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As Indonesia and the Amazon’s rainforests burn and the Arctic melts, radical geo-engineering projects offer a potential way out. It’s time to look to the clouds.

Episode Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/29/the-air-conditioning-trap-how-cold-air-is-heating-the-world &
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332450-700-refreezing-the-arctic-how-to-bring-the-ice-back-with-geoengineering/
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-on-sand/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537681/the-world-in-a-grain-by-vince-beiser/9780399576447/


EPISODE EXCERPT

Refrigeration is a topic we come back to frequently on MSP. Mostly because Matt Armitage can’t actually cope with the tropical climate he chose to live in. Today we take a look at solutions to refreeze the Arctic and how our own addiction to cold air could be warming the planet.

You have an obsession with being cold. When you complain about the temperature in the recording studios, then we know it really is cold.
Well, of course, when I first came to Malaysia it wasn’t as hot as it is now.
In fact, I remember when I first came here, there was snow on the ground and the taxi driver at the airport instructed me not to feed the polar bears.

I think you’re remembering a fever dream…
All Youth is a fever dream. You wake up one morning and there’s just a stagnant eternity ahead of you.
You’ll realise that one day.
If you aren’t burned up in the fiery hell that is climate change, first.

Nice link from hopelessness to eternal damnation…
Have to say I was quite pleased with it, too.
But it’s true. I find Malaysia’s climate increasingly hard to cope with.
Now, I could do the solid research based thing and look up temperature and rainfall charts over the past 20 years.
And compare them to similar records over the past couple of hundred.
But who has time for anything that’s not on the first page of a Google search?

Certainly not you…
Double definitely not me.
But also because I know that a lot of the problem is me and changes in the way I react to heat, which I won’t bore you with.

Because you’re bald and overweight and very very pale?
As I said. Boring reasons that don’t need to be discussed in detail on-air.
In fact, I woke up with a start yesterday morning because the air conditioning in my bedroom suddenly clicked off.
There are two reasons I panic when that happens - firstly, because it’s a bit of a PTSD-lite trigger, as I was once in a landslide in the middle of the night that was signalled by the power going out.
And secondly because I’m the angriest person in the world if I sleep in the heat.
Honestly, a sleep-deprived me is nicer than an over-heated me.
Which should give you some indication as to how mean I get without climate control.
In the end it turned out that I had accidentally set the shut off timer by mistake, groping around for the controller in the dark.
So i turned it on and went back to sleep.

Given the quality of that anecdote, I’m guessing that you’re still sleep-deprived?
Maybe. Or maybe I’m swallowing the meanness.
I wouldn’t suggest that you drink any of the liquids at your desk, however.
The anecdote that thrilled you so was to illustrate our addiction to and dependence on a/c.