Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "Can we stop ice sheets from melting?" video.

  1. Can we build an underwater curtain to hold the ice back? I don't know. Pranab Deb made some very good points about potential undercurrents and the sheer hostility of the Antarctic environment. It would be hugely challenging at the very least. Should we do it? ABSOLUTELY. If the curtains can be built, and if they don't increase warming on other nearby glaciers, then by all means build them. They could save hundreds of millions of lives, and possibly save entire nations from irreparable ruin. Calling something like this "a sticking plaster" or treating the symptoms and not the disease, ignores the enormous harm those symptoms will cause. Of course the main problem is greenhouse gas emissions. We need to de-carbonize our economy, that's inevitable and should be done as fast as possible. But this shouldn't be framed as an either-or situation. It's something we need to do in addition to stopping the root cause. Nations spend trillions of dollars on useless wars. Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on enormous engineering projects that save lives instead?
    1
  2. Yes, I think we should. And is it really "tampering" with nature when we're trying to stop the changes we caused in the first place?
    1