Fatema,

Yes, this seems too weird:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/12/climate/refreeze-arctic-real-ice/index.html

It’s a bold plan, and one of many controversial geo-engineering proposals to save the planet’s vulnerable polar regions that range from installing a giant underwater “curtain” to protect ice sheets, to sprinkling tiny glass beads to reflect away sunlight.

Some Arctic scientists and experts have criticized Real Ice’s methods as unproven at scale, ecologically risky and a distraction from tackling the root cause of climate change: fossil fuels.

But the company says its project is inspired by natural processes and offers a last chance to protect a disappearing ecosystem as the world fails to act swiftly on climate change.

Notice all the misinformation.

First, even though CNN is just a non-scientific news source, they should ask exactly how it is that using salt on ice wouldn't encourage that ice to melt. As road crews do when they pour salt on icy roads. Dissolve any impurity into water and the result should be to lower the freezing temperature. Just like antifreeze used in a car's cooling system. Hence, you'd think, to accelerate ice melt.

CNN should be bold enough to explain why not. Best I can guess here, perhaps the claim is that yes, this would reduce the ice pack in the Arctic. But the ice remaining would be colder? The claim is that tests have shown that "this idea works." I would think, rational people would want to know more. CNN should be smart enough to explain better.

And second, this counterproductive repetition of what is false. Burning fossil fuels is hardly the main cause of anthropogenic climate change. But let's just repeat the same banality, over and over again. Because we are too incompetent to check out the facts.

By the way, another very questionable artificial effort? To use machines to sequester atmospheric CO2. As if deforestation is not bad enough already, that would just make forests less likely to regrow, as they should be doing. The so-called "CO2 fertilization effect."

Another idea that results from people unwilling to look at the facts. Luckily for the human race, at least these machines seem to absorb a really small amount of CO2 anyway, so perhaps not too much harm done.

Even if these CO2 sequestration machines absorbed all 30 GT/yr of anthropogenic CO2, CO2 ppm in the atmosphere would continue to rise above the current 420 ppm. Plenty enough to encourage more vegetation to grow.

At least I strongly feel they can desalinate and hose the water onto the ice surely is less risky?

Fatema Miah

Dear Professor,

Thank you for raising this question.

The matter that you have addressed is indeed very important. Though I am not 100% sure, still I think that it is because of the constant rise in population that man has to explore the untouched avenues. We would have never gone to the Arctic circle if there was no necessity to get more and more. There is no doubt that the result is going o be devastating.

Best regards,

Anamitra.