The dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid that hit the earth and caused rapid global cooling from the sulfuric aerosols dispersed by the impact. Rapid cooling sounds like just the ticket to UNDO global warming... Can we artificially recreate the cooling effects of the asteroid’s impact to erase the effects of climate change?

Well, yeah, kind of. We could inject sulphuric aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space. This idea is called solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management or SRM and that’s the topic of today’s video. We’re going to talk about how it works, the pros and cons and uncertainties. And especially how we should proceed. Because solar geoengineering is much less a question of “can we” than “should we”?

And, we’re going to hear from my favourite atmospheric physicist, ClimateAdam, about what those aerosols could actually do to our atmosphere, and what we ought to think about before we start spraying them around everywhere.

Adam and I made a video on their channel ranking climate solutions in a tier list. So, head over there to see what we ranked solar geoengineering:    • The Climate Change Solution Tier List...  

The Engineering with Rosie team is:
Rosemary Barnes: presenter, producer, writer
Kevin Irman: research, calculations, assistant editor
Javi Diez: editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/javierdie...
David Hodgson: research and writing

If you would like to help develop the Engineering with Rosie channel, you could consider joining the Patreon community, where there is a chat community (and Patreon-only Discord server) about topics covered in the videos and suggestions for future videos and production quality improvements.   / engineeringwithrosie  

Or for a one-off contribution you can support by buying a coffee ☕️ here —
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/engwithr...

Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
01:20 What is Solar Radiation Management?
02:09 How does Solar Radiation Management work?
04:35 Methods of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere
05:46 Non-aerosol SRM methods
07:51 The negatives and positives of SRM
09:52 An anecdote about messing with nature
12:08 Is SRM the way forward?
13:53 Outro

Sources:
Was breaking the taboo on research on climate engineering via albedo modification a moral hazard, or a moral imperative?
Lawrence and Crutzen 2016
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...

Climate Stabilization: For Better or for Worse?
Kellogg and Schneider 1974
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...