You can control the climate of the entire Arctic if you just build a dam across the Bering Strait:
Back in the cold, icy 1950s and 1960s, Soviet climatologists were told to devise a plan for melting the Arctic ice cap. They came up with several ideas, including damming the Bering Strait and pumping cold Arctic water out into the Pacific, drawing warm Atlantic water into the Arctic.But now in the 21st century, climatologists are oriented toward preserving the Arctic ice cap and the Greenland ice sheets. Here is a proposal involving the damming of the Bering Strait, in order to save the Arctic ice cap (see PDF report at bottom). (via Global Warming)
A recent modeling study at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) supports the idea that the Bering Strait has been at the center of significant climate changes — most recently at the end of the last glaciation.
The computer simulations showed that North America and Eurasia warmed significantly during the times when the Bering Strait was open, with the tropical and subtropical Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as Antarctica, warming slightly.Remember that at least twice during the most recent glaciation, sea levels were low enough to create a land bridge across the Bering Strait. This allowed the migration of Siberian tribesmen (and perhaps other groups) across the strait from Asia into North America. Here is a scientific examination of the effect of the Bering Strait — open vs. closed — on the Arctic climate.
This reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s alternative history classic, The Man in the High Castle, in which the victorious Nazis dam and drain the Mediterranean, using atomic power. It’s the kind of thing that seemed perfectly within our grasp during the Atoms for Peace era — certainly easier than landing a man on the moon and returning him safely.