Who Should Control Earth's Thermostat?

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Solar geoengineering--the human attempt to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight away from Earth--is fraught with technological and ethical challenges. Maddie discusses some of these with contributor Ariela Zebede.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey nerds, Maddie Sify here with former Shortwave team member, now contributor,
0:10.4	Ariella Zabidi.
0:11.4	Hi Maddie.
0:12.4	Hi Z.
0:13.4	Today I want to talk about solar geoengineering.
0:16.9	It's this idea that humans can cool down the planet by interfering with how the sun
0:22.2	hits the earth.
0:23.5	Let me play you something.
0:24.5	Today, 79 countries will begin dispersing CW7 to the upper layers of the atmosphere.
0:31.1	Is this the movie Snowpiercer?
0:33.1	Yes.
0:34.1	The artificial cooling substance CW7 will succeed in bringing average temperature down to manageable
0:41.2	levels as a revolutionary solution to mankind's warming of the planet.
0:46.4	Is this just because you love the movie Snowpiercer?
0:48.6	What are we doing?
0:50.6	It is an amazing movie.
0:52.2	For anyone who hasn't seen it, they shoot these particles into the sky to try to cool the
0:57.1	earth and it's based on solar geoengineering.
1:00.7	I brought Snowpiercer here today for a real purpose, which is to say that this used to
1:05.4	be the stuff of science fiction.
1:06.9	But now there are some scientists seriously looking into this type of technology.
	...

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