“Treating” A Sick Planet

Have you ever been to the hospital for a bad cut or broken bone? The doctor might give you medicine to stop the pain, but that only treats the symptom. To really help you heal, the doctor must treat the cause, by stitching the cut or putting a cast on the broken bone.

Right now, climate change is making our planet sick. So, what should we do? Should we only ease the symptoms? Or should we treat the real cause of the problem by cutting greenhouse gas emissions? This article explores the idea of only treating the symptoms of climate change using a method called geoengineering—and why this approach might be risky or even dangerous for the planet and its inhabitants.

Warming is Worse at The Poles

Earth’s climate is warming because we burn fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. The Arctic (north pole) and Antarctic (south pole) are warming faster than the rest of the world. This process is known as polar amplification (to learn more about polar amplification, you can read this Frontiers for Young Minds article). Polar amplification is dangerous because, even though the poles might feel far away, what happens there affects the whole Earth.

As the poles warm, the ice that covers them is melting. Melting ice raises sea levels, which threaten coastal areas where millions of people live. Melting ice adds cold, freshwater to the salty ocean, which can also change the way ocean currents work. Polar ice is important for keeping the planet cool, for keeping sea levels stable, and for providing a home for unique wildlife such as penguins in the Antarctic and polar bears in the Arctic. Polar ice is also important for the people who live in the Arctic and need the ice to travel and hunt for food. The warming at the poles is so serious that some people are thinking about using geoengineering in these regions.

What is Geoengineering?

Geoengineering means using technological methods across large areas of Earth, to try to control the climate. Some of these technologies can help fight climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, but other geoengineering ideas involve huge changes to parts of Earth’s natural systems. While some of the geoengineering ideas we describe below might sound clever, most are unproven, expensive, hard to build, and could cause more problems than they solve, especially in fragile places like the poles.

The following sections describe some of the geoengineering ideas people are talking about.

“Sunscreen” for the Earth

One way that people think they could stop climate change is by stopping some sunlight from reaching the Earth. They think this could be done by spraying tiny particles high into the atmosphere to block sunlight, like a giant sunscreen for the planet (Figure 1A) [1]. This could reduce global warming in some places for a short time, but once the particles wear off, the Earth could heat up even faster than before. The particles could cause global weather patterns to change, which might help some countries, but could also cause big problems in others, like making droughts and other extreme weather worse (Figure 1B). In other words, this method of geoengineering will not be fair for everyone. Also, this idea involves deliberately adding pollution to the atmosphere, which would form acidic rain and increase acidity in our oceans, altering fragile marine ecosystems.

Growing More Ocean Algae

Tiny algae in the ocean called phytoplankton make most of the food for marine animals and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere like plants do, through the process of photosynthesis. To grow, phytoplankton need iron, which is found naturally in small amounts in the oceans. Some people think that if we add more iron into the ocean, phytoplankton could grow better and thus take up more of our carbon dioxide [2]. This method is called ocean fertilization, and it would involve dumping lots of iron from ships into the ocean around Antarctica (Figure 1A). The main problem with this idea is that the algae cannot store the carbon long enough to help fight climate change. Another problem is that adding iron to the Southern Ocean could harm marine life all over the world, even as far away as tropical islands (Figure 1B)!

Hoovering Up Meltwater

One of the most bizarre ideas is to drill lots of holes through the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and use giant pumps to suck up meltwater from underneath the ice sheets and spray it back onto the top of the ice, so it can refreeze (Figure 2A) [3]. People think that this would make the ice sheets bigger and less slippery, so that the ice might stop sliding into the sea and raising sea levels. However, ice sheets are thousands of meters thick, and it takes a lot of effort to drill all the way through them. The ice is always moving, and the holes would close after a few days or weeks. This method would cost a fortune, need massive amounts of energy (causing more greenhouse gas emissions), and will most likely not stop the ice from melting.

