniferous, Inc. Research Project. Additional information on the EPA's assessment of…
https://www.epa.gov/marine-protection-permitting/mprsa-resea…
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web search NEUTRAL — As a next step, Carboniferous is proposing a field trial that will involve sinking 20 bales of sugar cane bagasse from Louisiana; bagasse is a waste material that requires a lot of energy to manage, o…
https://ambrook.com/offrange/sustainability/just-throw-it-in…
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“Globally, land vegetation, including trees and crops, sequesters approximately 60 billion tons of carbon per year.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results to confirm or deny the specific figure of 60 billion tons of carbon sequestered by land vegetation annually.
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“Recent studies have estimated that ocean biomass storage projects could durably store somewhere between 0.1 and 1 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results regarding the specific estimate of 0.1 to 1 gigatons of CO2 storage for ocean biomass projects.
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“humanity may need to remove 7 to 9 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year from the atmosphere by the middle of the century and up to 20 gigatons per year by 2100 to meet global climate goals”
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“Israel-based Rewind is currently experimenting with burying waste plant matter from farms and cities in an anoxic Black Sea region off the coast of Romania, as well as beneath seabed sediments in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Haifa in Israel.”
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“The company [Rewind] believes that it could sink 1 million tons of biomass residue annually by 2030.”
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“Another Israeli company, BlueGreen Water Technologies... uses a solution of hydrogen peroxide to kill, and ultimately sink, toxic harmful algal blooms made up of cyanobacteria”
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“The world's oceans are by far Earth's largest carbon sink, storing roughly 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and 20 times more than terrestrial forests and soils combined.”
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info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.