Can the polar icecaps be restored?

Question

Since global warming has melted massive areas of the polar icecaps, can the previously vast frozen plains ever be restored or are they irreparably melted until the next ice age?

Answer 1

Yes, wait until winter. The arctic ice has melted because it is summer, and will refreeze in winter. The antarctic ice has not melted, and is in fact getting thicker because the antarctic is not experiencing any of the overall warming trends.

Answer 2

The melting that has occured in the polar regions has primarily been from around the edges - partly because of warmer air temperatures and partly because of warmer sea temperatures. To restore the melted ice directly would mean increasing the extent of ice coverage which unfortunately wouldn't work as it would just melt again.

One idea that has been considered is to pump sea water onto the Arctic and Antarctic interiors, places where the temperature never rises close to freezing. This water would be immediately frozen on contact with the ice but there's no real advantage to doing this.

If we wanted to restore the Polar ice caps the only way to achieve this would be to reduce the average global temperature back to it's pre-warming level. The first answer mentions some such schemes for reducing or reversing the effects of global warming, there's others as well, some of which are summarised on this page - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/combat.html#4

At the moment it's the Arctic Ice which is facing the greatest threat, there's much more melting here than elsewhere and latest research shows it to be melting faster than previously thought. In 40 years the Arctic Ice could have melted completely and would only partiually return each winter season. The Greenland Ice Cap and Antarctica are also melting but much slower, at current rates Greeland will be around for many hundreds of years and Antarctica for many thousands of years.

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Edit: To Anders. A lot of the schemes have been tried on a small scale and found to work but the potential for things going wrong is very worrying. Some of the ideas are quite frightening, the propspect of trying to move Earth into a different orbit doesn't bear thinking about. The scheme I personally favour is the 'artificial trees' one as it's fully controllable and can be gradually implemented. It also uses the same technology that we've been using for quite some time now in the scrubbers fitted to smoke stacks, effectively it's taking the scrubbers out of the factories and power stations and placing them in the open atmosphere.

Answer 3

Nature will eventually restore everything back to it's original state. Besides, global warming is a good thing because now we can drill for oil and natural gas in Santa Clause's back yard. More pollution will be the best Christmas present ever! Then the south pole will melt and we can finally get rid of those god damn penguins.

Answer 4

There are all sorts of large-scale schemes which might reverse the situation. One idea that is interesting (but currently too expensive) is to position satellites between the Earth and Sun which could shade parts of the Earth, bringing down the temperature. Another is to activate volcanoes (perhaps using explosives) but this would create too much acid rain and atmospheric pollution and would be difficult to regulate. Yet another is to dump iron dust into the ocean, causing phytoplankton to sink and trapping CO2. This doesn't seem very practical due to concerns over volume and pollution.

Let's hope that a nuclear winter isn't the answer.

Answer 5

I hope so. Before man came on this planet, New York used to be under 7,000 feet of ice. It wasn't until mans destructive power that caused the ice sheets to melt, and as this day they are still receding.

The Earth won't be complete again until the ice caps are returned to their normal position and New York is once again under mile thick ice caps.

Answer 6

While we're at it.. can we restore the glacier sheet that once covered North America? It was melted by global warming too! Why doesn't it deserve to be restored?

Or inversely, there used to be tropical forests in the arctic. These were destroyed by global cooling, shouldn't we be trying to restore them?

Answer 7

The only way they can be restored is if the global temperature drops--and that won't happen until we stop global warming. Even then, it will take many decades--perhaps centuries.

The good news is that you don't need an ice age to do it--just a restoration of normal temperatures.

Answer 8

How by building a big fridge ?
only an Ice age can restore them

Answer 9

Let's get Whirlpool on the job.

Answer 10

Thanks for the link Trevor.
Jeez, some of these ideas scare me. I truly hope they don't mess up if they ever try to implement one of them.

Edit. Lol, I agree. Good stuff.