Researchers advocate using existing aircraft, sulfur to block sunlight amid UK-backed trials



A study published Monday in the American Geophysical Union's peer-reviewed journal Earth's Future suggested, largely on the basis of different aerosol injection simulations, that it might be worthwhile using existing commercial jetliners to pollute the skies with toxic sulfur dioxide particles in order to dim the sun and thereby cool the planet.

Researchers from University College London indicated that weaponizing jets like the Boeing 777F — roughly 36 of which are produced a year — against the sun would would mean "lower technical barriers," a potential increase in "the number of actors able to produce a substantial global cooling using SAI [stratospheric aerosol injection]," and an earlier potential start date for this master plan.

They acknowledged, however, that the use of existing aircraft for the purposes of SAI would be less efficient than having specialized aircraft flying at altitudes of over 12 miles to conduct dumps and more likely to generate undesirable side effects.

'Dousing our citizens, our waterways and landscapes with toxins.'

According to the study, "Low-altitude SAI with high-latitude and seasonal injection, could achieve a substantial global cooling effect using existing large jetliners with a service ceiling of 13 km."

The researchers estimated "a global cooling of 0.6°C for an injection of 12 Tg at 13 km altitude at 60° North and South, in the local spring and summer." In other words, climate meddlers might be able to cool the planet down just over half a degree with a seasonal dumping of over 13.2 million tons of sulfur at the latitudes of Anchorage, Alaska, and the southern tip of South America.

In effect, they would be emulating the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere and caused a rapid half-degree drop in global temperatures. According to NASA, this drop lasted for two years until the sulfate dropped out of the atmosphere.

"We find this strategy would have only 35% of the forcing efficiency of a conventional high-altitude-subtropical injection, which would lead to a proportionate increase in the side-effects of SAI per unit cooling, such as human exposure to descending particulate matter," wrote the researchers.

In addition to "dousing our citizens, our waterways and landscapes with toxins," as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put it last month, the embrace of this strategy might increase the "risk of unilateral or poorly planned deployment," said the researchers.

Dozens of U.S. states have taken steps to ban geoengineering and weather modification activities. Earlier this month, the Florida Senate passed legislation that would protect the Sunshine State's skies from climate alarmists' shadowy designs. The United Kingdom has gone in the other direction.

Blaze News recently reported that the U.K. is throwing its approval and weight behind solar geoengineering experiments to be conducted by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency.

'That means that we would need to use three times the amount of aerosol to have the same effect on global temperature.'

Even with America's geoengineering bans, the homeland could potentially be impacted by foreign SAI experiments should the U.K. or another national entity decide to unilaterally execute SAI operations ahead of schedule, thanks to the embrace of modified jetliners.

A 2017 study published in Nature Communications indicated that SAI only in the northern hemisphere might increase droughts, hurricanes, and storms elsewhere, and concluded that "the impacts of SG would not be entirely confined to the perturbed region."

Lead author Alistair Duffey on the new study in Earth's Future told Phys.org, "Solar geoengineering comes with serious risks and much more research is needed to understand its impacts. However, our study suggests that it is easier to cool the planet with this particular intervention than we thought. This has implications for how quickly stratospheric aerosol injection could be started and by who."

"There are downsides to this polar low-altitude strategy," continued Duffey. "At this lower altitude, stratospheric aerosol injection is about one-third as effective. That means that we would need to use three times the amount of aerosol to have the same effect on global temperature, increasing side effects such as acid rain. The strategy would also be less effective at cooling the tropics, where the direct vulnerability to warming is highest."

Duffey added that "climate change is a serious problem," intimating that policymakers might weight the perceived threat of changing weather patterns as more concerning than the threats posed dumping chemicals overhead and generating acidic precipitation.

Columbia University's Climate School noted last April, "Studies show that stratospheric aerosol injection could weaken the stratospheric ozone layer, alter precipitation patterns, and affect agriculture, ecosystem services, marine life, and air quality. Moreover, the impacts and risks would vary by how and where it is deployed, the climate, ecosystems, and the population."

Matthew Henry of the University of Exeter, one of Duffey's co-authors, made clear to Phys.org that even with solar geoengineering, climate alarmists will still want to continue with their project of social engineering: "Stratospheric aerosol injection is certainly not a replacement for greenhouse gas emission reductions as any potential negative side effects increase with the amount of cooling: we can only achieve long-term climate stability with net zero."

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UK government to approve geoengineering experiments to block sunlight in effort to curb climate change despite alarming risks



The U.K. is expected to give approval for solar geoengineering experiments to block sunlight in an effort to curb climate change despite uncertainty and alarming risks, according to multiple reports.

The Telegraph reported that geoengineering experiments conducted outside aimed at combating climate change are set to be carried out by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency and will be announced in the coming weeks.

The experiments are said to be one of the most expensive solar geoengineering projects in history.

In February 2021, the U.K. government announced the creation of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, a self-described "independent research body to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research." The agency will be led by "prominent, world-leading scientists who will be given the freedom to identify and fund transformational science and technology."

The U.K. government said ARIA will "help to cement the U.K.’s position as a global science superpower, while shaping the country’s efforts to build back better through innovation."

The U.K. government promised roughly $1 billion in funding for the "most inspiring inventors to turn their transformational ideas into new technologies, discoveries, products, and services — helping to maintain the U.K.’s position as a global science superpower."

British tech news site UKTN previously reported, "It takes its inspiration from DARPA, the U.S. government research and development agency that has played a pivotal role in developing technologies such as GPS, drones, and weather satellites."

