Could We Build a Massive Man-Made Antarctic Glacier?
Bad news, Earth: At this point, a rising ocean is inevitable. Because melting polar caps cause even more melting via feedback loop, we're likely to see a sea-level rise of up to 10 feet in the next two centuries, that's even if humanity bands together to stop global warming at 2 degrees Celsius. And this rising tide has many scientists considering massive geoengineering projects that might prevent a future Earth from looking like a bad Kevin Costner movie.
Some of these projects are, well, crazy. They involve seeding the oceans with bubbles or spraying enough light-blocking aerosols into the sky to slow down climate change. But here's a new idea for such a massive project that sounds a little saner, at least on the surface.
A team of German scientists and engineers just published a report that asks: Why not fight the rising seas by pumping seawater onto Antarctica, creating an man-made glacier of epic proportions? The researchers, led by Katja Frieler at The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research detailed hundreds of computer models on this possibility in the journal Earth System Dynamics.
"We wanted to check whether sacrificing the uninhabited Antarctic region might theoretically enable us to save populated shores around the world," says Frieler.
Pumping Power
At least in theory, the idea is simple. If seawater could be pumped into the Antarctic's frigid interior, it would freeze as solid ice. That continuous creation of man-made ice could counterbalance the rise in sea level driven by melting natural glaciers and ice sheets falling into the sea. In several models, Frieler's team discovered that the best approaches involved pumping sea-water as far into Antarctica as possible. Ice piled up within about 100 miles of the coast was far less likely to stick around than ice dumped quite far into Antarctica's interior, say 500 miles in. (Left alone for 1,000 years, the coastal ice would be almost all but gone.)
Of course, from an engineering prospective, Project Super-Glacier would make the moon landing look downright easy. The Antarctic ice sheet is about 2.5 miles high. The energy required to pump enough water to keep sea-level rise neutral is a constant stream of about 2,300 gigawatts. Basically, you'd need 90 of the world's largest pump stations, more than 10 percent of the world's total power output. Part of that high energy cost comes from the fact that the manmade glacier physically pushes down on Antarctica, speeding up the continent's coastal melt and making you have to work even harder to keep up.
Frieler's team posits that, theoretically, Antarctic winds could power the project. But you'd need about 850,000 wind energy plants for the job. (Powering a project meant to fight global warming with coal, oil, or natural gas would be akin to healing a gunshot wood with a couple of well-aimed shotgun shells).
Utter Insanity
Frieler's team's calculated through all kinds of hoops to show that the man-made glacier is possible. But even so, the takeaway for them is that this idea absolutely should be tucked away and saved for a worst-case-scenario. Doing this is completely bonkers, for two reasons.
First, this effort would sign the death warrant for the Antarctic ecology and environment, ruining the unique natural place forever. Second, the project could only ever be a stop-gap. Stop pumping and eventually all that glacier water will melt back into the oceans.
"Even if this was feasible, it would only buy time. when we stop the pumping one day, additional discharge from Antarctica will increase the rate of sea-level rise even beyond the warming-induced rate," writes Anders Levermann, a co-author on the paper and Earth scientist at Columbia University. "This would mean putting another sea-level debt onto future generations."
