8 ms·

Geoengineer polar glaciers to slow sea-level rise

56 points by ehudla 9y ago

adaml_623 9y ago
This is one of these interesting topics where people are very likely to ask, "Have they thought of this?" And it would be great if there were a list of discarded ideas along with the reasons for why they were discarded. For instance I specifically would like to know if large areas of IR reflective material could be used to cover strategic areas in the arctic and antarctic to build up ice barriers. Coat sensitive areas with something that stops the ice from absorbing heat and hey presto maybe you get significant gains for your investment?
- DennisP 9y ago
  Some people are actually working on that. For example, Ice911 is testing high-albedo sand: http://www.ice911.org/ http://www.ice911.org/ Arctic researcher Peter Wadhams has been advocating geoengineering. His recent book A Farewell to Ice is a grim but fascinating read. Here's a short piece he wrote for Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-last-chance-save-sea-ice/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-la... Other proposals for increasing arctic albedo include using wind-powered ships to seed low-altitude clouds with seawater, injecting sulfur dioxide to high altitudes, and actually making more ice by using millions of windmill buoys to pump cold deep water to the surface. Here's an article on that last one: https://asunow.asu.edu/20161222-solutions-asu-scientists-propose-restoring-arctic-ice-10-million-windmills https://asunow.asu.edu/20161222-solutions-asu-scientists-pro...
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Of course, ice is already very high albedo. Might be difficult to find something better that you can directly apply to the ice. One idea for helping to terraform Mars (by thickening the atmosphere) is to apply black carbon dust to the glaciers. We're kind of doing that by accident here by burning fossil fuels that produce soot that ends up on glaciers. So reducing fossil fuel burning and soot production would help do what you're trying to do.
ianai 9y ago
I’m increasingly of the opinion that slow is not the way to go. Too many people refuse the existence of human caused climate change. So let them feel the brutal, undeniable affects. Maybe we’ll luck out and we’ll pull our collective hands off the hot iron before permanent scarring occurs.
- threeseed 9y ago
  That isn't how this works. The people who believe climate change the least are those that typically live in the middle of America i.e. the least to be directly affected. I assure you that when you speak to Pacific Islanders from Cook Islands, Fiji etc they very much believe climate change is real and are desperate for action to be taken. If you really want things to change help change the politicians in the US. Because China is doubling down on solutions and we really need the US to be doing the same.
  - ianai 9y ago
    I’m doing everything I can. But the current US political atmosphere is depressing. Edit-People in that middle America that you speak of seem to have forgotten the entire Cold War and welcomed Russia as allies! I mean, the Cold War didn’t ever end!
  - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
    > Because China is doubling down on solutions and we really need the US to be doing the same. I hadn't heard this. can you give some examples, please?
- DennisP 9y ago
  There's about a thirty-year delay, just like turning up a burner on the stove takes a while to heat the water. By the time people feel it that much, it'll be far too late. We have to put on the brakes before we get irreversible feedback effects, where natural systems start emitting enough greenhouse gases that it doesn't matter anymore what we do.
  - 9y ago
mrfusion 9y ago
Has there been any documented rise yet or is it supposed to start later?
- sintaxi 9y ago
  There was a huge rise around 12,800-11,600 years ago after the last ice age came to an abrupt end. As far as I'm aware ocean levels have been mostly stable ever since.
  - mkempe 9y ago
    Formally, the current ice age hasn't ended and its effects will return in full force; we happen to live in an interglacial period, still overall a colder climate than when the Earth has not been in an Ice Age.
    - sintaxi 9y ago
      You might be right. I'm talking specifically about the 26k year cycle due to earths wobble.
- joshuahedlund 9y ago
  Measurements have been averaging a little above 3mm per year for the last two decades[0]. This is believed to be about double the post-Ice-Age background rate of a century ago, and it is predicted to accelerate further (though it has yet to do so noticeably). [0]http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
  - godshatter 9y ago
