Sea-level rise too big to be pumped away

The possibility of doing this was suggested in a near-term science fiction novel I'm reading : "Green Earth" by Kim Stanley Robinson.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/pifc-srt030716.php

Public Release: 9-Mar-2016
Sea-level rise too big to be pumped away
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Future sea-level rise is a problem probably too big to be solved even by unprecedented geo-engineering such as pumping water masses onto the Antarctic continent. The idea has been investigated by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact. While the pumped water would certainly freeze to solid ice, the weight of it would speed up the ice-flow into the ocean at the Antarctic coast. To store the water for a millennium, it would have to be pumped at least 700 kilometer inland, the team found. Overall that would require more than one tenth of the present annual global energy supply to balance the current rate of sea-level rise.

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Burning fossil fuels leads to greenhouse-gas emissions that drive up global temperatures. Consequently, the thermal expansion of ocean water and the melting of glaciers and ice-sheets slowly raise sea levels, which will continue for millennia. Under unabated warming, sea level rise may exceed 130 centimeters (11.8 inches) by 2100.

"This is huge. Local adaptation, for instance building dikes, will not be physically possible or economically feasible everywhere," Frieler says. "Protection may depend on your economic situation - so New York might be saved, but sadly not Bangladesh, and this clearly raises an equity issue," she adds.

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