Billion-dollar polar engineering ‘needed to slow melting glaciers’

Underwater sea walls and artificial islands among projects urgently required to avoid devastation of global flooding, say scientists

Scientists have outlined plans to build a series of mammoth engineering projects in Greenland and Antarctica to help slow down the disintegration of the planet's main glaciers. The controversial proposals include underwater walls, artificial islands and huge pumping stations that would channel cold water into the bases of glaciers to stop them from melting and sliding into the sea.

The researchers say the work - costing tens of billions of dollars a time - is urgently needed to prevent polar glaciers melting and raising sea levels. That would lead to major inundations of low-lying, densely populated areas, such as parts of Bangladesh, Japan and the Netherlands.

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