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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: what is a stratospheric aerosol? Scientific evidence indicates that the

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Speaker 1: Earth is getting warmer because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: trap more of the Sun's heat. For example, human consumption

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Speaker 1: of fossil fuels releases billions of pounds of carbon dioxide

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Speaker 1: gas into the atmosphere every day, and a wide variety

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Speaker 1: of natural processes create methane. Both of these gases trap heat.

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Speaker 1: If we could somehow block or reflect away some of

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Speaker 1: the unlight reaching Earth, it would cool the planet down.

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Speaker 1: One way to block or reflect sunlight is to load

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Speaker 1: the stratosphere with particles or sulfur chemicals like sulfur dioxide.

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Speaker 1: We know this would work because large volcanic eruptions, which

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Speaker 1: inject dust and sulfur into the stratosphere have a noticeable

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Speaker 1: cooling effect on the entire planet. This stratosphere starts about

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Speaker 1: six miles above the Earth's surface, and commercial jets regularly

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Speaker 1: fly at this altitude, So one idea that's been proposed

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Speaker 1: is to use jets or high altitude balloons to create

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Speaker 1: man made reflective stratospheric aerosols. We could release large quantities

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Speaker 1: of sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide gas directly into the stratosphere.

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Speaker 1: There are three advantages to this approach. First, we know

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Speaker 1: it would work. Volcanoes show us the way. Second, we

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Speaker 1: could get started very quickly. There are no technological hurdles. Third,

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Speaker 1: it's easy to turn it off. We simply stop injecting

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Speaker 1: the chemicals and in a year or two they'll dissipate naturally.

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Speaker 1: Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast?

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Speaker 1: If so, please send me an email at podcast at

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot

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