Climate change: The ‘insane’ plan to save the Arctic’s sea-ice

Blue sky begins to break through the clouds over Arctic Ocean ice Sept. 9, 2009. [Wikipedia]

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Is this just another toytown publicity stunt to keep promoting the notion that there’s some climate problem, supposedly caused by human activities, requiring urgent corrective measures?
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Perched on sea-ice off Canada’s northern coast, parka-clad scientists watch saltwater pump out over the frozen ocean.

Their goal? To slow global warming, says BBC News.

As sea-ice vanishes, the dark ocean surface can absorb more of the Sun’s energy, which accelerates warming. So the researchers want to thicken it to stop it melting away.

Welcome to the wackier side of geoengineering – deliberately intervening in the Earth’s climate system to try to counteract the damage we have done to it. [Talkshop comment – unsupported assertion].

Geoengineering includes more established efforts to lock up planet-warming gases, such as planting more trees and burying carbon underground.

But more experimental measures aim to go a step further, seeking to reduce the energy absorbed by the Earth.

Many scientists are strongly opposed, warning that such attempts distract from the critical step of cutting carbon emissions and risk doing more harm than good.

But a small number of advocates claim their approaches could give the planet a helping hand while humanity cleans up its act.

The ultimate goal of the Arctic experiment is to thicken enough sea-ice to slow or even reverse the melting already seen, says Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, whose team at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Climate Repair is behind the project.

Will it work or is it, as one scientist put it, “quite insane”?

“We don’t actually know enough to determine whether this is a good idea or bad idea,” admits Dr Fitzgerald.
. . .
“The vast majority of polar scientists think this is never going to work out,” cautions Martin Siegert, an experienced glaciologist at the University of Exeter, who is not involved in the project.

One issue is that the saltier ice may melt more quickly in the summer.

And then there’s the huge logistical challenge of scaling the project up to a meaningful level – one estimate suggests that you could need about 10 million wind-powered pumps to thicken sea-ice across just a tenth of the Arctic.

“It is quite insane in my opinion that this could be done at scale for the entire Arctic Ocean,” says Julienne Stroeve, a professor of polar observation and modelling at University College London.

Full article here.
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Image: Arctic sea ice [credit: Wikipedia]