Plans to stop ice melting in the world’s polar regions will not work and could even backfire with harmful environmental impacts, according to a group of scientists.
Several eye-catching ideas have been proposed for “geoengineering” the Arctic and Antarctic to undo or slow the dramatic shifts they are experiencing as they warm much faster than the rest of the world due to climate change.
The government is spending £10 million to explore whether Arctic ice could be thickened by pumping seawater onto the surface during winter. Other researchers have proposed building 300m-high walls to stop warm water reaching and melting Antarctica’s vast ice sheets from below.
However, a new peer-reviewed study by an international team of scientists has concluded that five of the main ideas are not feasible because of technological constraints, logistics, cost, potential environmental damage and the inability to build them at a large scale. Martin Siegert, professor of geosciences at the University of Exeter and an author of the study, said such solutions raised “false hopes” and could prove a distraction for other research and efforts to tackle climate change.
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Plans to stop ice melting in the world’s polar regions will not work and could even backfire with harmful environmental impacts, according to a group of scientists.
Several eye-catching ideas have been proposed for “geoengineering” the Arctic and Antarctic to undo or slow the dramatic shifts they are experiencing as they warm much faster than the rest of the world due to climate change.
The government is spending £10 million to explore whether Arctic ice could be thickened by pumping seawater onto the surface during winter. Other researchers have proposed building 300m-high walls to stop warm water reaching and melting Antarctica’s vast ice sheets from below.
However, a new peer-reviewed study by an international team of scientists has concluded that five of the main ideas are not feasible because of technological constraints, logistics, cost, potential environmental damage and the inability to build them at a large scale. Martin Siegert, professor of geosciences at the University of Exeter and an author of the study, said such solutions raised “false hopes” and could prove a distraction for other research and efforts to tackle climate change.