Is Geoengineering A Good Idea?
6/30/202639 min
The planet is heating up, every plan to stop it has fallen short, and growing group of scientists has started to ask a stranger question: what if we grabbed the thermostat ourselves? Ben Bradford investigates geoengineering — the science of deliberately manipulating Earth’s climate — from space mirrors and ocean fertilizers to fleets of planes mimicking a volcano. Some of it sounds like cartoon villainy. Some of it might actually work. And that raises the thornier question: if humans can cool the planet on purpose, who decides whether we should?
Guests:
Kate Ricke, climate change scientist at UCSD
Alan Robock, atmospheric scientist at Rutgers
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Ben Bradford· Host0:16
[crowd noise] San Francisco 2005, Earth and space scientists from around the world are gathering to present, argue, drink cheap conference wine, [wine pouring] and gossip. Today, not a DUI, not an affair, clutch your pearls. It was an essay.
Alan Robock· Guest0:37
Did you hear about the paper that Paul published?
Ben Bradford· Host0:39
[crowd gasping] The prestigious Paul Crutzen, conference heavyweight, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, was circulating an electric, controversial new idea, not how to reduce pollution, but to add it back. [instrumental music] At the time, the US and other countries had massively cut back harmful emissions from refrigerators, shaving cream bottles, car tailpipes, a win for air quality, the ozone layer, lungs, and cancer rates. The cons, sunsets were less spectacular, and one much bigger problem, climate scientist Kate Ricke recalls.
Kate Ricke· Guest1:16
We're cleaning up pollution near the ground that makes people sick, but that pollution also reflects sunlight.
Ben Bradford· Host1:24
Creating a cooling effect. In other words, these emissions had actually been combating global