I understand the difference, but perhaps I misunderstood the article. What it says (and you're correctly referring to) is: > We will be conservative and say th

I understand the difference, but perhaps I misunderstood the article. What it says (and you're correctly referring to) is: > We will be conservative and say that our algal beds fix 2.5 kg of C per square meter per year and 2.5 kg of C works out to 9.167 kg of CO2. But then a couple of paragraphs later: > the maximum CO2 assimilation rate of algal beds which we will say is 9.167 kg of C per square meter per year. I.e. they first mention a conservative "2.5 kg of C" in the context of the ocean, followed by a "maximum rate". 9 kg of carbon is around 33 kg of CO^2. Maybe they meant "kg of CO2" in that second paragraph, it's certainly suspicious that it repeats the same 9.167 number, but why would they call that number both "conservative" and "maximum assimilation rate", hrm...