{"id":125441,"date":"2025-09-09T15:29:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T15:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/125441\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T15:29:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T15:29:11","slug":"protect-arctic-from-dangerous-climate-engineering-scientists-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/125441\/","title":{"rendered":"Protect Arctic from ‘dangerous’ climate engineering, scientists warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scientists behind the new assessment, published in the journal Frontiers in Science, reviewed the evidence for five of the most widely discussed polar geoengineering ideas.<\/p>\n

All fail to meet basic criteria for their feasibility and potential environmental risks, they say.<\/p>\n

One such suggestion is releasing tiny, reflective particles called aerosols high into the atmosphere to cool the planet.<\/p>\n

This often attracts attention among online conspiracy theorists<\/a>, who falsely claim that condensation trails in the sky \u2013 water vapour created from aircraft jet engines \u2013 is evidence of sinister large-scale geoengineering today.<\/p>\n

But many scientists have more legitimate concerns, including disruption to weather patterns around the world.<\/p>\n

With those potential knock-on effects, that also raises the question of who decides to use it \u2013 especially in the Arctic and Antarctic, where governance is not straightforward.<\/p>\n

If a country were to deploy geoengineering against the wishes of others, it could “increase geopolitical tensions in polar regions”, according to Dr Valerie Masson-Delmotte, senior scientist at the Universit\u00e9 Paris Saclay in France.<\/p>\n

Another fear is that while some of the ideas may be theoretically possible, the enormous costs and time to scale-up mean they are extremely unlikely to make a difference, according to the review.<\/p>\n

One idea BBC News recently looked at was a plan to pump seawater over the surface of Arctic sea-ice<\/a> in winter to thicken it, giving the ice a better chance to survive the summer.<\/p>\n

But to cover 10% of the Arctic could require about 10 million seawater pumps, one estimate suggests.<\/p>\n

A more fundamental concern is that these types of projects could create the illusion of an alternative to cutting humanity’s emissions of planet-warming gases.<\/p>\n

“If they are promoted\u2026 then they are a distraction because to some people they will be a solution to the climate crisis that doesn’t require decarbonising,” said Prof Siegert.<\/p>\n

“Of course that would not be true and that’s why we think they can be potentially damaging.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scientists behind the new assessment, published in the journal Frontiers in Science, reviewed the evidence for five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-125441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}