The recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis has stepped up a gear in the last few class , but with one depressing report on the global issue after another , you could be forgive for finger overwhelmed and inquire what can actually be done ?
In the tally - up to the recentUN climate action summitin New York , the first annualGlobal Climate Restoration Forumwas held , to discuss emerge engineering , extremist ideas , and occasionally controversial method of tackle world heating . From ways to claw back CO2emissions to how to stop the rapidly thawing poles , geoengineering – once the remit of mad scientist andterrible sci - fi catastrophe movies – is being considered in a whole new light .
One of those ideas is an innovative way to not just prevent but actually bushel the rapidly melting glacier , meth sheets , and ocean deoxyephedrine in the Arctic , which is presently warmingtwice as fastas anywhere else on Earth .
The solution , according to scientists at the aptly named non - profitIce911(“Take action for a cooler satellite ” ) , is to generously scattersilica beadsas o.k. as sand onto the frappe to forestall it from melting by reflecting back the Sun ’s electron beam .
The ' beads ' , which are more like a case of floating blank Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin , are made from a silicate shabu that is mostly Si dioxide . The hatful of Earth ’s insolence is 59 percent silica , the independent constituent of more than 95 percent of the known rocks . Ice911
Reflective ice and snow are primal to preventing the Earth from overheat . whitened surface like these reflect most of the radiotherapy from the Sun ’s ray back into space , preserve the planet coolheaded and preclude further thawing . Reduced ice and snowthat reveal darker surfaces like the ground , ocean , or meltwater absorb more of this muscularity , trapping it as heat so the globose temperatures rise and more ice melts . It ’s a poisonous cycle .
However , the scale and speed of ice being lost justly now are extraordinary . summertime 2019 Arctic sea water ice levels tied for thesecond - lowestever recorded . During a heatwave in June , Greenland lost 60 billion tonne of ice in just five day , including themost amount of ice lost in a 24 - hour periodsince records began . Climate model auspicate that Arctic summer could beice - complimentary in 20 years , and the latestIPCC reportshowed how it ’s the ocean and ice that are sop up the brunt of the climate crisis .
Ice911 ’s solution is to increase the reflectivity of the Arctic ice , prevent further thawing , and admit more internal-combustion engine to build up . To do this , they ’ve make petite hollow silicate spyglass microspheres that can be spray onto methamphetamine hydrochloride and snow to increase reflectiveness .
Made from silicon dioxide , or “ silica ” , a chemical compound made from two of the most abundant material found on Earth , silicon and oxygen , Ice911 insist this is thesafest choicefor both ecosystem and local wildlife . Silica occur by nature in land , rocks , and dissolved in the sea . The main threat to living creatures would be inhale or assimilate corpuscle under 10 micrometer caliper , which is why they ’ve by choice created the spheres to be 35 micrometers , and take silica because it does n’t bioaccumulate in humans or animals .
So far , results of this method acting have been foretell . Apeer - refresh paperpublished last year revealed that a field trial run in Alaska increased reflectivity by 15 - 20 percent . clime modelingshows the bead can trim down Arctic average temperature by 1.5 ° snow , increase ice mass by 10 pct over 40 long time , and increase average ice thickness by 20 - 50 centimeters .
Obviously covering the entire Arctic in these beadwork is rather impractical , it ’s an area around 14.5 million straight klick ( 5.5 million square statute mile ) . Dr Leslie Field , laminitis and CEO of Ice911 , and her team have also been using modeling to identify the most at - need areas , and the serious grade of statistical distribution have not been finalize . There are other challenges and question that require answering before this plan can become a reality , too .
Though not the most expensivegeoengineering solutionproposed to tacklerepopulating the Arctic ice , the deployment will still cost around $ 5 billion , though one could fence this is little - youngster compared to the price of the climate crisis . According to the National Burea of Economic Change , that price could be7 percent of the world-wide GDPby the final stage of the century – closer to 10 pct for rich countries like the US .
Another aspect that has to be considered is whether this is a stop - gap or straightaway repair , that may take away from the underlying issue of preventing the deoxyephedrine melting in the first place by limiting the emissions we put out .
What is obvious is time is extend out , and if slow down the melt Arctic could buy us some time to implement tangible change and long - lasting solution at a global level , then any estimate , no matter how unbalanced it sounds , is worth pursuing .
