Unsolicited Google AI-generated “news”

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Doug Grandt

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Sep 9, 2025, 5:23:42 PM (10 days ago) Sep 9
to John Nissen, Simmens Herb, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
John, Herb et al,

Google search is now offering unsolicited “More updates for you” and today Google crossed the line with an AI-generated bit of “news” about polar geoengineering that caught my eye:

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The search window displayed  the query: “Polar geoengineering projects are ineffective, costly, and environmentally risky”

What follows is what Google is spreading (repeating the query in attempt to replicate the AI summary resulted in seemingly unlimited variations on a theme).

We need to learn from this and consider fighting fire with fire, flooding the AI search engines with equal and opposite queries.

For kicks, I submitted a counter query … astonished, I pasted it at the very end 

Disappointed,
Doug G

AI Overview
+12
Scientific analysis and recent research have concluded that polar geoengineering projects are generally ineffective, prohibitively costly, and environmentally risky
. A September 2025 review in Frontiers in Science  [list of authors and affiliations at the end of this email] assessed five prominent proposals and found that none met the criteria for responsible climate intervention. Experts instead emphasize that rapid and deep decarbonization is the only viable path forward. 
Ineffectiveness and infeasibility
None of the major polar geoengineering proposals have been proven effective or are ready for real-world deployment. 
  • Sea curtains: These proposed floating walls are designed to block warm ocean water from reaching ice shelves. However, researchers found no field experiments exist for them and concluded they are not feasible for installation in harsh, remote polar waters.
  • Sea ice thickening: Schemes to pump seawater onto sea ice to thicken it have not been tested at scale. One similar project that aimed to use reflective glass microbeads to manage sea ice was shut down after tests showed it could harm the Arctic food web.
  • Solar geoengineering: Stratospheric aerosol injections (SAI), which aim to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight, would be ineffective during the months-long polar winter. A 2023 review also concluded that truly localized polar SAI would be insufficient to stop regional warming under high emissions scenarios.
  • Glacier water removal: Proposals to pump subglacial meltwater to slow ice flow face major scientific flaws because our understanding of ice sheet dynamics is incomplete. Drilling and operating in such extreme conditions would also be an unprecedented logistical challenge. 
Prohibitive costs
The costs of proposed projects are staggering and likely underestimated.
  • Setup and maintenance: Researchers estimate that each geoengineering proposal would cost at least $10 billion to set up and require decades of costly maintenance.
  • Case study: Sea curtains: For a single 80-kilometer sea curtain, the cost was projected to be $80 billion over 10 years. This cost does not even consider the environmental and logistical impacts.
  • Underestimation of costs: Current estimates do not account for hidden expenses like litigation or compensation for unintended consequences.
  • Limited funding: Experts note that hundreds of billions of dollars would be needed, funds that are currently unavailable and unlikely to be secured within the necessary timeframes. 
Environmental risks
Polar geoengineering poses severe risks to fragile ecosystems and could lead to unforeseen consequences.
  • Marine ecosystem disruption: Sea curtains could interfere with marine life migration, feeding grounds, and habitats. Ocean fertilization could disrupt marine food chains by altering natural chemical cycles and causing unpredictable phytoplankton blooms.
  • Toxic pollution: Pumping operations under glaciers risk contaminating pristine subglacial environments with fuels and other pollutants.
  • Climate pattern disruption: While aiming to counteract warming, stratospheric aerosol injection could inadvertently cause ozone depletion and disrupt global climate patterns.
  • Perpetual intervention and termination shock: Geoengineering fixes would likely require continuous operation for decades or centuries. If interventions were ever stopped, a "termination shock"—a rapid and severe temperature increase—could occur.
  • Moral hazard: Promoting geoengineering can create a "moral hazard," giving policymakers and industry an excuse to delay or avoid the necessary cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel companies have even funded some geoengineering research while continuing to expand production. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Safeguarding the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering: a critical assessment of proposed concepts and future prospects

  • 1University of Exeter, Penryn, United Kingdom
  • 2Secretariat, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, Arctic Council, Tromsø, Norway
  • 3Department of Geography, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom
  • 4Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst, MA, United States
  • 5Arctic Office, Natural Environment Research Council, United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI-NERC), Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • 6Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
  • 7Department of Water and Climate, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium
  • 8Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
  • 9Section of Geophysics, National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics, Trieste, Italy
  • 10Scripps Polar Center, Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States
  • 11Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Exeter, Penryn, United Kingdom
  • 12British Antarctic Survey, UKRI-NERC, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • 13Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Instituto Antártico Argentino, Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • 14CONICET-UBA, Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics, CABA, Argentina
  • 15UBA, FCEyN, Physics Department, CABA, Argentina
  • 16International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 17School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • 18Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
  • 19Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, United States
  • 20Departments of Biology and Environmental Science, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States
  • 21Department of Geography, School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom
  • 22Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE), Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
  • 23Global Systems Institute, Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
  • 24Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 25National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
  • 26Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
  • 27Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • 28School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States
  • 29International Research Institute for Climate and Society, University of Columbia, New York, NY, United States
  • 30Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
  • 31Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
  • 32Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
  • 33Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, London, United Kingdom
  • 34Earth Sciences New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand
  • 35Department of Physical Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES), University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
  • 36WWF Global Arctic Programme, World Wide Fund for Nature, Solna, Sweden
  • 37Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
  • 38Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MT, Canada

