Page 219 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Russian people to overcome the northland cold, proposed building a dam across
32
the Bering Strait to melt the Arctic sea ice. In numerous articles and then again
in his book Can Man Change the Climate? (1973), Borisov detailed his vision of
a dam 50 miles long and almost 200 feet high with shipping locks and pumping
stations. He proposed that the dam be built in 820-foot sections made of pre-
fabricated freeze-resistance ferroconcrete that could be floated to the construc-
tion site and anchored to the sea bottom with pilings. He further suggested that
the top of the dam be shaped so that ice floes would ride up over the dam and
break off on the southern side. An alternative design included an intercontinen-
tal highway and railroad. According to Borisov, “What mankind needs is war
against cold, rather than a ‘cold war.’” 33
To liquidate Arctic sea ice, Borisov wanted to pump cold seawater out of the
Arctic ocean, across the dam, and into the Bering Sea and the North Pacific. This
displacement would allow the inflow of warmer water from the North Atlantic,
eliminate fresh water in the surface layer in several years, and thus prevent the
formation of ice in the Arctic Basin, creating warmer climate conditions:

In this day and age, with mankind’s expanding powers of transforming the natural
environment, the project we are advancing does not present any technical difficul-
ties. The pumping of the warm Atlantic water across into the Pacific ocean will
take the Arctic ocean out of its present state of a dead-end basin for the Atlantic
water [and] drive the Arctic surface water out into the Pacific ocean through the
Bering Strait. 34

His goal was to remove a 200-foot layer of cold surface water, which would be
replaced by warmer, saltier water that would not freeze. Inspired by Markin’s
popular book Soviet Electric Power, Borisov also assumed that huge amounts of
electricity would soon be available to run the pumps, perhaps from hydroelectric
generators or nuclear reactors.
The dam was, of course, never built, but if it had been attempted, would the
nations of the world have confronted the Russians? The net climatic effect of the
project, if it had been carried out, is still highly uncertain. A good argument can
be made that the effect would be less than that of naturally occurring variations
in the Atlantic influx, but none of the computer models at the time were sophis-
ticated enough to show any robust results.
other ocean-engineering schemes included installing giant turbines in the
Strait of Florida to generate electricity and adding a thin film of alcohol to the
northern branch of the Gulf Stream to decrease surface water evaporation and
warm the water by several degrees, although the cod might become rather tipsy.

202 | fearS, fantaSieS, and PoSSibilitieS of Control