June 30, 2025 • 11 mins
We dive into the controversial world of geoengineering — bold ideas like space mirrors, painting roofs white, and injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Could these unconventional methods actually help cool the planet without stopping fossil fuel use? Plus, the tricky balance between science, politics, and the future of our climate. Join us as we unpack how geoengineering might be the next big thing in the fight against global warming.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Ten Minute Climate, the podcastbrought to you by Beaverbrook Energy.
Join Max I am Max and Tony.
Hi, I'm Tony, who between themhave got over 70 years of experience
in the energy industryand they're here to share it with you.
It's everything you need to knowdelivered in just ten minutes.
So let's get started.
We talk a lot about climate changeand fossil fuels and everything else,
(00:23):
but it is really simple.
It's too much sunlight coming inand not going back into space.
Put curtains up.
Well, exactly.
And the thing is, is thatwe can actually solve the problem now.
Without stopping using fossil fuels,without all this renewable stuff,
we just need to dowhat's called geoengineering.
Yeah.
It's just just, you know,and there's a number of ways of doing it.
(00:45):
You do space mirrors.
I big mirrors in space reflect back sun.
I mean that's quite complicated.
You got the mirrors paint countries white.
Yeah. Albedoincrease the albedo of the world.
amount of, reflectivity of the worldback to space is critical.
We're keepingtoo much of the sun's heat in.
Yeah, so if we painted,
I mean, it's quite seriousif we painted all of our roofs white.
(01:05):
North Africa, southern Spain,everything's painted white.
Yeah, because there's a cool. Yeah.
We reflect more of the sunback to back to space.
That would help.
Yeah. Ping pong balls is when I heard pingpong balls.
Yeah. You're basically.
You take the whole world's manufacturingcapability, you make ping pong balls,
and you pull them on the world'soceans. So.
And you stop evaporation, and you reflectback sunlight off the world's
(01:29):
oceans, because all the white pingpong balls are floating on the.
Somebody wants to ask question.
When that kill all the fishes,no one are floating.
They, like you need a big mouthto swallow a ping pong ball.
Like plastic pollution in the oceans.
I mean, plastic, yeah, but it's floatyplastic, isn't it?
It's not stinky.And you could make a bag or something.
I mean, it ain't going to happen,but there is one solution.
(01:50):
And people are doing this already, whichis, sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere.
No. It works.
And not that much.
About 5% of the current sulfur dioxidegoing in the atmosphere
injected in the stratosphere. Yeah.
Upper bits.
Yeah. Would reflect back sun's rays.
Pretty much solving the problem.
Some of these things are,not quite mad scientist, but
(02:12):
laboratory simulation things.
Well, someone say there's a company calledChasing Sunsets, I think.
I mean, what they dois they take balloons,
they fill himself dioxide,they release them into the air.
They first ones they did in from BajaCalifornia, New Mexico, Mexican
come and go furious and bandit.
And everybody gets really upset.
But but if you put that sulfur dioxidein the stratosphere, it is quite difficult
(02:34):
to get it out there.These guys using balloons.
Well, I don't know. It works.
I do know of a systemthat would make that happen,
and it would solve a number of the world'sproblems that we have at the moment
is what you do underneathYellowstone Park in America.
There's, a caldera of what, the largest,
active volcano on the planet.
And about every 600,000 years, it explodesbecause they've checked
(02:58):
all the way around the globe,whether as the the plates have shifted,
if you set that offby some form of device, loads of sulfur
dioxide will go up into the atmosphere.
But to Emily's.
Good question.
Sorry, I just googled sulfur dioxide.
And it's a corrosive acidic
gas which is predominantly producedfrom the combustion of coal or crude oil.
And direct exposure to it is associatedwith asthma and chronic bronchitis
(03:22):
and can lead to irritationand constriction of the airways.
So yeah, I'd be madif I came across a balloon full of that.
But it also, it also actsas a very good dampener on sunlight.
It is, but you put it in the stratosphere.
So one of the in human airways not nearhuman airways, you put it right out.
One of the interesting thingsthat's happened in the last five years,
which hasn't had
(03:43):
an enormous amount of debateexcept in specific scientific circles,
is that the bunker fuel used in
shipping had the sulfur removed in 2020,
and it massively reduced sulfur dioxideemissions at ground level or sea level.
Right, for the reasons you just set.
So lots of good air pollution reasons.
However,it's had a huge effect on global warming
(04:08):
because that sulfur dioxidewas reflecting sunlight.
