Scientists warn against risky proposals to cool Poles

Efforts to artificially cool the Earth’s polar regions to counter global warming are costly, impractical and potentially dangerous, according to new research published on September 9 in the journal Frontiers in Science.

The Arctic and Antarctic are warming faster than the rest of the world, prompting proposals from think tanks and entrepreneurs for large-scale interventions. Suggested methods include spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere, installing sea “curtains” to block warm water from glaciers, and seeding oceans with nutrients to stimulate carbon-absorbing algae, Bloomberg writes. 

However, a team of more than three dozen scientists concluded that such ideas are not workable and could cause irreversible damage.

“Some of these ideas have been given a disproportionately high amount of visibility compared with their maturity and their feasibility,” said lead author Martin Siegert, a polar scientist and vice president at the University of Exeter.

The scientists assessed several high-profile concepts — from scattering glass beads to reflect sunlight, to spraying seawater to thicken ice, and drilling into glaciers to remove subsurface water — using six evaluation criteria. They found that the scale, costs and technological demands far exceed current capabilities.

The paper noted that deploying untested technologies in remote polar regions would be nearly impossible to manage under international agreements. Any unilateral action, the authors warned, could escalate geopolitical tensions.

The European Union has also called for thorough assessments of such interventions, citing potential ripple effects on food and water supplies. Interest in geoengineering has grown as global efforts to cut emissions continue to fall short.

Some experts argue that media attention to these proposals distracts from proven solutions.

“We have a known method to improve our situation that has scientific consensus,” said Sammie Buzzard, a professor at the University of Northumbria and one of the paper’s authors. “We know how to decarbonize, so we should be doing it.”

Others contend that outright dismissal of experimental approaches is premature.

“This doesn’t mean we should uncritically embrace yet unproven technologies at the first promise of reducing those climate risks,” said Matthias Honegger, senior program director at the Centre for Future Generations and project leader of the EU-funded Co-CREATE project. “But it does mean we must examine their potential and limitations seriously.”

In a separate paper published in the same journal, researchers argued that decades of failed lobbying for deep decarbonization make it ethically necessary to consider every option.

“We want to move talking about this away from it being a taboo and into the mainstream, where it can be assessed in the normal kinds of ways,” said John Moore, a researcher at the University of Lapland. “It may well be that all of these ideas won’t work, but the easiest way to debunk them is to actually do some research and find the red flags and the off-ramps.”

By Sabina Mammadli