    In fact, that same graph used to have a trend line of 3.2 mm/yr, and is now 3.1. I've been checking in with that site off-and-on for the last few years. At the current linear rate, we're looking at an increase of 0.25m by 2100. To get to the 1m by 2100 that is predicted, we would have to have a linear sea level rise of 12.4 mm/yr. The graph displayed shows some variable years a few years ago, but it's mostly been pretty linear. The graph shows 20 years or so of data, and we're 82 years out from 2100. I would expect to see it curving up sometime soon, but it hasn't done that yet.
noiv 9y ago
Geoengineering is just a money sink if the root cause isn't tackled. This proposal might slow down SLR, but the oceans will continue to sour, temperatures to rise and weather becomes more economically threatening.
- detritus 9y ago
  > Geoengineering is just a money sink if the root cause isn't tackled. Sounds like the perfect industry for the consumer-age in that case.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- eloff 9y ago
  Indeed, but don't underestimate the value of buying time, especially when it's measured in centuries. That gives us time to transition our economies away from fossil fuels, time to develop more efficient agriculture and industry, perhaps even the holy grail of clean energy - fusion power. In theory it also buys us time to migrate more slowly away from the coast, or deploy carbon sequestration technologies, or build sea walls. All of which may get easier with more advanced technology. But I don't have much faith in humans doing that if we move the consequences further out into the future. We're so collectively short-sighted as a species.
- mkempe 9y ago
  What is the exact sea-level that is perfect and should be maintained --or returned to-- by all means? I have a similar question about the perfect amount of atmospheric CO2. We do know that the long-term trend of CO2 was headed down to a dangerously low level (plants would starve and land-based plant life would have catastrophically ended by 150ppm).
  - bjelkeman-again 9y ago
    275 million people live in cities that will be flooded if we have a 3C warming. That is a pretty nice reason to maintain that sea level. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/three-degree-world-cities-drowned-global-warming https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/0...
John_KZ 9y ago
1 meter in 100 years sounds a bit anti-climactic. With the kind of socioeconomic problems rising it sounds kind of dumb thing to care about. People will have decades to move and evacuate. Sure, some infrastructure will be wasted, but it's not like the end of the world that everyone is trying to portray.
- CodeCube 9y ago
  Even small changes can have pretty big consequences ... for example, some hypothesize that climate change may have had a role in the "Arab Spring" that started a chain of events that's still unfolding in the middle east: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2013/02/28/54579/the-arab-spring-and-climate-change/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/201... "“The Arab Spring and Climate Change” does not argue that climate change caused the revolutions that have shaken the Arab world over the past two years. But the essays collected in this slim volume make a compelling case that the consequences of climate change are stressors that can ignite a volatile mix of underlying causes that erupt into revolution." TL;DR climate change contributed to changing agricultural conditions, which led to increased migration from rural to urban centers, which was a "stressor" that probably contributed to an already volatile situation ... the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back (pun not necessarily intended). So yeah, a meter of water level rise would change a massive amount of coastlines ... which would result in population shifts, which would result in economic activity changing, which could result in ... we'll see.
  - John_KZ 9y ago
    Of the many things might have caused the revolution, global warming wasn't one of them. Egypt is at a country's developmental phase when urbanization happens. Also it takes a lot of confidence to attribute 2 years of dryness to climate change. I'm trying to keep my composure but this is a laughable statement. Here's a neat little tool I found: http://flood.firetree.net/ http://flood.firetree.net/ I guess that by 2100 the only problems my area will run into is a couple of deltas being flooded by saltwater and a few random patches of 50m incursions, all but one uninhabited. I think I'll survive, and my children will probably be fine.
User23 9y ago
We are still in an ice age and we just happen to live in an interglacial period. The Earth has the large polar continent, and multiple other continents arranged such that they greatly impede the free flow of water currents around the globe that are necessary for mass glaciation. In these conditions, glaciation can easily lead to a positive feedback loop and once that gets going the effect is rapid (think order months to years, not decades).
swanlyk 9y ago
Isn't sea level rise mostly caused by thermal volumetric expansion not ice melting?

