It sounds like something from a B-grade ’50s SF thriller: The Day the Earth Froze (which is indeed the English-language title of a 1959 Finnish fantasy adventure). In this case, rather than witches stealing the Sun, the putative culprit is a scientist who, while maybe not mad, is certainly thinking outside the box.
In his particular case, he’s pointing out the bleeding obvious: ‘emissions reduction’ is a colossal waste. “We’ve been talking about reducing emissions for decades,” he says. And yet, they’re still rising. Despite trillions of dollars spent.
So much for ‘climate action’.
Mad Dr Shaun Fitzgerald has a different Evil Plan.
Could we, he wondered, refreeze the Arctic?
Never mind that the Arctic is still frozen, Al Gore’s demented doomsaying notwithstanding.
The idea has serious backing. In June, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) – a government body created to back “ideas on the edge of what’s possible” – awarded a team led by Fitzgerald £10 million ($20.9m).
The money will be spent on exploring whether it might be possible to use hundreds of thousands of robots to thicken and prolong the life of a portion of the sea ice that forms each winter across the High Arctic.
The basic idea is pretty straightforward and is already used to build the famous ‘ice roads’ of the Arctic Circle. Drill holes in sea ice, pump seawater on top, and leave it to freeze and thicken into ice. New sea ice forms naturally, too.
In nature, new sea ice forms from beneath. For this to grow, heat must escape upwards, through the existing ice, allowing the seawater below to cool and solidify.
But when snow falls on sea ice, it insulates it, trapping upwelling heat and slowing the formation of ice. So, the plan is to flood the surface with seawater, washing the snow away. The water on the surface turns to ice and the rate of freezing below the ice increases.
Experiments last year involved drilling holes through sea ice and pumping water upwards. This “snow flooding” produced about 25cm of new ice on the surface, and another 25cm below.
“These are encouraging results, not conclusive ones,” Fitzgerald said. “We need much better data.”
The £10 million from Aria will fund laboratory tests, computer models and field trials.
Controlled experiments will be conducted around Cambridge Bay, which lies along the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic, for three winters, starting later this year.
If all goes well, the areas treated could be extended to up to about one square km per site, roughly 140 football pitches.
Okay, but why?
One objection would be that ice reflects less solar energy than snow, being darker. If the goal is to lower global temperatures, then you’d be better with bright snow, with its higher albedo, than darker ice. Still, ice doesn’t absorb as much solar energy as water.
However, Fitzgerald believes that snow flooding could be done in the winter.
When the sun returns, a blanket of artificial snow could be created, providing a bright, insulating blanket that would slow melting during the summer.
That the idea might work is indicated by the pearl-clutching that’s already starting from the Climate Cult. They’re terrified that, if we stop the Arctic supposedly melting, then it will undermine the excuse for their global wealth-transfer-disguised-as-climate-action.
Well, good.
