The scientific community should urgently pursue research into geoengineering of glaciers, according to a new scientific white paper.

According to the white paper, research into geoengineering of ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic must be undertaken now, before humanity faces a catastrophic rise in sea-levels that could provoke panicked decision-making to halt it.

“Everyone who is a scientist hopes that we don’t have to do this research,” said Douglas MacAyeal, a professor of geophysical sciences and co-author of the paper.

“But we also know that if we don’t think about it, we could be missing an opportunity to help the world in the future.”

The white paper emerged out of two conferences held on geoengineering—deliberate interventions to alter the planet’s climate—at Chicago and Stanford University. The conferences were organized by the newly formed Climate Systems Engineering initiative at UChicago, which “seeks to understand the benefits, risks, and governance of technologies that might reduce the impacts of accumulated greenhouse gases,” according to a press release.

The scientists at the conferences advocated for two major types of geoengineering to be investigated. The first type consists of “curtains” moored on the seabed to prevent warm water from undermining ice shelves. The biggest threat to ice sheets is not warm air, but warm water,

The second type involves attempts to reduce the flow of meltwater streams that run off ice sheets. This could be achieved, for example, by drilling deep into glaciers, either to drain water from the glacier bed and prevent it from affecting the glacier, or to try and freeze the glacier bed artificially.

The report notes that both approaches are totally untested and their advantages and disadvantages, including potentially environmental disruption, are unclear.

The report calls for any investigation into geoengineering solutions to be conducted in an equitable manner, with input from all the world’s nations. This would involve “robust participation of sociologists, humanists, ecologists, community leaders, scientific and engineering governing bodies, international treaty organizations, and other relevant stakeholders in guiding the research.”

Geoengineering has received increasing coverage in the news in recent months, for good and bad reasons.

First, the good. In a welcome development, Tennessee became the first state in the US to ban geoengineering, including attempts to modify the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth, whether by using physical barriers in the high atmosphere, through spreading reflective chemicals in the sky, or by practices like cloud-seeding, which is used to increase the amount of rainfall over a particular area.

Now, the bad. It’s becoming clear that a shift is taking place in the scientific community and government, as the dangers of geoengineering are being reconsidered in light of the supposed “inevitability” of catastrophic climate change. Many influential figures now believe that the massive risks of geoengineering are worth taking, even if they only buy some extra time for even more sweeping changes to the global regime of carbon-emission reduction.

In February, The Wall Street Journal published a detailed report on three ongoing geoengineering projects taking place across the globe, with a mixture of government and private funding.

In Australia, researchers from Southern Cross University are releasing a brine mixture into the sky to create larger, brighter clouds that will reflect more sunlight and reduce local temperatures. The project is funded by the Australian government, universities, and conservation organizations.

In Israel, Stardust Solutions is testing a delivery system to disperse reflective particles at high altitudes, again to reduce solar radiation. The startup is currently testing the system indoors but will move to outdoor tests in the “next few months.”

And in the US, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute plans to add 6,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide to the ocean off Martha’s Vineyard. They want to produce a “carbon sink” that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into the sea, storing it there. The U.S. government and private sources fund the project. The release of the chemical will require further approval from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Even more worryingly, private companies and individuals are experimenting with geoengineering, without government support or approval. In January 2023, a California startup called Make Sunsets admitted to launching test ballons in Mexico containing sulfur dioxide, a chemical that is of great interest to geoengineers because of its ability to reflect solar radiation in the atmosphere.

Although the test launches were greeted with anger by the scientific community and the Mexican government, the CEO of Make Sunsets, Luke Eisen, was unrepentant, and said that soon his company would start releasing as much sulfur into the atmosphere “as we can get customers to pay us” to release. The startup offers a “cooling credit” system on its website where customers can pay $10 for a gram of sulfur dioxide in a balloon’s payload.

from:    https://www.infowars.com/posts/scientists-call-for-geoengineering-of-glaciers-to-address-climate-change/