Moore et al's * Nature *Comment points to an interesting material disparity- history's largest civil enginering projects have already required shifting far more mass locally than global geoengineering schemes require.
They in turn contemplate projects in glacier damming that each require a one to two order of magnitude increase in mass over the cubic kilometer excavated to create the Suez Canal, or the ~ 250 million cubic meters of concrete poured to create the Three Gorges Dam. This contrasts with trending dematerialization in engineering , architecture, and the economy, as pointed to by such figures as Jesse Ausabel, Buckminister Fuller, and Vaclav Smill. This may be an economic trend independent of conservation policy, as increased efficiency in the use of materials tends to be profitable in and of itself. If the economic and engineering case for ( local not global ) glacier engineering in the face of rising seas can be made well enough to merit high profile publication in *Nature *, one hopes the editors will entertain future Comment pieces on less massive approaches to conserving polar ice and albedo. On Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 2:01:06 PM UTC-4, Greg Rau wrote: > > > > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180316&spMailingID=56197970&spUserID=MTMxNDgwMjc3NjQ1S0&spJobID=1362348899&spReportId=MTM2MjM0ODg5OQS2 > "We think that geoengineering of glaciers on a similar scale could delay > much of Greenland and Antarctica’s grounded ice from reaching the sea for > centuries, buying time to address global warming. In our view, this is > plausible because about 90% of ice flowing to the sea from the Antarctic > ice sheet3 > <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180316&spMailingID=56197970&spUserID=MTMxNDgwMjc3NjQ1S0&spJobID=1362348899&spReportId=MTM2MjM0ODg5OQS2#ref-CR3> > ,4 > <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180316&spMailingID=56197970&spUserID=MTMxNDgwMjc3NjQ1S0&spJobID=1362348899&spReportId=MTM2MjM0ODg5OQS2#ref-CR4>, > > and about half of that lost from Greenland travels in narrow, fast ice > streams. These streams measure tens of kilometres or less across. Fast > glaciers slide on a film of water or wet sediment5 > <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180316&spMailingID=56197970&spUserID=MTMxNDgwMjc3NjQ1S0&spJobID=1362348899&spReportId=MTM2MjM0ODg5OQS2#ref-CR5>. > > Stemming the largest flows would allow the ice sheets to thicken, slowing > or even reversing their contribution to sea-level rise." > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
