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Science In Action: Climate techno-fix would worsen global malaria burden

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Illustration of a mosquito biting

21/04/2022 GMT

Climate techno-fix would worsen global malaria burden

BBC World Service - Science In Action, Climate techno-fix would worsen global malaria burden

Solar geoengineering to curb climate change could worsen global malaria burden.

Solar geoengineering to curb climate change may worsen the global malaria burden. Plus portable MRI machines, coloured pterosaur feathers and why monkeys love maggot-filled fruit

As a series of UN climate reports have warned recently, drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – a halving over the next decade – are needed if we are to keep global warming down to manageable levels. No sign of that happening. 

An emergency measure to buy time that’s sometimes discussed is solar geoengineering – creating an atmospheric sunscreen that reduces incoming solar heat. Sulphate compounds in volcanic gases or in industrial fumes attract water vapour to make a fine haze and have that effect. The difference would be starting a deliberate programme of injecting sulphate particles into the stratosphere. 

There are a host of arguments against it, including a revulsion against adding another pollutant to the atmosphere to offset the one, carbon dioxide, that’s giving us problems in the first place. Another objection, outlined this week, is that it could set back the global fight against malaria - a major killer in its own right. University of Cape Town ecologist Chris Trisos tells Roland Pease what his team’s modelling study revealed.

Yale University neurologist Kevin Sheth talks to us about a revolution in medical scanning – small-scale MRI machines that can be wheeled to the patient’s bedside.  

According to palaeontologist Maria McNamara, an amazingly preserved pterosaur fossil from Brazil proves that some of these flying reptiles did have feathers similar to those of birds (and some dinosaurs), and that the feathers were of different colours, possibly for mating display. 

Primatologist Adrian Barnett has discovered that spider monkeys in one part of the Brazilian Amazon seek out fruit, full of live maggots to eat.  Why?

Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

(Photo: Illustration of a mosquito biting 
Credit: SCIEPRO/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

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