"Engineering a cooler planet: Could we? Should we?" with Prof Richard Darton and Prof Steve Rayner

15 May 2015

Mankind’s strategies of mitigation and adaptation may well turn out to be too weak and too late to avoid dangerous climate change later this century. So might we need to try a different route - geoengineering? We could for example reflect more solar radiation back into space by making more reflective clouds; or we could absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it underground, to diminish the “greenhouse” effect.

Would such technologies work, and would there be side effects? And who would decide whether to do this, and when, if ever, to stop. These are just some of the questions raised by the idea of engineering the climate – could we, and should we?