56 points by ehudla 9y ago

This is one of these interesting topics where people are very likely to ask, "Have they thought of this?" And it would be great if there were a list of discarded ideas along with the reasons for why they were discarded. For instance I specifically would like to know if large areas of IR reflective material could be used to cover strategic areas in the arctic and antarctic to build up ice barriers. Coat sensitive areas with something that stops the ice from absorbing heat and hey presto maybe you get significant gains for your investment?

DennisP 9y ago
Some people are actually working on that. For example, Ice911 is testing high-albedo sand: http://www.ice911.org/ http://www.ice911.org/ Arctic researcher Peter Wadhams has been advocating geoengineering. His recent book A Farewell to Ice is a grim but fascinating read. Here's a short piece he wrote for Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-last-chance-save-sea-ice/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-la... Other proposals for increasing arctic albedo include using wind-powered ships to seed low-altitude clouds with seawater, injecting sulfur dioxide to high altitudes, and actually making more ice by using millions of windmill buoys to pump cold deep water to the surface. Here's an article on that last one: https://asunow.asu.edu/20161222-solutions-asu-scientists-propose-restoring-arctic-ice-10-million-windmills https://asunow.asu.edu/20161222-solutions-asu-scientists-pro...
Robotbeat 9y ago
Of course, ice is already very high albedo. Might be difficult to find something better that you can directly apply to the ice. One idea for helping to terraform Mars (by thickening the atmosphere) is to apply black carbon dust to the glaciers. We're kind of doing that by accident here by burning fossil fuels that produce soot that ends up on glaciers. So reducing fossil fuel burning and soot production would help do what you're trying to do.

ianai 9y ago

I’m increasingly of the opinion that slow is not the way to go. Too many people refuse the existence of human caused climate change. So let them feel the brutal, undeniable affects. Maybe we’ll luck out and we’ll pull our collective hands off the hot iron before permanent scarring occurs.

threeseed 9y ago
That isn't how this works. The people who believe climate change the least are those that typically live in the middle of America i.e. the least to be directly affected. I assure you that when you speak to Pacific Islanders from Cook Islands, Fiji etc they very much believe climate change is real and are desperate for action to be taken. If you really want things to change help change the politicians in the US. Because China is doubling down on solutions and we really need the US to be doing the same.
- ianai 9y ago
  I’m doing everything I can. But the current US political atmosphere is depressing. Edit-People in that middle America that you speak of seem to have forgotten the entire Cold War and welcomed Russia as allies! I mean, the Cold War didn’t ever end!
- tensor_rank_0 9y ago
  > Because China is doubling down on solutions and we really need the US to be doing the same. I hadn't heard this. can you give some examples, please?
DennisP 9y ago
There's about a thirty-year delay, just like turning up a burner on the stove takes a while to heat the water. By the time people feel it that much, it'll be far too late. We have to put on the brakes before we get irreversible feedback effects, where natural systems start emitting enough greenhouse gases that it doesn't matter anymore what we do.
- 9y ago

mrfusion 9y ago

Has there been any documented rise yet or is it supposed to start later?

sintaxi 9y ago
There was a huge rise around 12,800-11,600 years ago after the last ice age came to an abrupt end. As far as I'm aware ocean levels have been mostly stable ever since.
- mkempe 9y ago
  Formally, the current ice age hasn't ended and its effects will return in full force; we happen to live in an interglacial period, still overall a colder climate than when the Earth has not been in an Ice Age.
  - sintaxi 9y ago
    You might be right. I'm talking specifically about the 26k year cycle due to earths wobble.
joshuahedlund 9y ago
Measurements have been averaging a little above 3mm per year for the last two decades[0]. This is believed to be about double the post-Ice-Age background rate of a century ago, and it is predicted to accelerate further (though it has yet to do so noticeably). [0]http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
- godshatter 9y ago
  In fact, that same graph used to have a trend line of 3.2 mm/yr, and is now 3.1. I've been checking in with that site off-and-on for the last few years. At the current linear rate, we're looking at an increase of 0.25m by 2100. To get to the 1m by 2100 that is predicted, we would have to have a linear sea level rise of 12.4 mm/yr. The graph displayed shows some variable years a few years ago, but it's mostly been pretty linear. The graph shows 20 years or so of data, and we're 82 years out from 2100. I would expect to see it curving up sometime soon, but it hasn't done that yet.

