Polar scientists warn geoengineering in the Arctic and Antarctic poses a serious danger to fragile ecosystems critical to the planet, reports Australian public news service ABC News.
As the effects of climate change worsen, some see geoengineering – deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s climate system to counter warming – as a potential tool to combat short-term effects. While some forms, like using trees or machines to capture carbon in the atmosphere, are widely accepted, others are viewed as more radical due to risks involved and potential to distract from emissions-cutting efforts critical to combatting climate change.
Dozens of polar scientists have come together to create a new assessment, published in the journal Frontiers in Science, evaluating the evidence for five of the most widely discussed polar geoengineering ideas. All failed to meet the essential criteria, including feasibility and likelihood of success, to be considered responsible. Any attempt to geoengineer in such sensitive regions, the authors stress, “would cause severe environmental damage” and risks “grave unforeseen consequences.”
The study looked at five popular geoengineering concepts: stratospheric aerosol injections, sea curtains and walls, sea ice management, basal water removal and ocean fertilisation. Each was assessed according to scope of implementation, effectiveness, feasibility, negative consequences, cost, governance and ability to be deployed at scale.
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Each faces initial costs in the hundreds of billions, with added maintenance costs, and other obstacles that would likely stymie polar engineering fieldwork and large-scale projects. At nearly 30 million square kilometres, the sheer scale of the polar regions – as well as remoteness and difficult conditions – undermine the feasibility of any assessed concept. It also increases the risk of environmental damage.
Sea curtains and walls, for example, aim to prevent warm sea water from reaching ice shelves with man-made buoyant structures anchored to the seabed but at the cost of disrupting habitats, feeding grounds and migration routes of marine animals ranging from seabirds to whales.
Pumping seawater onto the ice to artificially thicken, a plan previously dubbed “insane” by polar scientists, and ocean fertilisation also risk dangerously altering ocean chemistry and harming life. Stratospheric aerosol injections that aim to reduce incoming sunlight could risk depleting the ozone, which would decrease protection, and alter the global climate pattern.
“These ideas are often well-intentioned, but they’re flawed,” lead author Professor Martin Siegert, from the University of Exeter, told ABC News. “Deploying any of these five polar projects is likely to work against the polar regions and planet.”