And it now what we realizeis that the amount of sulfur dioxide
we've been pumping out, particularlyfrom ships using very dirty fuel,
had been masking the amount of extra, temperature that we've had in the world.
And there's a guy called James Hansenwho very, very famous,
well respected scientistwho was the first guy in the 1980s
(04:30):
in America to really make global warminga thing and produced the first forecasts.
And this has been his huge crusadein the last few years,
saying this sulfur dioxide,we didn't realize this was such a problem.
And because we're now not emitting it,we're we actually realize we're warming
much faster than we were.
And it's one of the things that peopleput forward as to why global warming
(04:51):
is accelerating right now, whythe temperatures are going up much faster.
So it's we've kind of already been doinggeoengineering with
with sulfur dioxide, but
in the lower
levels of the atmosphere,which caused all that we can use.
Yeah. You set of volcanoes.
it did, it was,we had this before in 1816.
No nice tambora sample or something
(05:14):
in Indonesia,I think, huge volcanic eruption.
Yeah.
Cause a nuclear winter basically didit was it was the year without some of
they called it and it was 2 to 3 degreesof global cooling because of the amounts
of big, big volcanoes have that, effecteven now, not on the same scale.
And in fact, you know,I think the, the previous
(05:35):
great, wiping out of, of life on planet,before the asteroid
did for the dinosaurswas, was volcanoes the previous time.
Because changing the, Yeah.
there's a couple of things.There was a big atmosphere.
There was a big volcanic eruption two,three years ago that had actually pushed
a lot of water vapor out.
And it's controversial
because a lot of kind of climate denierssay that this is the reason
(05:57):
why temperatureshave gone up in the last couple of years.
And I and I'm not a climate scientist,but from what I understand,
is that's not quite the case.
It was.
Yes, it was a certain amountof water vapor,
but it didn't get to the right placesin the atmosphere.
It didn't do that.
I don't think they realized the scaleof the energy that we're talking about.
Because when you're talking about Tambora,
(06:18):
that was a volcano on a scalethat's like every couple of centuries.
It's not it's not something that
like a
volcano, believe me, it would be worldnews that,
you know, the size of the volcanothat would need to go off
to, to make that differenceand get that what came out of it.
But what's interesting, what what I think,
(06:40):
what I think is going to happen,
right, is, is is right now,
no one wants to talk about geoengineering,practically anybody,
because the scientists are like,we could actually do stuff.
Even got into cloudseeding, renewables, ocean seeding.
But but
it's not necessarily cheaper actually.
But no one would know.We would talk about it.
(07:01):
No one will invest in itbecause the scientists are saying, well,
if we do that, thenwe're not going to brought up renewables.
We're just saying to the fossil guys,hey, keep going.
Yeah. And we'll paper over the cracks.
We'll put a plaster on thiswith geoengineering.
The thing is, isthat we're not reducing the amount
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,however many renewables we are putting up.
And it is fantastic.
It's only replacing growth in energy.
(07:23):
And last year we had the biggest increasein carbon dioxide ever. Yep.
Okay. So we're not solving the problem.
Pretty soon
people are going to say actuallywe need to take geoengineering seriously.
And I think it'll be led by fossilfuel producing nations
who go, we want to protect our economy.
Climate change is getting worse.
(07:43):
And actuallythere is something interesting here.
And I think we're going to hear a hellof a lot more about it.
But it has to be a global initiative.
You can't you can't do
an engineering, a
climate engineeringgeo engineering project
for your country,because that's not the way
the weather system and everything else.
Well, what if you're Saudi Arabia,you've got a massive oil industry. Yeah.
(08:06):
You want to keep it going.
You know what you can do the geoengineering as long as you can pay for it.
Yeah, you can do it.
Everyone else benefits or dis benefits,but you can do it on your own.
Protect your own industry.
You go, hey,what's the climate problem now?
We've brought it all down by a degree.
Yeah,except the you then change the whole rail
rain pattern for northern India
(08:26):
and wiped out the entire ricecrop for the next half century.
I mean, this is the problem.There are risks.
Yeah. Yeah, they are risks. Yeah, yeah.
To the odd billion Indians who are goingto starve to death. It's true.
And the other thing you can do is seedis iron seeding in oceans.
You you spread iron filingsacross the ocean,
which cause plankton,you know, dodgy, dodgy.
(08:47):
You might get algae,whatever it is. Some plants.
Yeah. Loves the iron, grows, right?
Dies, drops the bottom of the ocean,and that's sucking in carbon again.
We know that works. And then.
And then as they decompose,you turn the sea acidic.
No, no, no, they don't expose.