noiv 9y ago

Geoengineering is just a money sink if the root cause isn't tackled. This proposal might slow down SLR, but the oceans will continue to sour, temperatures to rise and weather becomes more economically threatening.

detritus 9y ago
> Geoengineering is just a money sink if the root cause isn't tackled. Sounds like the perfect industry for the consumer-age in that case.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eloff 9y ago
Indeed, but don't underestimate the value of buying time, especially when it's measured in centuries. That gives us time to transition our economies away from fossil fuels, time to develop more efficient agriculture and industry, perhaps even the holy grail of clean energy - fusion power. In theory it also buys us time to migrate more slowly away from the coast, or deploy carbon sequestration technologies, or build sea walls. All of which may get easier with more advanced technology. But I don't have much faith in humans doing that if we move the consequences further out into the future. We're so collectively short-sighted as a species.
mkempe 9y ago
What is the exact sea-level that is perfect and should be maintained --or returned to-- by all means? I have a similar question about the perfect amount of atmospheric CO2. We do know that the long-term trend of CO2 was headed down to a dangerously low level (plants would starve and land-based plant life would have catastrophically ended by 150ppm).
- bjelkeman-again 9y ago
  275 million people live in cities that will be flooded if we have a 3C warming. That is a pretty nice reason to maintain that sea level. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/three-degree-world-cities-drowned-global-warming https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/0...

John_KZ 9y ago

1 meter in 100 years sounds a bit anti-climactic. With the kind of socioeconomic problems rising it sounds kind of dumb thing to care about. People will have decades to move and evacuate. Sure, some infrastructure will be wasted, but it's not like the end of the world that everyone is trying to portray.

CodeCube 9y ago
Even small changes can have pretty big consequences ... for example, some hypothesize that climate change may have had a role in the "Arab Spring" that started a chain of events that's still unfolding in the middle east: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2013/02/28/54579/the-arab-spring-and-climate-change/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/201... "“The Arab Spring and Climate Change” does not argue that climate change caused the revolutions that have shaken the Arab world over the past two years. But the essays collected in this slim volume make a compelling case that the consequences of climate change are stressors that can ignite a volatile mix of underlying causes that erupt into revolution." TL;DR climate change contributed to changing agricultural conditions, which led to increased migration from rural to urban centers, which was a "stressor" that probably contributed to an already volatile situation ... the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back (pun not necessarily intended). So yeah, a meter of water level rise would change a massive amount of coastlines ... which would result in population shifts, which would result in economic activity changing, which could result in ... we'll see.
- John_KZ 9y ago
  Of the many things might have caused the revolution, global warming wasn't one of them. Egypt is at a country's developmental phase when urbanization happens. Also it takes a lot of confidence to attribute 2 years of dryness to climate change. I'm trying to keep my composure but this is a laughable statement. Here's a neat little tool I found: http://flood.firetree.net/ http://flood.firetree.net/ I guess that by 2100 the only problems my area will run into is a couple of deltas being flooded by saltwater and a few random patches of 50m incursions, all but one uninhabited. I think I'll survive, and my children will probably be fine.

User23 9y ago

We are still in an ice age and we just happen to live in an interglacial period. The Earth has the large polar continent, and multiple other continents arranged such that they greatly impede the free flow of water currents around the globe that are necessary for mass glaciation. In these conditions, glaciation can easily lead to a positive feedback loop and once that gets going the effect is rapid (think order months to years, not decades).

swanlyk 9y ago

Isn't sea level rise mostly caused by thermal volumetric expansion not ice melting?