Plans to save ice in the polar regions and “repair” the climate using technology are a “flawed” distraction from the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases, according to a new scientific assessment.
The review of proposals to reflect sunlight or use barriers to keep warm sea water at bay concludes they are too expensive, hard to scale up and may do more harm than good.
But the report has reopened the controversy over so-called geoengineering.
The Arctic is warming at least three times faster than the rest of the planet, raising sea levels and increasing the risks of extreme weather in Europe.
And other scientists say every effort is needed to prevent climate breakdown in the fragile polar regions.
But Professor Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter, who led the new assessment, told Sky News that using technology to fix the problem was a “false promise”.
“It’s an appealing proposition,” he said. “But it doesn’t stack up at all.
“It’s quite dangerous actually because some people might rely on it as a way to cure the planet, but we just don’t think it’s viable.”
The review, published in the journal Frontiers in Science, looked at well-publicised proposals to reduce the impact of climate change on polar regions.
They include techniques to spray particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, use barriers anchored to the seabed to keep warm water away from floating ice shelves or add nutrients to polar oceans to encourage growth of microscopic creatures that suck up carbon from the atmosphere.
But the assessment concludes the techniques are unproven and may have unpredictable effects on the atmosphere and environment.
Professor Siegert told Sky News: “Disproportionately high amounts of attention has been given to some of these projects.
“The thing we can do to save the polar regions, the thing we…