They goes so far down that they just lockin the carbon in the bottom of the ocean.
(09:09):
It's technology that that isthat is understood.
Okay. It's pretty simple.
The second or third order effects are notunderstood if you do it a global scale.
Yeah.
That's that's always, we thought it wasa good idea at the time sort of thing.
You know, Sothere are a few ways of doing engineering.
Sulfur dioxide, ocean seeding.
(09:31):
And probably one of the, one of the ones
that's movingfast forward is advanced rock weathering.
But basically,you get particular types of rock from
places, mines, I guess,and you crush it up and you put it
across, fields and it sucks ita particular type of calcium carbonate.
I think.
And it just, it sucks in carbonand it sits in the soil and it works well.
(09:54):
Yeah,but the problem is, how do you pay for it?
Yeah.
With all carbon credits and distribute itand like yeah, yeah.
The, the distribution,the mechanics of it are all fine.
But you need a carbonin the, in the hundreds.
You need a lot of energyto make it happen.
And you need a lot of money to payfor the energy and the distribution.
And I mean, imagine if you were saying,well, okay, we're just going to sprinkle
(10:16):
this stuff acrossall of the UN urbanized land in Europe.
Right?
So that's 98% of this land surfacearea of Europe.
So yeah. How is money. Yeah.
How do you pay for it?
I mean, yeah,you've got to have a carbon tax.
little subsidies.
It's the same thingultimately it's just expensive.
(10:36):
The question I suppose is do you have fossil fuels plus some form of geoengineering
or maybe direct air capture,
which is again very expensive,but it's basically fossil fuels plus cost.
Or do you have an entirely system like,
you know, wind and solar, renewables,batteries?
I think as with everything,
the, the, the solution that will become
(10:58):
obvious to everybody eventuallyis not one technology or one approach,
but a combination of all these things,you know,
and because then we're not puttingall our, eggs in one basket.
Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode.
If you enjoyed the conversation,don't forget to like, subscribe
and leave us a review!
(11:19):
It really helps us grow and continuebringing you valuable content.
If you're curious
to learn more about Beaverbrook Energyand how we're navigating the future
of energy,feel free to reach out to us directly.
And for those looking for quick,actionable insights on the energy
transition, be sure to subscribeto our ten second climate newsletter,
delivered every weekend
with a central intelligence to helpbusiness leaders stay ahead of the curve.
(11:41):
We appreciate you listening,
and we look forward to having youjoin us again next time.
Stay informed, stay engaged and take care.
Welcome to Ten Minute Climate, the podcastbrought to you by Beaverbrook Energy.
Join Max I am Max and Tony.
Hi, I'm Tony, who between themhave got over 70 years of experience
in the energy industryand they're here to share it with you.
It's everything you need to knowdelivered in just ten minutes.
So let's get started.
We talk a lot about climate changeand fossil fuels and everything else,
(00:23):
but it is really simple.
It's too much sunlight coming inand not going back into space.
Put curtains up.
Well, exactly.
And the thing is, is thatwe can actually solve the problem now.
Without stopping using fossil fuels,without all this renewable stuff,
we just need to dowhat's called geoengineering.
Yeah.
It's just just, you know,and there's a number of ways of doing it.
(00:45):
You do space mirrors.
I big mirrors in space reflect back sun.
I mean that's quite complicated.
You got the mirrors paint countries white.
Yeah. Albedoincrease the albedo of the world.
amount of, reflectivity of the worldback to space is critical.
We're keepingtoo much of the sun's heat in.
Yeah, so if we painted,
I mean, it's quite seriousif we painted all of our roofs white.
(01:05):
North Africa, southern Spain,everything's painted white.
Yeah, because there's a cool. Yeah.
We reflect more of the sunback to back to space.
That would help.
Yeah. Ping pong balls is when I heard pingpong balls.
Yeah. You're basically.
You take the whole world's manufacturingcapability, you make ping pong balls,
and you pull them on the world'soceans. So.
And you stop evaporation, and you reflectback sunlight off the world's
(01:29):
oceans, because all the white pingpong balls are floating on the.
Somebody wants to ask question.
When that kill all the fishes,no one are floating.
They, like you need a big mouthto swallow a ping pong ball.
Like plastic pollution in the oceans.
I mean, plastic, yeah, but it's floatyplastic, isn't it?
It's not stinky.And you could make a bag or something.
I mean, it ain't going to happen,but there is one solution.
(01:50):
And people are doing this already, whichis, sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere.
No. It works.
And not that much.
About 5% of the current sulfur dioxidegoing in the atmosphere
injected in the stratosphere. Yeah.
