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A record loss of Arctic sea ice and faster-than-expected melting of Greenland’s ice cap made worldwide headlines in 2012, but research published in major science journals in the fall suggest warming in the North doesn’t have to continue.

We could refreeze the Arctic, proposed a paper in Nature Climate Change. It wouldn’t even cost that much, said an affiliated study in Environmental Research Letters.

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The question is should we?

“In terms of pure technical capacity, any significant nation in the world could do it,” said David Keith, a Calgarian and professor of applied physics at Harvard University, one of the lead authors in both studies.

“The really hard questions here aren’t mostly technical. They’re questions about what kind of planet we want and who we are.”

In a world that seems unable to come to grips with carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change, manipulating the Earth’s climate to cool it down has some calling geoengineering a bad idea whose time has finally come.