It’s so crazy it just might work. And if it doesn’t, at least it will get people talking.
Let’s face it: climate scientists have been issuing warning after warning that the polar ice caps are melting. This event will undoubtedly upset the already-fragile balance and our human activities will only speed up the process.
The severe melting in the Arctic is directly linked to unusually strong and freaky weather phenomena and to downright scary calamities. Floods, heat waves, tornadoes, hurricanes and cyclones, you name it and we’ll bet our asses it’s coming for us.
This is not wild speculation, it’s the hard reality. Our impact on the global weather is measurable and provable, and not something that is up for debate.
In 2016, the Arctic ice level was at its lowest point since we started taking measurements over a century ago. This loss is disastrous and the sane scientific world agrees measures should be taken immediately. One such desperate move is the focus of this article and it involves wind turbines and pumps. About 10 million pieces should do the trick.
Behind this unusual idea is Physicist Steven Desch and his colleagues at the Arizona State University. Their solution is simple but expensive and it involves a massive network of buoys equipped with wind turbines and pumps.
Using free power, this network would pump water from below the ice and dump it over the cold surface. Water exposed to the cold air would freeze much faster than water under ice and in the cold winter months, this could increase the ice formation by as much as 3 feet. Considering the fact that the mean annual thickness of polar ice is approximately 5 feet, the refreezing efforts would give a 70% increase. Not too bad, but will it be enough?
“The scale of climate change and associated problems is so large it paralyzes us into inaction,” Desch told press. “But we can make real progress in the Arctic by putting people to work and using just a fraction of the industrial capacity that accidentally caused climate change in the first place”
Their plan is strange and costly, but it would be a dumb idea to sit around and not do anything.
“Maybe trying to make more ice in the Arctic using windmills and pumps and hoses is a crazy idea, but what’s really crazy is doing nothing while the Arctic melts. We hope to provoke discussion and action. Whether we choose to be in or not, we’re in charge of the climate now, so let’s all do the best we can.”
In order to obtain any meaningful results, the operation would have to cover a lot of area. Since each pump could serve a surface of 0.03 miles, around ten million of them could really make a difference.
The cost of operating this army of arctic pumps? $50 billion per year, over a period of ten years.
This is a project of immense magnitude that would require massive funding and manpower. It surpasses the financial abilities of any one nation so it would have to be an international venture. And if there’s something that could unite us, it has to be a common enemy or cause.
If climate change doesn’t fit the bill, I don’t know what does.