Upper bits.
Yeah. Would reflect back sun's rays.
Pretty much solving the problem.
Some of these things are,not quite mad scientist, but
(02:12):
laboratory simulation things.
Well, someone say there's a company calledChasing Sunsets, I think.
I mean, what they dois they take balloons,
they fill himself dioxide,they release them into the air.
They first ones they did in from BajaCalifornia, New Mexico, Mexican
come and go furious and bandit.
And everybody gets really upset.
But but if you put that sulfur dioxidein the stratosphere, it is quite difficult
(02:34):
to get it out there.These guys using balloons.
Well, I don't know. It works.
I do know of a systemthat would make that happen,
and it would solve a number of the world'sproblems that we have at the moment
is what you do underneathYellowstone Park in America.
There's, a caldera of what, the largest,
active volcano on the planet.
And about every 600,000 years, it explodesbecause they've checked
(02:58):
all the way around the globe,whether as the the plates have shifted,
if you set that offby some form of device, loads of sulfur
dioxide will go up into the atmosphere.
But to Emily's.
Good question.
Sorry, I just googled sulfur dioxide.
And it's a corrosive acidic
gas which is predominantly producedfrom the combustion of coal or crude oil.
And direct exposure to it is associatedwith asthma and chronic bronchitis
(03:22):
and can lead to irritationand constriction of the airways.
So yeah, I'd be madif I came across a balloon full of that.
But it also, it also actsas a very good dampener on sunlight.
It is, but you put it in the stratosphere.
So one of the in human airways not nearhuman airways, you put it right out.
One of the interesting thingsthat's happened in the last five years,
which hasn't had
(03:43):
an enormous amount of debateexcept in specific scientific circles,
is that the bunker fuel used in
shipping had the sulfur removed in 2020,
and it massively reduced sulfur dioxideemissions at ground level or sea level.
Right, for the reasons you just set.
So lots of good air pollution reasons.
However,it's had a huge effect on global warming
(04:08):
because that sulfur dioxidewas reflecting sunlight.
And it now what we realizeis that the amount of sulfur dioxide
we've been pumping out, particularlyfrom ships using very dirty fuel,
had been masking the amount of extra, temperature that we've had in the world.
And there's a guy called James Hansenwho very, very famous,
well respected scientistwho was the first guy in the 1980s
(04:30):
in America to really make global warminga thing and produced the first forecasts.
And this has been his huge crusadein the last few years,
saying this sulfur dioxide,we didn't realize this was such a problem.
And because we're now not emitting it,we're we actually realize we're warming
much faster than we were.
And it's one of the things that peopleput forward as to why global warming
(04:51):
is accelerating right now, whythe temperatures are going up much faster.
So it's we've kind of already been doinggeoengineering with
with sulfur dioxide, but
in the lower
levels of the atmosphere,which caused all that we can use.
Yeah. You set of volcanoes.
it did, it was,we had this before in 1816.
No nice tambora sample or something
(05:14):
in Indonesia,I think, huge volcanic eruption.
Yeah.
Cause a nuclear winter basically didit was it was the year without some of
they called it and it was 2 to 3 degreesof global cooling because of the amounts
of big, big volcanoes have that, effecteven now, not on the same scale.
And in fact, you know,I think the, the previous
(05:35):
great, wiping out of, of life on planet,before the asteroid
did for the dinosaurswas, was volcanoes the previous time.
Because changing the, Yeah.
there's a couple of things.There was a big atmosphere.
There was a big volcanic eruption two,three years ago that had actually pushed
a lot of water vapor out.
And it's controversial
because a lot of kind of climate denierssay that this is the reason
(05:57):
why temperatureshave gone up in the last couple of years.
And I and I'm not a climate scientist,but from what I understand,
is that's not quite the case.
It was.
Yes, it was a certain amountof water vapor,
but it didn't get to the right placesin the atmosphere.
It didn't do that.
I don't think they realized the scaleof the energy that we're talking about.
Because when you're talking about Tambora,
(06:18):
that was a volcano on a scalethat's like every couple of centuries.
It's not it's not something that
like a
volcano, believe me, it would be worldnews that,
you know, the size of the volcanothat would need to go off
to, to make that differenceand get that what came out of it.
But what's interesting, what what I think,
(06:40):
what I think is going to happen,
right, is, is is right now,
no one wants to talk about geoengineering,practically anybody,
because the scientists are like,we could actually do stuff.
Even got into cloudseeding, renewables, ocean seeding.
But but
it's not necessarily cheaper actually.
But no one would know.We would talk about it.
