Since 1979, Arctic ice has shrunk by 1.35 million square milesa new JPL study Greenland's ice loss is much worse than previously thought and Antarctica's ice is now at its lowest level since records began. The more they melt, the faster the remaining ice diminishes until we face a series of disasters. The most immediate is sea level rise, which threatens to wipe out entire nations on low-lying islands. How to stop such a problem? As we solve the long-term problems of fossil fuel consumption, we may need to buy more time with geoengineering.
The seriousness of this situation cannot be overemphasized. Professor John Moore of the Arctic Center at the University of Lapland says we are long past the point where emissions reductions alone will be effective. “We are facing a situation where there is no pathway to reach 1.5 (degrees) through mitigation,” he said. “Things like melting ice caps and other tipping points will happen anyway,” adding that Earth's current situation is akin to that of a patient bleeding on the operating table, “ We’re in a situation where we can’t tone it down shit.”
Moore is one of the figures behind Frozen Arctic, a report produced by the Universities of the Arctic and Lapland in collaboration with the UN-backed think tank GRID-Arendal. It's a Review of around sixty geoengineering projects this could slow or reverse polar melting. A team of researchers chose to examine each idea, from those already in place to those on the fringes of science. “We wanted to be thorough,” Moore said, “because even the craziest idea could contain a golden nugget.” Each approach was briefly analyzed, examining whether it is feasible on a scientific or practical basis, whether it would potentially be useful, and how much it would cost. The report even went so far as to examine pykrete, a far-fetched World War II initiative to create artificial glaciers for strategic purposes by mixing sawdust or paper products into the ice.
If you're curious and don't have a day or two to read the report yourself, you can boil the approaches down to a handful of categories. The first is the management of solar radiation, that is, making the polar regions more reflective to evacuate more solar heat. Second, there is the production of artificial ice to make up for what has already been lost. Third, huge engineering works to strengthen, insulate and protect the remaining ice – such as huge underwater walls that act as a barrier against the seas as they warm. Finally, there are measures that limit the problem in terms of effect, but have more viable long-term success, such as preventing flora and fauna (and the heat they give off) from encroaching on areas that are supposed to remain frozen.
If you're a climate scientist, the most obvious approach is probably the first, because we've already seen the positive effects. Albedo is the climate science term describing how white ice acts as a huge reflector, rejecting much of the sun's heat. Ice ages greatly increase albedo, but there are more recent examples within living memory: in 1991, Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, erupted, spewing a huge amount of volcanic ash into the atmosphere. (The event also caused extensive damage, displaced 200,000 people, and claimed the lives of at least 722 people.) According to NOAA, ash dumped into the atmosphere helped reflect much of the sun's heat away from Earth, causing a temporary global cooling effect of about 1.5 degrees Celsius. The devastation of Pinatubo is undesirable, nor is the ozone depletion it caused, but this cooling effect could be vital to slowing global warming and polar melting.
It is possible to do this artificially by seeding the clouds with chemicals dropped by an aircraft or with ground-based smoke generators, which can also be used to promote rain clouds. This is a tactic already used in China to help make rain for agriculture and alleviate drought conditions. In this context, clouds would act as a barrier between the sun and the ice caps, reflecting more of this solar radiation away from the Earth's surface. Unfortunately, there is a problem with this approach: it is incredibly expensive and incredibly complex. The report says this is only viable when suitable clouds are above, and the work would require the construction of a huge infrastructure nearby. Not to mention that while we have some small evidence to suggest that it might be helpful, there's nothing proven yet.
And then there are the second-order effects when these approaches ripple through the rest of the global ecosystem. “If you apply methods of reflecting sunlight and you drop something into the atmosphere, it doesn’t stay where you put it.” This is the big problem identified by Dr Phil Williamson, honorary associate professor at the University of East Anglia and a former contributor to the UN's Keystone project. Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His concern is that regional, targeted climate solutions “don't solve the whole world's problem” and that if you don't tackle climate change on a global scale, you're “only making the difference bigger.” With a cold Arctic, but rising temperatures elsewhere, you're boarding a “climate roller coaster.”
Second in the ranking of climate approaches is to build a freezer to both cool existing ice and make more. Unfortunately, many ideas in this area forget that ice sheets are not simply large, immovable blocks of ice and are, in fact, subject to movement. Consider the idea of drilling about two miles into the ice sheet and pumping out the hot water to cool it: thanks to the ever-changing ice and water, a new site should be drilled fairly regularly.
There's another problem: The report says a project to dig a hole 2.5 km (1.5 miles) burned 450,000 liters of fuel. Not to mention the amount of energy it would take to operate heat exchangers or freezers to create fresh ice on such a scale. This represents a considerable amount of greenhouse gas pollution for a project intended to repair exactly this type of damage. Dumping a layer of artificial snow on a mountain may work well for a ski resort when the powder is a little fine, but not for the entire planet.
As difficult as the scientific and technical battles are, the political question will also have to be addressed. “A lot of people are almost religiously upset about releasing substances into the stratosphere,” said Professor John Moore, “you would think they would be just as upset about greenhouse gases.” One strategy being explored involves injecting sulfur into the atmosphere to replicate the cooling effects seen after major volcanic eruptions. The sulfur would form SO2, creating thick layers of dense clouds to prevent more heat from reaching the ice. But if, like me, you have a high school level science background, that's a scary prospect given that sulfur dioxide would resolve into sulfuric acid. Given the microscopic quantities involved, there would be little or no impact on the natural world. But the image of acid rain falling from clouds means it would be difficult to convince an uninformed population.
But if there is any reason to worry, it is that any unintended consequences could pose a problem in the global political space. “It's almost like declaring war on the rest of the world if (a nation) goes it alone,” says Phil Williamson, “because any damage or alteration to the global climate system, the country that did it is responsible for all the future climate disasters. because the weather is not the same.
Of course, Moore knows that Frozen Arctic The report's findings are not overly optimistic about a quick solution. He believes his findings should serve as a wake-up call for the planet. “No one is going to expand something to the entire Arctic Ocean overnight,” he said, but now is the time to “find some ideas that might be useful … and d 'then invest resources to find out if (these ideas) are really useful. He added that the short lead time before a total climate catastrophe is not really a problem, saying that “engineers can do just about anything what you're asking of them if you devote enough resources to it.” Because the alternative is to do nothing, and “every day we choose to do nothing, we accept more harm to come.”