Artificially cooling the Arctic and Antarctic, a ‘solution’ put forward by some entrepreneurs and think tanks to tackle global warming, would not be viable and could cause irreversible harm to the planet, according to a new paper published in the Frontiers in Science journal.
More than 30 scientists contributed to the report, which examined some of the most widely discussed geoengineering proposals for slowing polar warming.
‘Climate interventions’
‘Halting global warming requires rapid and deep decarbonisation to “net zero” carbon dioxide emissions, which needs to be achieved by 2050 if warming is to remain within the limits set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement,’ the authors state in the report.
‘However, some scientists and engineers claim that a mid-century decarbonisation target will not be reached, and they propose that we should focus on technological geoengineering “fixes” or “climate interventions” that could delay or mask some of the impacts of global warming.’
Measures suggested include spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight, erecting underwater ‘curtains’ to prevent warm currents from reaching glaciers, and seeding oceans with nutrients to boost algae growth.
According to the report authors, the scale and scope of these proposed interventions far exceeds current capabilities, while implementing them in remote and hostile environments would be both logistically difficult and could generate unintended impacts.
As they note, some of these geoengineering proposals have received widespread media attention, which fails to take into account their feasibility.
‘Environmentally dangerous’
‘According to our expert assessment, none of these geoengineering ideas pass scrutiny regarding their use in the coming decades,’ they write. ‘Instead, we find that the proposed concepts would be environmentally dangerous.
‘It is clear to us that the assessed approaches are not feasible, and that further research into these techniques would not be an effective use of limited time and resources. It is vital that these ideas do not distract from the priority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or from the critical need to conduct fundamental research in the polar regions.’ Read the full paper here.
