Environmental scientists are warning against the plans to fight climate change by manipulating the Arctic and Antarctic environment. Altering the polar caps can prove dangerous and is unlikely to work. Moreover, it could also distract policymakers from the need to ditch fossil fuels.

The technique of geoengineering at polar caps aims to cool the planet in unconventional ways, such as artificially thickening sea ice or releasing tiny reflective particles into the atmosphere. Such techniques have gained attention as a potential future solution to combat global warming alongside cutting carbon emissions, but more than 40 researchers have come together to conclude that this could bring severe environmental damage and have urged countries to simply focus on reaching net-zero goals, which is the only established way to limit global warming.

Deliberately intervening in the Earth’s climate system by means of geoengineering is one of the most controversial debates in the climate research world. To save the future from the impact of global warming, geoengineering can bring about changes that will remain uncontrolled and dangerous. Some types of geoengineering are widely accepted, like removing planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via planting trees or using machines. All these are part of net-zero efforts by various states.

Net zero refers to the balancing act of organisations and countries where the planet-warming greenhouse gases produced by human activities are compensated with efforts towards removing the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Geoengineering Technique

But other more radical geoengineering ideas, like reflecting sunlight, “are dealing with the symptoms of climate change, rather than the causes,” says lead author Martin Siegert, professor of geoscience at the University of Exeter.

For some supporters of geoengineering, these techniques support the hope that they could save the future from the rapidly rising temperatures, which are already bringing several impacts to people and ecosystems around the world. However, experts often claim that the risks are simply too great. Particularly in fragile polar regions, where impacts are still unknown, engineering techniques can pose risks to the lives of many.

Scientists behind the report, published in the journal Frontiers in Science, reviewed the evidence for five of the most widely discussed polar geoengineering ideas. According to them, all techniques fail to meet the basic criteria for their feasibility and potential environmental risk. For instance, one of the techniques involves releasing tiny reflective particles called aerosols high into the atmosphere to cool the planet. Such a technique also caught attention among online conspiracy theorists who falsely claim that condensation trails in the sky—sometimes water vapour created from jet engines—are evidence of large-scale geoengineering.

Experts Warn

Scientists and experts in the field have genuine concerns about such techniques, including the potential destruction of weather patterns around the world. This also raises the question of who decides to use them, especially in the Arctic and the Antarctic, where governance is not straightforward. If a country were to apply geoengineering against the will of its citizens, it could increase geopolitical tension in polar regions. Another fear around engineering techniques is that they are only theoretically possible and that the enormous cost and time required to scale them up make such techniques extremely unlikely to make a difference.

Another such idea is to pump seawater over the surface of Arctic sea ice in winters to thicken it, giving the ice a better chance to survive during the summer season. But to cover 10% of the Arctic, there is a need for about 10 million water pumps, which is very ambitious. Not only that, but a more fundamental concern arising from this type of project is that it could create the illusion of an alternative to cutting humanity’s emissions of planet-warming gases without any actual outcome.

“If they are promoted… then they are a distraction because to some people, they will be a solution to the climate crisis that doesn’t require decarbonising… of course, that would not be true, and that’s why we think they can be potentially damaging… There are some basic home truths that don’t need an awful lot of research to come to the conclusion that they’re not really viable,” says Professor Siegert.

Supporters of geoengineering research agree with the concerns of the scientists and also believe that such techniques can at best be supplements and not a substitute. “This need for emission reduction comes first… almost anything we do is futile without it,” says Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, the director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair, another body involved in some projects that were highlighted in the article.