The North Pole is well on its way to becoming the North Pool
as heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to melt the polar ice caps.
The world's waters are rising slowly, almost imperceptibly, around us.
But don't be overly concerned. For every ecological problem there must
be one or more geoengineering solutions.
In this spirit of blind technological optimism, I'm advancing a modest proposal to shift the melting process into reverse and to refreeze the ice caps.
Doing so will save hundreds of coastal cities in the long run, not to mention Holland.
These locales will eventually go under, literally, if worldwide thermal pollution continues unabated. We need affordable solutions and ameliorations, and the cost of doing nothing is far greater than the cost of investing in possible solutions.
That's why I'm proposing that we design and build giant machines that magically turn water into ice. This proposal, when implemented, should pay for itself in the saved costs of moving hundreds of cities farther inland.
Posterity is already thanking us for bequething to them the Big Icemaker.
How hard can it be to refreeze melting ice caps? We perform this trick on a smaller scale every time we turn water into ice cubes in our home freezers. Why not play the same trick on a bigger scale by submerging giant coils filled with refrigerant into near-freezing polar waters and turning these waters back into light- and heat-reflecting ice, thus reducing the liquid volume and sea level of the world's oceans?
Let's leave aside for the moment the tedious consideration of compressors, condensers, evaporators, and whatever other things it takes to make giant ice cubes. We’ll have to trust the engineers to work out the finer points. We're just big-picturing it here.
Critical thinkers will object that the amount of energy needed to freeze so much water would generate enormous heat of its own (not to mention carbon dioxide pollution, if we’re still relying on exploding microfossils to generate power). Thus, critics may cavil that the proposed solution would be self-defeating, if not, indeed, clinically delusional.
I’m one step ahead of the critical thinkers. I propose that we run the Big Icemaker on clean sources of energy, such as wind and solar, and sequester any excess heat by pumping it down a Big Pipe toward the earth’s molten core, which is well accustomed to high temperatures.
The clean energy needed to run the Big Icemaker will be stored with astonishing efficiency in devices such as the genuinely promising liquid metal battery currently being developed at MIT.
With plenty of clean energy, efficient battery storage, green coolant and deep-earth heat sequestration, I see no reason why we can’t refreeze the poles, and indeed, make them any size and shape we want. The polar caps can become our ultimate ice sculpture gardens, if we’ll only dream.They await their Picassos and Picassas.
When the Big Icemaker is up and going, coastal people everywhere will rejoice, and Santa and the Christmas toy industry can move back to the North Pole from China, where most of their operations have been relocated due to the North Pool problem.
If the Big Icemaker solution to polar ice melt doesn’t work, I have a backup plan. I understand there’s been exciting work at Cornell on a quick-freeze product known by the code name “ice-nine." I'd like to say more about this remarkable substance, but it's classified information.
If ice-nine doesn’t work, we’ll find something that does. I remain serene in the faith that for every Earthly problem there’s a geoengineering solution – a technofix -- out there somewhere. I know it in my heart. I just do.
And if geoengineering solutions create new problems, we’ll just find new technofixes for these as well, as human progress continues to lurch forward, one mind-made disaster at a time.
originally posted in Danagram on Open Salon
In this spirit of blind technological optimism, I'm advancing a modest proposal to shift the melting process into reverse and to refreeze the ice caps.
Doing so will save hundreds of coastal cities in the long run, not to mention Holland.
These locales will eventually go under, literally, if worldwide thermal pollution continues unabated. We need affordable solutions and ameliorations, and the cost of doing nothing is far greater than the cost of investing in possible solutions.
That's why I'm proposing that we design and build giant machines that magically turn water into ice. This proposal, when implemented, should pay for itself in the saved costs of moving hundreds of cities farther inland.
Posterity is already thanking us for bequething to them the Big Icemaker.
How hard can it be to refreeze melting ice caps? We perform this trick on a smaller scale every time we turn water into ice cubes in our home freezers. Why not play the same trick on a bigger scale by submerging giant coils filled with refrigerant into near-freezing polar waters and turning these waters back into light- and heat-reflecting ice, thus reducing the liquid volume and sea level of the world's oceans?
Let's leave aside for the moment the tedious consideration of compressors, condensers, evaporators, and whatever other things it takes to make giant ice cubes. We’ll have to trust the engineers to work out the finer points. We're just big-picturing it here.
Critical thinkers will object that the amount of energy needed to freeze so much water would generate enormous heat of its own (not to mention carbon dioxide pollution, if we’re still relying on exploding microfossils to generate power). Thus, critics may cavil that the proposed solution would be self-defeating, if not, indeed, clinically delusional.
I’m one step ahead of the critical thinkers. I propose that we run the Big Icemaker on clean sources of energy, such as wind and solar, and sequester any excess heat by pumping it down a Big Pipe toward the earth’s molten core, which is well accustomed to high temperatures.
The clean energy needed to run the Big Icemaker will be stored with astonishing efficiency in devices such as the genuinely promising liquid metal battery currently being developed at MIT.
With plenty of clean energy, efficient battery storage, green coolant and deep-earth heat sequestration, I see no reason why we can’t refreeze the poles, and indeed, make them any size and shape we want. The polar caps can become our ultimate ice sculpture gardens, if we’ll only dream.They await their Picassos and Picassas.
When the Big Icemaker is up and going, coastal people everywhere will rejoice, and Santa and the Christmas toy industry can move back to the North Pole from China, where most of their operations have been relocated due to the North Pool problem.
If the Big Icemaker solution to polar ice melt doesn’t work, I have a backup plan. I understand there’s been exciting work at Cornell on a quick-freeze product known by the code name “ice-nine." I'd like to say more about this remarkable substance, but it's classified information.
If ice-nine doesn’t work, we’ll find something that does. I remain serene in the faith that for every Earthly problem there’s a geoengineering solution – a technofix -- out there somewhere. I know it in my heart. I just do.
And if geoengineering solutions create new problems, we’ll just find new technofixes for these as well, as human progress continues to lurch forward, one mind-made disaster at a time.
originally posted in Danagram on Open Salon
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