Sea Curtains

Another geoengineering idea is to put up giant underwater sea curtains in the Antarctic Ocean and around Greenland [3]. These curtains would act like huge walls to stop warm water from reaching the ice sheet and melting it (Figure 2B). One of the big problems with this idea is that building and taking care of sea curtains across hundreds of miles in harsh polar environments would be incredibly difficult. The curtains would be so big that we do not even have ships large enough to carry the anchors needed to hold the curtains in place. Even if we did, Antarctica is one of the toughest places on Earth to work, and some areas where the curtains would need to go cannot even be reached by ships. On top of all this, the curtains could harm the ocean environment, cause problems for sea creatures, and probably will not even work to keep warm water from reaching the ice. It is a risky idea that would be very expensive and is not practical.

Re-growing Sea Ice

Sea ice is a layer of frozen seawater that floats on the surface of the ocean in the Arctic and Antarctic. Two geoengineering techniques have been suggested to re-grow Arctic sea ice, which could help to keep the Earth cool. The first method involves spreading small glass beads on the sea ice to reflect sunlight (Figure 3A) [4]. However, these beads are toxic to wildlife and disrupt the food chain, causing more harm than good. One project that was planning to do this has already shut down because they realized that the beads are dangerous to animals.

The second method involves making the Arctic sea ice thicker by installing lots of pumps to spray water onto the top of the ice (Figure 3B) [5]. This is a bad idea because we would need over 1 million pumps to really make a difference, and it would take over 1,000 years to set them all up! This is far too late to help stop climate change, which needs to be done now. Even if the pumps were all set up, they would need to be looked after, and this would be very difficult and expensive. Sea ice is always moving, and the pumps could fall into the sea when the ice melts, causing even more damage to the environment.

Reducing Fossil Fuels is the Best Solution

Geoengineering ideas like these may sound exciting and futuristic, but they are expensive, risky, and very unlikely to solve the problem of climate change. What is worse, they could harm the fragile ecosystems in the polar regions and cause problems all over the world.

Some experts worry that geoengineering might lead people to think that we can fight climate change by treating only the symptoms. This might make governments, companies, or individuals less motivated to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which would be a huge mistake. The world needs rapid, deep reduction of greenhouse gas emissions—not distractions or delays. Trying to “play climate doctor” with risky, expensive polar geoengineering experiments might end up doing more harm than good.

The good news is that we already know what works: burning less fossil fuel. By switching to clean energy sources like wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stop global warming. This will help protect the polar regions and their inhabitants, the wildlife that depends on them, the rest of the planet, and all its people.

Glossary

Geoengineering: ↑ Using machines to try to reduce the consequences of climate change.

Polar Amplification: ↑ Snow and ice reflect the sun’s rays, but when they melt, dark land or ocean absorbs heat. This process means the poles warm up faster than other parts of the world.

Ice Sheet: ↑ A country-sized pile of ice made by snow that has built up and compressed over millions of years. Greenland and Antarctica have ice sheets, and sea level rises when they melt.

Sea Ice: ↑ In very cold places, the surface of the sea freezes. This ice floats on the top of the sea and is important for polar wildlife.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the coauthors of the original manuscript: Michael J. Bentley, Julie Brigham-Grette, Henry Burgess, Marie Cavitte, Steven L Chown, Florence Colleoni, Robert M. DeConto, Helen Amanda Fricker, Edward Gasson, Susie M. Grant, Adriana Maria Gulisano, Susana Hancock, Katharine R. Hendry, Regine Hock, Kevin A. Hughes, Deneb Karentz, James D. Kirkham, Bernd Kulessa, Robert D. Larter, Andrew Mackintosh, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Felicity S. McCormack, Ruth Mottram, Twila A. Moon, Tim Naish, Chandrika Nath, Ben Orlove, Pam Pearson, Joeri Rogelj, Jane Rumble, Sarah Seabrook, Alessandro Silvano, Martin Sommerkorn, Leigh A. Stearns, Chris R. Stokes, Julienne Stroeve, and Martin Truffer.

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