(07:01):
No one will invest in itbecause the scientists are saying, well,
if we do that, thenwe're not going to brought up renewables.
We're just saying to the fossil guys,hey, keep going.
Yeah. And we'll paper over the cracks.
We'll put a plaster on thiswith geoengineering.
The thing is, isthat we're not reducing the amount
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,however many renewables we are putting up.
And it is fantastic.
It's only replacing growth in energy.
(07:23):
And last year we had the biggest increasein carbon dioxide ever. Yep.
Okay. So we're not solving the problem.
Pretty soon
people are going to say actuallywe need to take geoengineering seriously.
And I think it'll be led by fossilfuel producing nations
who go, we want to protect our economy.
Climate change is getting worse.
(07:43):
And actuallythere is something interesting here.
And I think we're going to hear a hellof a lot more about it.
But it has to be a global initiative.
You can't you can't do
an engineering, a
climate engineeringgeo engineering project
for your country,because that's not the way
the weather system and everything else.
Well, what if you're Saudi Arabia,you've got a massive oil industry. Yeah.
(08:06):
You want to keep it going.
You know what you can do the geoengineering as long as you can pay for it.
Yeah, you can do it.
Everyone else benefits or dis benefits,but you can do it on your own.
Protect your own industry.
You go, hey,what's the climate problem now?
We've brought it all down by a degree.
Yeah,except the you then change the whole rail
rain pattern for northern India
(08:26):
and wiped out the entire ricecrop for the next half century.
I mean, this is the problem.There are risks.
Yeah. Yeah, they are risks. Yeah, yeah.
To the odd billion Indians who are goingto starve to death. It's true.
And the other thing you can do is seedis iron seeding in oceans.
You you spread iron filingsacross the ocean,
which cause plankton,you know, dodgy, dodgy.
(08:47):
You might get algae,whatever it is. Some plants.
Yeah. Loves the iron, grows, right?
Dies, drops the bottom of the ocean,and that's sucking in carbon again.
We know that works. And then.
And then as they decompose,you turn the sea acidic.
No, no, no, they don't expose.
They goes so far down that they just lockin the carbon in the bottom of the ocean.
(09:09):
It's technology that that isthat is understood.
Okay. It's pretty simple.
The second or third order effects are notunderstood if you do it a global scale.
Yeah.
That's that's always, we thought it wasa good idea at the time sort of thing.
You know, Sothere are a few ways of doing engineering.
Sulfur dioxide, ocean seeding.
(09:31):
And probably one of the, one of the ones
that's movingfast forward is advanced rock weathering.
But basically,you get particular types of rock from
places, mines, I guess,and you crush it up and you put it
across, fields and it sucks ita particular type of calcium carbonate.
I think.
And it just, it sucks in carbonand it sits in the soil and it works well.
(09:54):
Yeah,but the problem is, how do you pay for it?
Yeah.
With all carbon credits and distribute itand like yeah, yeah.
The, the distribution,the mechanics of it are all fine.
But you need a carbonin the, in the hundreds.
You need a lot of energyto make it happen.
And you need a lot of money to payfor the energy and the distribution.
And I mean, imagine if you were saying,well, okay, we're just going to sprinkle
(10:16):
this stuff acrossall of the UN urbanized land in Europe.
Right?
So that's 98% of this land surfacearea of Europe.
So yeah. How is money. Yeah.
How do you pay for it?
I mean, yeah,you've got to have a carbon tax.
little subsidies.
It's the same thingultimately it's just expensive.
(10:36):
The question I suppose is do you have fossil fuels plus some form of geoengineering
or maybe direct air capture,
which is again very expensive,but it's basically fossil fuels plus cost.
Or do you have an entirely system like,
you know, wind and solar, renewables,batteries?
I think as with everything,
the, the, the solution that will become
(10:58):
obvious to everybody eventuallyis not one technology or one approach,
but a combination of all these things,you know,
and because then we're not puttingall our, eggs in one basket.
Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode.
If you enjoyed the conversation,don't forget to like, subscribe
and leave us a review!
(11:19):
It really helps us grow and continuebringing you valuable content.
If you're curious
to learn more about Beaverbrook Energyand how we're navigating the future
of energy,feel free to reach out to us directly.
And for those looking for quick,actionable insights on the energy
transition, be sure to subscribeto our ten second climate newsletter,
delivered every weekend
with a central intelligence to helpbusiness leaders stay ahead of the curve.
(11:41):
We appreciate you listening,
and we look forward to having youjoin us again next time.
Stay informed, stay engaged and take care.
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