“Beavers Could Stop Sea Level Rise”
Beavers and Humans are Only Animals That Intentionally Alter Their Environments. (Photo: Steve Hersey)
Okay. I made this bogus headline up. Beavers do build dams, but this idea is of course, absurd. What prompted this post is, I was angry at the growing list of insane ideas and headlines proposed to stop Antarctica from melting – and thus prevent sea level rise. For example, here’s a recent one that put me over the edge.
“Antarctica is melting so fast that scientists are proposing shooting artificial snow out of cannons to slow it down”, in Business Insider.
It describes a scheme to make artificial snow with 12,000 wind turbines and pumps, costing $600 million each. Even forgetting the cost, could it work? Even the author of the underlying study in the Journal Science Advances, Dr. Anders Levermann makes clear he does not believe it would work. If one bothers to read the article, he says: “It’s not really a suggestion on our part — we as scientists have to put out all possibilities to counter the problem ahead so that society can decide which to act on.” I have no problem with Levermann, who is a good scientist. I agree that science should explore all options, regardless of practicality. But the media grabs onto these stories and presents them to the public as if they could realistically stop sea level rise. They seem to be proliferating.
Sometimes these crazy schemes get some pushback, like this article in Ars Technica,
“Running the Numbers on an Insane Scheme to Save Antarctic Ice”
But it’s the crazy easy “fix” that gets the attention and “sticks”, not the caution and reality check. Last year, another far-fetched idea received a lot of press, including a full feature in the Atlantic Magazine, describing building a series of islands to stop the mega glaciers of Antarctica from sliding into the sea. My blog post “Radical Scheme to Stop Sea Level Rise” made clear my many, many reasons why I believe that is incredibly unrealistic.
The danger is that by promoting fantasy solutions, we encourage the belief that some technological fix will allow us to continue as we are, so that we do not need to begin adapting to the almost certain 3-8 feet (1-3 m) of higher sea level that is now in our future.
Mankind has a long history of being susceptible to illusions, delusions, and “con games.” This is one problem, however, that is just too damaging to be taken lightly. If anything the news from Greenland this week about the record melting should heighten our concern.
If we are going to propose nonsense, here is my submission: Beavers could dam up the glacial outflow, stopping sea level rise. (I hope that is sufficiently ridiculous that no one takes it seriously.)