Canceled Geoengineering Experiment to Block the Sun Won’t Stop Rich Climate Botherers from Trying

Trying to dim the sun on an industrial scale is a dim idea for a number of fairly obvious reasons. But people with deep pockets and probably too much spare time still want to have fun with it, citing the well-worn excuse of fear of slightly warmer weather. They imagine it’s due to human activities, so like to think it can be countered by opposing activities.
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CLIMATEWIRE | Wealthy philanthropists with ties to Wall Street and Silicon Valley are unbowed by a botched climate experiment to limit the amount of sunlight hitting the earth, vowing to continue bankrolling future solar geoengineering tests as temperatures catapult upward. [Talkshop comment – hyperbole alert!].

POLITICO contacted a dozen people or groups who funded a controversial program by the University of Washington to reflect sun rays by altering clouds, says Scientific American.

Those who responded indicated that it’s worth pushing through the public skepticism surrounding efforts to determine how to best deploy the last-ditch global warming fix — if at all.

“The Pritzker Innovation Fund believes in the importance of research that helps improve climate models and enables policymakers and the public to better understand whether climate interventions like marine cloud brightening are feasible and advisable,” Rachel Pritzker, the fund’s founder and president, said in a statement. “We will only get answers to these questions through open research that can inform science-based, democratic decision-making.”

The funders’ comments came after two high-profile experiments were shutdown following public backlash, pointing to the challenges of conducting controversial research that could result in weather disruptions or other unintended consequences.

The latest experiment was derailed earlier this month when local officials in Alameda, California, rejected a request by Washington researchers to restart a test to brighten clouds from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay.

The move followed the March cancellation of another solar geoengineering project in Sweden.

Most funders of the Alameda experiment didn’t respond to inquiries, but the assertions of those who did suggest there’s a strong base of philanthropic support for solar geoengineering research, which can also include spraying reflective particles miles about the earth’s surface.

“Our goal is to support the basic science needed to assess the role of aerosols in the atmosphere, particularly the stratosphere,” said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation. “We want to have the basic science in place so that society can evaluate the possible benefits and costs of stratospheric aerosol injection or marine cloud brightening.”
[Talkshop comment – ‘basic science’ can be elusive].

Full article here.
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