Stopping Unstoppable Sea Level Rise by Manaugh&Majdi

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions. We were able, via email, to contact Dr. Roger Hooke, an expert glaciologist. Our exchange of emails with him is posted in the comments section of this proposal ( https://www.climatecolab.org:18081/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1301411/phaseId/1309134/planId/1319603/tab/COMMENTS ). We greatly appreciate his graciously taking time to review our proposal . Dr. Hooke is a Retired Research Professor at the Climate Change Institute and the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Maine, Orono. Most of his work has been in the field of glacial geology and glaciology conducting research in the Canadian Arctic and Northern Sweden. He has authored several papers and books, including "Principles of Glacier Mechanics." Here is a link to read more about Dr. Hooke: http://climatechange.umaine.edu/people/profile/roger_leb_hooke . Dr. Hooke's comments did not lead us to make any major changes. He expressed two concerns that might impact the cost of the project but would not affect the feasibility of the project. Because well-known technologies are proposed for the project, feasibility for the success of the project is more dependent on recognition by political leaders of a need to take steps toward slowing sea level rise than technical barriers. First, Dr. Hooke noted "[t]he flow of Pine Island glacier is up to 4 km/yr, which would make maintaining an open borehole somewhat problematic, and would require redrilling every few years to keep the flow of cooled water in the place where it would do most good." That is a statement to which we agree. The substantial budget we proposed would allow for re-drilling as needed. Second, Dr. Hooke would "like to see some calculations (at least back-of-the-envelope type) to show how much water would have to be pumped to achieve the effect you desire." We provided Dr. Hooke with the kind of calculation he requested. We also changed our proposal to include modeling and simulation during Year One. That change is designed to provide a better estimate than the "back-of-the-envelope" estimate we calculated in response to Dr. Hooke's request. Because of the novelty of our project, modeling and simulation will greatly help (a) guide implementation of the actions we have proposed so as to make implementation go smoothly and (b) anticipate any negative consequences. One unknown is the extent to which drawing seawater out of the ocean will affect marine life. Anticipating that such could happen, we invented and applied for a provisional patent on a novel device that can be used to suck water from the ocean with minimal entrainment of small fish, larvae, and eggs. That provisional patent application will be disclosed to judges upon request. Also, we have changed the time line slightly to include a field study during Year Two, possibly in Alaska or northern Canada. The field study will allow an opportunity to test equipment and procedures that will be used in Antarctica during subsequent years. We anticipate that changes will occur in the natural progression of the Pine Island Glacier in its seaward movement. Indeed, that is the goal of the project. That progression has sped up significantly in recent years. If we are able to slow the progression down, that should be seen as an attempt to bring the glacier back into a more normal relationship to its environment rather than an unwelcome tinkering with a benign natural process. There is certainly nothing benign about glacier-melting causing cities and coastal areas around the world to become inundated by seawater. We very consciously chose Pine Island Glacier to be the subject of our project. It is known to be "ground zero" for concerns about collapse of glaciers and subsequent sea level rise. Any other glacier would be less convincing a subject for our study. Positive results from a successful intervention on Pine Island Glacier's collapse would astound scientists and engineers who have declared its collapse as unstoppable. Positive results from our project on Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier will not be ignored or minimized. Even skeptics of climate change and its effects (those whose messages engender fatalistic attitudes and apathy) will be forced to refocus their negative arguments. Those who understand the ominous threats posed by climate change will be heartened that humanity will be able to control climate-changing greenhouse gases and will be able to take practical steps to avoid catastrophic rise in sea level while concentrations of greenhouse gases return to less dangerous levels. The audacity of implementing this novel, big-budget project has a good chance of being rewarded with a much-needed rise in people's hopes and expectations about the worth of taking steps to confront climate change. Because of glacier-slipping, we expect we will need to re-drill holes in the ice to keep our injection wells well-positioned for pumping cooled seawater into strategic locations to slow glacier slipping. Re-drilling will increase the scope and cost of operations. We have planned for that contingency and other contingencies by specifying a large budget. That large budget offers us the ability to cover the costs for many unknowns and difficulties in working in a harsh and remote setting. The large budget of billions of dollars will only be justified in the minds of decision-makers if they come to believe that trillions of dollars will be lost if billions are not spent. We actually hope and expect to discover over the next several years that the project we have proposed and the kind of impact we hope it will achieve will be accomplished for far less expense than what we have proposed. That said, it would be wrong for us now to propose a budget that might be so small as to doom the project to failure before it can be launched. We hope CoLab judges will agree that now is the time for big, novel, and far-sighted proposals to be made. If we wait until audacious and expensive projects are easily recognized to be justified by crushing effects of climate change, we will probably have waited too long.