From the European Geosciences Union and the “we can stop that glacier in its tracks, cold. Trust us.” department comes this wacky geoengineering idea. I think these folks don’t understand what the scope of engineering something like this would actually be.
Glacial engineering could limit sea-level rise, if we get our emissions under control
Targeted engineering projects to hold off glacier melting could slow down the collapse of ice sheets and limit sea-level rise, according to a new study published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere. While an intervention similar in size to existing large civil engineering projects could only have a 30% chance of success, a larger project would have better odds of holding off ice-sheet collapse. But study authors Michael Wolovick and John Moore caution that reducing emissions still remains key to stopping climate change and its dramatic effects.
“Doing geoengineering means often considering the unthinkable,” says Moore, a scientist at Beijing Normal University, China, and a professor of climate change at the University of Lapland, Finland. The term ‘geoengineering’ is usually applied to large-scale interventions to combat climate change. But instead of trying to change the entire climate, Wolovick and Moore say we could apply a more targeted approach to limit one of the most drastic consequences of climate change: sea-level rise.
Their “unthinkable” idea is glacial geoengineering: making changes to the geometry of the seafloor near glaciers that flow into the ocean, forming an ice shelf, to prevent them from melting further. Some glaciers, such as the Britain- or Florida-sized Thwaites ice stream in West Antarctica, are retreating fast. “Thwaites could easily trigger a runaway [West Antarctic] ice sheet collapse that would ultimately raise global sea level by about 3 metres,” explains Wolovick, a researcher at Princeton University’s Department of Geosciences, US. This could have dramatic effects to the millions of people living in the world’s coastal areas.
Instead of, or in addition to, limiting the effects of rising seas through traditional coastal protection, using glacier geoengineering to stop the flood at the source could be a viable option, as Wolovick and Moore show. “The most important result [of our study] is that a meaningful ice sheet intervention is broadly within the order of magnitude of plausible human achievements,” says Wolovick.
The team looked into two glacial-geoengineering designs. One idea would be to build a wall underwater to block warm water reaching an ice shelf’s base, which is very sensitive to melting. A simpler design consists of constructing artificial mounds or columns on the seafloor: they wouldn’t block warm water but could support and hold back the glacier, helping it regrow. “In either case, we were imagining very simple structures, simply piles of sand or gravel on the ocean floor,” says Wolovick.
The team ran computer models where they applied these designs to Thwaites Glacier in a warming world. Thwaites is projected to be the largest individual source of future sea-level rise and, at 80 to 100 km wide, it’s one of the widest glaciers in the world. “If [glacial geoengineering] works there then we would expect it to work on less challenging glaciers as well,” the authors write in The Cryosphere study.
The research shows that even the simpler design could slow down the rate of sea-level rise, giving more time to coastal societies to adapt to rising waters. The smallest intervention has a 30% probability of preventing a runaway collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet for the foreseeable future, according to the models. This intervention would consist of building isolated 300-metre-high mounds or columns on the seafloor using between 0.1 and 1.5 cubic kilometres of aggregate, depending on the strength of the material. This is similar to the amount of material that was excavated to build the Suez Canal in Egypt (1 cubic kilometre) or used in Dubai’s Palm Islands (0.3 cubic kilometres).
A more sophisticated project, going beyond the scale humanity has attempted so far, would have higher chances of success in avoiding a runaway ice-sheet collapse within the next 1000 years (the time the simulations run for), as well as better odds of causing the ice sheet to regain mass. A small underwater wall blocking about 50% of warm water from reaching the ice shelf base could have 70% chance of succeeding, while larger walls would be even more likely to delay or even stop ice-sheet collapse.
Despite the encouraging results, the scientists say they don’t advocate starting these ambitious projects any time soon. While the simplest design would be similar in scale to existing engineering projects, it would be built in one of Earth’s harshest environments. So, the engineering details still need to be worked out. Nonetheless, the team wanted to see whether glacial geoengineering could work in theory, and wanted to get the scientific community to think about, and improve on, the designs.
“We all understand that we have an urgent professional obligation to determine how much sea level rise society should expect, and how fast that sea level rise is likely to come. However, we would argue that there is also an obligation to try to come up with ways that society could protect itself against a rapid ice-sheet collapse,” says Wolovick.
Ice physics shows glacial geoengineering could work to hold off ice-sheet collapse, but both Wolovick and Moore are adamant that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions remains a priority in the fight against climate change. “There are dishonest elements of society that will try to use our research to argue against the necessity of emissions’ reductions. Our research does not in any way support that interpretation,” they say.
Engineering glaciers would only limit sea-level rise, while reducing emissions could also limit other harmful consequences of climate change, such as ocean acidification, floods, droughts and heat waves. In addition, the team points out that more warming would mean glacial engineering projects would become less feasible and would have lower chances of success. After all, their underwater structures might protect the bottom of the ice shelves, but wouldn’t prevent warm air from eating away the ice at the top.
