Manufactured Polar Ice May Be Just-ice For Mother Earth

Image from below video from Dezeen.

Iceberg-making Submarine Aims to Tackle Global Warming by Re-freezing the Arctic

I’m gonna hit you with a couple sentences that are going to sound extremely made up, but are extremely not made up at all. An Indonesian designer and architect (Faris Rajak Kotahatuhaha, for those interested), came in second place in an international design competition hosted by the Association of Siamese Architects (that’s Thailand, not cats) with a design for an iceberg-manufacturing submarine. Which doubles as a hotel / research station. And the icebergs are hexagons – which is rad enough but also helps them fit together to form larger, more lifelike ice sheets.

Confused? Watch the video:

Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed that.

So, this is crazy, right? A submarine that makes artificial icebergs that fit together like a game of Catan and people are going to visit these things, the world’s sexiest ice cube trays? It might not be so crazy, and in fact it might be just this kind of thing the planet desperately needs. As humanity as a whole continues to fail to address climate change in a meaningful way, radical, unthinkable solutions (aka geoengineering) will become more and more attractive. (<— I really do recommend you read that linked article; it’s a thinker.)

Ignoring the silly video and goofy Photoshopped polar bear and tourists, would this work to replace sea ice? Beats me, but I don’t see why not, and I’d absolutely be willing to give it a try. Though this potential solution has some well-deserved criticism, it’s an example of the radical thinking we need. The global climate crisis is extremely dire and what we’re currently doing is not big enough. We’ve gotta be creative, and bold, and perhaps a little supervillain-y if we want a shot at this. Plus, can you imagine anything as rad as building a goddamn Arctic ice sheet? Of course not, that’s Rad as Hell.