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.

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.

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    … how to best deploy the last-ditch global warming fix…

    Trust me: as the decades go on and things get increasingly worse, more and more desperate measures will be tried. This is hardly “last-ditch”.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      It’s the last ditch of things we can do other than actually becoming carbon neutral, which apparently no one is willing to go for.