“The more carbon we emit, the less likely it becomes that the ice sheets will survive in the long term at anything close to their present volume,” Wolovick concludes.
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The publication at The Cryosphere https:/
“There are dishonest elements of society that will try to use our research to argue against the necessity of emissions’ reductions.”
— Oh, darn. I was about to say that we no longer need to reduce emissions because we have this brilliant glacier scheme thing that we can do. Now I can’t! I’d expose myself as a dishonest element of society.
…“We all understand that we have an urgent professional obligation to determine how much sea level rise society should expect, and how fast that sea level rise is likely to come. However, we would argue that there is also an obligation to try to come up with ways that society could protect itself against a rapid ice-sheet collapse,” says Wolovick…
Well if you can’t get the first part(s) right, why would anyone give credence to the second part?
This is pure crazy talk. These people need to be evaluated to make sure they’re not a danger to themselves or others.
There is absolutely no shortage of Alarmists staying up day and night imagining more and more wasteful ways to spend your hard earned taxes. This, above, is a fine example of their efforts.
“So, the engineering details still need to be worked out”
Indeed. This would have to be done in water with a temperature below 0 C, at a depth of several hundred meters, in complete darkness, in waters that are covered by sea-ice for most of the year, are among the stormiest in the World, and are constantly traversed by icebergs calved from the glaciers.
By the way I wonder how they intend to prevent their wall from being demolished by icebergs? Icebergs regularly gouge furrows tens of meters deep and hundreds of meters wide in the sea-bottom. This is what the sea-bottom looks like in the Amundsen Sea where the wall-building is supposed to be done:
So a thousand miles of land based glacier is being held back by the grounded ice shelf. Are these fools complete idiots or what? And a pile of gravel is going to hold back billions of tons of ice piling up for hundreds of miles? Man PhD’s get dumber every year.
PhD!
Now being degraded into “Piled higher and Deeper” as one respected PhD endowed researcher I know summed up the current standings of PhD’s.
The description certainly has become very applicable to the whole of the model reliant and so called “climate science” cabal.
Climate science and its almost total reliance on unprovable, unverified, assumption laden, idelogically biased models has become an outstanding and readily observed version of the Flat Earth theory and its supporting structure as defined by the “Little Old Lady” below.
Climate science and its obessive and thoroughly unhealthy and near fanatical fixation with Global Warming being the equivalent of the Flat Earth theory.
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish.
The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?”
“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
Proposals only a theorist would dream up with a straight face.
The arrogance is jaw dropping.
OK, I’m now sure that this isn’t a well intentioned scam to eke out resources for a few more centuries. Its to keep them away from poor people.
Can’t stop laughing long enough to begin a fuel usage analysis.
And to think that at the root bottom of a all this nonsense is a tiny trace gas. Its truly a wonderous substance this CO2 gas.
If only Trump can set up his RED and BLUR team to debate and to finally prove that CO2 is a good gas, natures fertilizer and nothing else.
MJE
As a thought experiment, they have this much too complicated with logistics to be able to place 1+ cubic km of rock and sand ballast in front of the glacier to stop it sliding into the sea. Very expensive proposition. And no permanent income would be generated from this massive engineering project like what was generated from building the Suez Canal. And what would this stop, a .01 mm of sea rise? Hardly attributable
to any legitimate current problem as we know that SLR is a bit of a red herring.
But further with this engineering thought experiment…If something just had to be done that might achieve the same goal, wouldn’t it be easier to just pump -2 C ocean water in winter onto the top of the tongue of the glacier that is already grounded and add frozen ice mass to the glacier terminus so that it became a immobile lump of ice and stopped the rest of the glacier behind it from sliding into the sea? No where near as expensive to achieve the same lame result.
Actually that is a brilliant idea.
The idea that loose sggregate could be piled up in sufficient amounts to stop massive glaciers is unsane.
Your idea, otoh, could actually be feasible.
Ships can carry massive pumps.
Ships can be built to withstand icepack.
Pipelines can be built of sufficient size.
The freeze up issue could be worked out.
Spray it out as a must could release dnough hest, for example…
If we want an engineering solution to making more ice in Antarctica let’s let Tesla design a solar shield that is positioned so its shadow falls only on the south polar region. That way we still get the sun providing energy to grow food in the non polar latitudes while causing massive ice build up in Antarctica. Might want to pull all the science crews since we just engineered permanent winter for Antarctica.
Make the Earth start wobbling on its axis from the altered angular momentum. Obliquity could then skyrocket in a few thousand years.
It’s so big of them to “admit” that their hairbrained expensive scheme for fighting a non-problem, by itself, can’t save the planet. They deserve a nobble for that. You know, for being such nobs.
Not to change the subject, but is this a game changer? Rocket City Rednecks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQNCUsHQYHE
Is th8s not proof that science is just “a best guess”?
