A botched geoengineering experiment to limit the amount of sunlight hitting Earth hasn’t dimmed donors’ enthusiasm for funding the research

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.

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

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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.

  • HossenfefferEnglish
    16·
    5 months ago

    “Sunlight is, of course, the most important raw material we have today in the world. It’s a question of whether we should privatize the normal sunlight supply for the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring sunlight a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to sunlight. That’s an extreme solution. The other view says that sunlight is stuff like any other stuff, and like any other stuff it should have a market value. Personally, I believe it’s better to give stuff a value so that we’re all aware it has its price, and then that one should take specific measures for the part of the population that has no access to this sunlight, and there are many different possibilities there.” - that Nestle CEO, probably.