When you’ve run out of options to solve the climate problem sensibly, do something ludicrous like damming the Bering Strait. All Norway’s new cars are EVs. Greenhouse gas emissions are up 50 per cent since nations decided to control them.

Damn the Bering Strait!

In the interests of brevity, I’m going to assume that readers know what a climate tipping point is, that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is the name of the surface and deep water currents that keep the Atlantic Ocean circulating between the tropics and the poles, that although the current flows happen in the Atlantic, the AMOC is a major influence on climates worldwide, and that the weakening of the AMOC as a result of climate change is (some say) in danger of reaching a tipping point when its complete shutdown will become inevitable with disastrous consequences for the climate, weather patterns, nations and communities around the globe -  phew! Readers wanting more information about the AMOC should have a look at David Spratt’s article in P&I. For a primer on tipping points, see The Global Tipping Points report 2025. So, now we’re all on the same page, on with the story…

Climate change is proceeding at such an alarming rate and with already alarming consequences that some people, despairing that humans are not going to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently rapidly to avoid truly catastrophic global warming, are proposing and researching what would otherwise be considered truly outlandish technological ‘solutions’, for example solar radiation management (using cloud brightening, floating a giant parasol in space and surrounding the Earth with a blanket of reflective particles in the atmosphere), direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere, and refreezing the Arctic.

Here’s a proposal I haven’t come across previously: building an 80km dam across the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. Closing the Strait, it is suggested, will allow less of the fresh water released from the melting Arctic ice to flow into the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Part of the present problem is that increasing amounts of Arctic ice melt are reducing the salinity of the adjacent Atlantic surface, making the water less dense and preventing the cold surface water from sinking and drawing warmer surface........

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