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Summary
- The Arctic is warming at an alarming rate due to climate change, with significant impacts on indigenous peoples and wildlife.
- Scientists have proposed 61 climate mitigation ideas for the Arctic, including geoengineering approaches.
- While some geoengineering ideas show promise, the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Many geoengineering ideas have not been tested at a large scale, and more research is needed to understand their potential risks and benefits.
- Urgent action is required to address climate change and its devastating impacts on the Arctic and beyond.
Key passage:
The Arctic is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet. Recent research finds it to be warming nearly four times faster than the Earth average, with highly reflective Arctic sea ice expected to vanish in summer in less than two decades, causing the dark blue-colored Arctic Ocean to absorb even more heat. Glaciers are vanishing, snow cover is shrinking, permafrost is melting, and life for Indigenous peoples and wildlife is being radically transformed. If the Greenland ice sheet goes entirely, that’s a 7-meter (23-foot) rise in sea levels.
Can anything be done? Scientists say we must first stop burning fossil fuels for energy. But even if we stopped that today, and that’s clearly not happening, the world will remain hotter for decades if not centuries. So how can we cool things down?
In hopes of delaying catastrophe, scientists recently developed a report examining 61 climate mitigation ideas for the Arctic, ranking them on everything from technological readiness, to cost, to potential effectiveness. Many fit into the carbon sequestration bucket, but a number recommend various geoengineering approaches.
