A New Kind of Photosynthesis
Scientists have discovered that certain cyanobacteria (formerly called blue-green algae) use a different chemical process to extract energy from sunlight than that used by green plants. It seems that large areas of the oceans are too poor in iron to support large-scale photosynthesis, so these single-celled organisms have evolved a means of getting energy from the sun without using iron.
The down side to the discovery is that this alternate process does not absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, like normal photosynthesis. That means global models of oceanic carbon dioxide absorption are probably wrong, and so global-warming predictions are understated. This may provide part of the explanation for why things seem to be warming-up faster than was predicted.