Abstract

Fossil-fuel burning is heating the planet with catastrophic consequences for its habitability and for the natural world on which our existence depends. Halting global warming requires rapid and deep decarbonization to “net zero” carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which needs to be achieved by 2050 if warming is to remain within the limits set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, some scientists and engineers claim that a mid-century decarbonization target will not be reached, and they propose that we should focus on technological geoengineering “fixes” or “climate interventions” that could delay or mask some of the impacts of global warming. They often cite the need to slow warming in polar regions because they are experiencing rates of warming higher than the global average, with severe and irreversible projected consequences both locally (e.g., on fragile ecosystems) and globally (e.g., on sea level). Several geoengineering concepts exist for polar regions, but they have not been fully examined by the polar science community, nor integrated with an understanding of polar dynamics and responses. Here, we evaluate five of those polar geoengineering concepts and highlight the significant issues and risks relating to technological availability, logistical feasibility, cost, predictable adverse consequences, environmental damage, scalability (in space and time), governance, and ethics. According to our expert assessment, none of these geoengineering ideas pass scrutiny regarding their use in the coming decades. Instead, we find that the proposed concepts would be environmentally dangerous. It is clear to us that the assessed approaches are not feasible, and that further research into these techniques would not be an effective use of limited time and resources. It is vital that these ideas do not distract from the priority to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or from the critical need to conduct fundamental research in the polar regions.

Key points

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Counter query: “Polar geoengineering measures are expected to be effective, inexpensive vs the societal cost of doing nothing, and can be designed to pose no adverse environmental risk”
    Google AI has a one-track mind … is there nothing on the internet in support of polar geoengineering? I substituted “SRM geoengineering” then “SRM” and “SAI”—Google returned “highly disputed”, “false”, “misleading” … Ugh … 
    AI Overview
    +11
    The premise that polar geoengineering measures are effective, inexpensive, and pose no adverse environmental risk is highly disputed by the scientific community
    . A 2025 assessment in Frontiers in Science found that prominent proposals for polar geoengineering are neither effective nor feasible and carry serious environmental and political risks. These interventions treat the symptoms rather than the root cause of climate change and risk undermining proven solutions like decarbonization. 
    Limitations on effectiveness
    • Insufficient scale: For interventions to be effective, they must be implemented at a massive scale that may be logistically impossible in harsh polar conditions. For example, the materials for a proposed sea ice management scheme—scattering reflective glass beads on sea ice—would require hundreds of millions of tons of beads annually.
    • Inadequate testing: Proposals like sea curtains to block warm water or ocean fertilization to stimulate plankton blooms have not been robustly tested in real-world polar environments. Where experiments have been conducted, results have been inconclusive or showed significant environmental risks.
    • Incomplete solutions: Solar radiation management (SRM) schemes, such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), do not address ocean acidification, a direct result of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. Some versions are ineffective during the polar winter. 
    Significant costs and logistical challenges
    • Staggering expenses: Cost estimates for individual projects are in the tens of billions of dollars for setup and ongoing maintenance, and these figures are likely underestimates. Deploying an 80-kilometer sea curtain, for example, could cost $80 billion over 10 years and require immense logistical efforts in the world's most inhospitable waters.
    • Ongoing commitment and "termination shock": Many schemes, especially SRM, would require continuous, decades-long maintenance. If halted abruptly, the planet would experience a rapid temperature increase known as "termination shock," which could be catastrophic for ecosystems and societies.
    • Reduced incentive for emissions cuts:The perception of a technological "fix" for climate change could distract from and weaken political will to pursue actual decarbonization efforts. 
    Serious environmental risks
    • Ecosystem disruption: Many proposals could introduce dangerous, unintended consequences to fragile polar ecosystems.
      • Marine life: Sea curtains could disrupt the migration routes and feeding grounds of marine animals like whales and seals.
      • Ocean fertilization: Adding nutrients like iron could trigger unpredictable blooms of phytoplankton and disrupt the marine food web, potentially creating "dead zones" with low oxygen.
      • Sea ice management: Scattering glass beads or pumping water onto sea ice poses ecological risks and could interfere with local food chains.
    • Atmospheric and global climate impacts: Stratospheric aerosol injection, in particular, could:
      • Exacerbate climate patterns: Affect global climate patterns, including disrupting monsoon seasons critical for agriculture.
      • Deplete ozone: Releasing sulfur compounds into the stratosphere could cause ozone depletion, increasing harmful UV radiation.
    • Contamination: Pumping water from underneath glaciers (basal water removal) carries the risk of contaminating pristine subglacial environments with fuels and other pollutants from machinery. 
    Disappointed,
    Doug Grandt 

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