Is unavoidable sea level rise an engineering problem, do we have the capabilities for a technological fix?

John C. Moore from the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland presents these ideas in his October 2018 talk, “Stopping the flood – Can we engineer ice sheets and save the homes of a billion people?”

Open lecture of Research Professor John C. Moore from the Arctic Centre on how we could slow sea-level rise by stabilizing the ice sheets. The lecture took place on United Nations Day on 24th October 2018 in Rovaniemi, Finland.

Sea level rise will happen even if we stop using fossil fuels in the next few decades. Globally they are expected to rise by a metre this century costing tens of billions euro per year in coastal protection and forcing relocation of hundreds of millions of people and loss of many wetland ecosystems. Much of this rise is unavoidable even by cooling the climate because of ice sheet instabilities especially in Antarctica.

The research, led by John C. Moore, show that we could stabilize the ice sheets by modifying the way they slide over their beds, or by increasing the buttressing that resists them as they float across the Antarctic coastline. It is not a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emission, rather a potential solution for one symptom of warming, and one which will not work indefinitely.

• Original version source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrkzBOZ46gk
• Marine ice sheet instability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_ice_sheet_instability
• Jakobshavn Glacier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakobshavn_Glacier
• West Antarctic Ice Sheet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet