Half a century ago, scientists were going to forever clear the Arctic of ice - and enjoy the warm climate throughout the Northern Hemisphere, resting in the resorts of Chukotka and the Kara Sea.
Thinking big is always tempting. It was especially great when science seemed omniscient and omnipotent, capable of solving any global problems in one fell swoop, from social injustice to climate change. “The centuries-old dream of mankind is to create comfortable conditions for its existence by influencing the processes of climate formation,” wrote the Soviet scientist Nikolai Yasamanov. However, we are very lucky that this dream remained a dream, and the ideas popular in the early 1960s for the destruction of the Arctic ice cover were never implemented.
Unlike the continental glaciers of Antarctica, the ice of the Arctic Ocean is floating, so even their complete melting will not lead to a noticeable increase in sea level. Moreover, in those years they were (erroneously) considered relict "remnants" of the ice ages, and the calculations indicated that in the modern climatic epoch this ice, having melted, will no longer be restored and will appear only in the winter season. The reflectivity of the polar regions will drop, and dark water will absorb more energy from the Sun. The cold and uncomfortable northern climate will soften.
Glaciologist Yevgeny Gernet was among the first to voice the idea of ridding the Arctic of ice. Back in the 1930s, he wrote about the artificial return to the north of Eurasia of the early Miocene climate, when dense thickets of cypress and magnolias swayed even on the shores of Scandinavia. Later, climatologist Mikhail Budyko, the future academician and author of the energy balance model, which became the basis of modern ideas about the climate and the greenhouse effect, was carried away by these ideas. Subsequently, the scientist will look for means to combat global warming and will propose to fill the atmosphere with sulfur aerosols in order to reflect part of the solar radiation back into space. However, in the late 1950s, Budyko advocated mitigating the Arctic climate by spraying a thin layer of soot over it. By absorbing sunlight, the coal particles would help to completely melt the ice and free large areas from the clutches of the cold.
The original application for "radical improvement of the climate" was submitted in 1959 by the geographer Pyotr Borisov. The idea was to use the Gulf Stream, which, reaching the Far North and passing into the North Atlantic Current, noticeably weakens and is pushed to the bottom by the cold streams of the Arctic Ocean. Borisov was going to "force" this water to rise to the surface and give off masses of heat for heating the Arctic.
For this, it was planned to block the Bering Strait with a dam equipped with huge screw pumps. According to Borisov's calculations, by pumping 500 km³ of water daily, it is possible to reduce the level of the Arctic basin by 20 m per year. This drop compensates for the influx of warm currents from the Atlantic: “We do not recognize the Northern Hemisphere of our planet,” they commented on the project. “Siberia will have a climate similar to that of central Ukraine.”
Igor Ashik, head of the Department of Oceanology of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of Roshydromet (AARI): “Half a century ago, we overestimated our strength and ability to influence global natural phenomena. Today it is clear that the energy of the climate-forming processes covering the planet is many times greater than the power supply of mankind. But if proponents of a man-made explanation for current climate change are right, then humans have - and are - influencing it. Although not setting such a task for himself."
Promotional video:
Pull push
In 1966, the State Committee for Science and Technology considered the project of the Riga engineer Eugene Pastors, a description of which recently surfaced in the archives of the AARI. Based on Borisov's concept, the author expressed the original idea of towing the ice cover to the south by sea vessels. “… If you introduce about 20-25 powerful ships into the ice of the central Arctic, turn some of them towards the strait into the Atlantic, and some towards the strait into the Pacific Oceans, push them into the ice and push … then the ice cover will leave the Arctic ocean,”says Pastors' application.
Fortunately, these projects then remained on paper, and soon our ideas about the climate changed significantly. Already in 1970, Peter Borisov stated that the sea ice of the Arctic basin "is not a relic … but a product of the modern climate." Mikhail Budyko drew attention to the development of global warming and became concerned with urgent problems.
Alas, refined scientific concepts do not replace the temptation to think big. Projects to “fix” the climate are still emerging today. To combat global warming, it is proposed to spray aluminum powder and sulfur-containing aerosols in the atmosphere "according to the Budyko method", to pump excess carbon dioxide into underground storage facilities … Commenting on these ideas, climatologist Igor Ashik says: “The level of our knowledge about the mechanisms of climate formation is not so high that to speak with confidence about the causes of climate change, and even more so to predict and plan them."
The article "There Will Be No Winter" was published in the Popular Mechanics magazine (# 1, January 2016).
Roman Fishman