As long as all they do is yak=yak-yak about it, fine.
If The They start doing anything, like collecting money for this looney tune project, they need to be locked up and left there. The more these twits talk about interfering with natural processes on this planet, the more convinced I am that they are either completely nuts or just a bunch of money-grubbing con men.
Stop them before they do some real harm, willya? Please, I’m begging you, stop them.
Their approach to the situation is definitely uni-tasking, and not any fun at all. No leverage for other activities or benefits. A ‘No inspiration, no imagination, all your eggs in one basket’ thought process.
It would be far easier, and well-within existing technologies to sequester water (fresh or salt) all around the world with multiple, smaller projects with constrained objectives, manageable costs and individually maintained engineering ecosystems, while increasing the availabilility of fresh water for human populations, humidity management, recreation and other uses.
For example: There is nothing other than pumping, piping and water chilling keeping mountain ski resorts and other areas from freshwater sequestration as snow, year-round. Think ‘glacier replenishment’ if you want. All the higher elevations which are normally snow-replenished by Nature can be supplemented (augmented) this way.
While at it, give Canada and Siberia something to do with the vast wastelands normally hard-frozen in winter… snow-melt basins near nuke power plants and desal units, making managed, freshwater lakes. While you are at it, stock the warmer section (remember, nukes have waste heat) with coldwater sporting fish, oh, walleyes and muskies would be a good start.
Because you might need the fill elsewhere, dig the basins down to 500 metres. Truck some of it where you need to stabilise coastal areas or silted river areas (thinking raising of New Orleans, as an example. 10 metres ought to do it for a few centuries). If you don’t want the water fresh, then geoengineer some of the Canadian Archipelago off the map, or dredge out a section of NE Alaska, and make deeper and wider channels through the NorthWest Passage or new Alaskan deep harbors. Just remove the material down to a flat sea floor, and build up some mountains where they might be needed or useful.
Other, smaller projects that come to mind.
Fill the inland seas to sea level.
Dig out Death Valley to a uniform depth of 500 metres (and sequestering the Borax and exotic earths), and build a canal ( or a pair of 16′ siphon tubes) to the Gulf of California. Stock the new lake with Salt water sport fish, make salt at the edge, and surround it with a National Recreation Area, including saltwater fisheries, habitat research and other stuff if you want. Automagically, you get evaporation, with higher humidity there and to the east, increasing rainfall, and the FUN of fishing for Ocean fish a few miles off the shore from your hotel. IMO, should also think about having a ‘kiddie pool’ for coral research, and other saltwater stuff. A fair-sized surf basin would round out the attractions… right next to the RV park and the piers….
As long as the projects are all manageable scope, independent of each other, and have their own supporting revenue streams, there is no reason we could not begin now, if sea level rise is of any concern. While we are at it, we could also address issues of water rights inherent in the ‘uphill-downhill’ disparities that some states impose. For example, what could Colorado do with 50% more melt snow to divide between the Colorado river watershed and the Platte?
For that matter, there is nothing preventing us from just digging the oceans a bit deeper, and moving what we dig out on to existing land…
Just some thoughts….
Being a retired injuneer, I thought about a project on a similar scale when I read the WUWT article about the potential eruption of the Katla volcano in Iceland which is emitting 20 KILOTONS of CO2 every DAY.
My suggestion is that Michael Wolovick and John Moore design and build a “lid” for Katla. The lid would have a large pipe to capture all of the CO2 which would then be a feed source for carbon capture and storage. This would be ‘way more efficient than trying to take the CO2 out of normal, run-of-the-mill air, of course.
Here’s an engineering exercise that has a 100% chance of success! If they are worried about sea level rise, and all this Uber rich celebs houses flooding …… MOVE!
There …. problem solved.
But but but: before they can move, they have to sell that ultra-valuable coastal/sea-side land for a grossly inflated profit first …
At least 40% of sea rise is caused by ocean expansion during warming, and about 20% more is caused by melting mountain glaciers, outside of the polar ice sheets, and most of those do not have ocean terminals.
May be feasible. But it will kill off an awful lot of marine life.
Second issue, with all the known volcanoes in the area, the warm water will be trapped by the wall, melting the glacier faster.
lol, +10
Yes, +11
Well, you could run refrigerator lines to freeze it and power the system with a coal plant but you might cause harm to the ozone layer in another advocacy thread.
Perhaps a billion plastic straws could be used to stabilize it.
They must have been inspired by this film;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer
Not even ridiculous.
There are no elements of society that are going to use their research for anything at all, other than as an example of the worst.
This is a non starter. Once the marine ecologists point out that the Antarctic food chain will be impacted, this proposed project will be DOA.
That sort of thing only works for mines and fracking projects.
The only way the Environmental Elite will stand against this sort of absurd project would be to mention that the construction process was also expected to tap into newly discovered coal reserves.
I’m speechless…I have no speech..