ARIA officially launched in January 2023.

The experiments will include solar geoengineering, where particles are injected into the air to deflect some of the sun’s radiation back into space with the goal of reducing Earth’s surface temperature.

Professor Mark Symes, the program director for ARIA, said the looming threat of climate change was a strong reason to research the controversial solar geoengineering.

"One of the missing pieces in this debate was physical data from the real world," Symes told the Telegraph. "Models can only tell us so much.“

Symes guaranteed, "Everything we do is going to be safe by design."

“We have strong requirements around the length of time experiments can run for and their reversibility, and we won’t be funding the release of any toxic substances to the environment," Symes stressed.

The research would include "small controlled outdoor experiments on particular approaches."

Symes noted that the agency would be making it clear when any outdoor experiments might be taking place.

'The risks are so immense.'

The Guardian reported that possible experiments could include blocking sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface by "launching clouds of reflective particles into the atmosphere or using seawater sprays to make clouds brighter."

The New York Times reported in September 2024 that the experiments could include "injecting aerosols, such as sulfur dioxide, into the stratosphere or shooting sea-salt aerosols into low-lying marine clouds to reflect more sunlight away from the Earth."

Dr. Sebastian Eastham, a senior lecturer in sustainable aviation at Imperial College London, told the Telegraph, "Every time you fly, sulphur, which is naturally present in jet fuel, is emitted into the lowermost stratosphere, causing a small cooling effect."

"Similarly, aircraft contrails cause accidental cirrus cloud modification, but in this case accidentally causing, rather than preventing or thinning, cirrus clouds," Eastham explained. "This points to the fact that it’s theoretically possible [to cool the planet] with current-day technology, but there are many practical questions that would need to be answered before they could be done at scale."

The experiments are said to be one of the most expensive solar geoengineering projects in history.

According to the New York Times, ARIA will be awarded approximately $75 million for researchers to "examine ideas for artificially cooling the planet — including outdoor experiments to determine whether any of those ideas could actually work."

As Blaze News reported in November 2024, billionaire Bill Gates is also delving into solar geoengineering in an attempt to block the sun.

However, solar geoengineering projects to alter the climate have been heavily scrutinized because of possible negative side effects and unintended consequences that could arise from real-world experiments.

A study released in December 2024 found that solar geoengineering experiments could cause more pollution and damage the ozone layer, which would cause an increase in mortality from skin cancers.

Columbia University's Climate School noted in April 2024, "Studies show that stratospheric aerosol injection could weaken the stratospheric ozone layer, alter precipitation patterns, and affect agriculture, ecosystem services, marine life, and air quality. Moreover, the impacts and risks would vary by how and where it is deployed, the climate, ecosystems, and the population."

In February 2023, the United Nations Environment Program released a report regarding the potential risks and impacts of solar radiation modification, including nefarious motives by a rogue state.

UNEP’s Chief Scientist Andrea Hinwood stated, "A range of concerns about SRM were raised in the report and included the scenario that if SRM were to be unilaterally deployed by a rogue state or non-state actor, like a private company, it could introduce a series of new complex geo-political or security threats."

Lili Fuhr, from the Center for International Environmental Law, told CNN in 2023, "Just because we’re desperate doesn’t suddenly make solar geoengineering a good idea, because the risks are so immense."

Last month, the Florida Senate passed a bill prohibiting geoengineering and weather modification activities.

Blaze Media recently conducted a deep dive into cloud seeding and weather manipulation, which you can read here.

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University of Chicago backs mad scientist's plan to block out the sun



A subset of alarmists is convinced that to curb so-called global warming, they must block out the sun, at least partially. David Keith, founding faculty director at the University of Chicago's Climate Systems Engineering Initiative, is among them.

Keith, a multimillionaire who was previously at the University of Calgary and Harvard University, seeks to pollute the stratosphere ultimately with millions of tons of sulfur dioxide.

Blasting aerosols and other reflective substances, such as diamonds or aluminum dioxide, into the atmosphere, roughly 12-16 miles above the Earth, might replicate the effects of volcanic eruptions in blocking sunlight and lowering global mean temperatures.

The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, resulted in a rapid half-degree drop in global temperatures. According to NASA, this drop lasted or two years until the sulfate dropped out of the atmosphere.

Without the guidance of Ivy League technocrats or the help of volcanoes, the species unwittingly found another way to lower global temperatures and scatter solar rays: using fossil fuels.

Emissions from cars, homes, and industry have long mixed in with low-altitude clouds, causing them to brighten and bounce more sunlight, resulting in a cooling effect. However, climate alarmists' ongoing campaign against the use of affordable energy — again, to supposedly curb global warming — might diminish this secondary benefit, thereby exacerbating global warming.

"I think most people are aware that there's a greenhouse gas effect that warms climate," Sarah Doherty of the University of Washington's Marine Cloud Brightening Program told the Weather Channel earlier this year.

"But what most people aren't aware of is that the particles that we've also been producing and adding to the atmosphere offset some of that climate warming," continued Doherty. "So, the overall effect is one of climate warming, but it would be a lot more without that particulate pollution."

Extra to reducing this low-hanging particulate pollution released by a productive society, Keith wants to release his alternative pollutant with a "purpose-built fleet of high-altitude aircraft."

In a February paper in the MIT Technology Review, he co-authored with Harvard Kennedy School research fellow Wake Smith, Keith noted that "offsetting a substantial fraction of global warming — say, 1 °C of cooling — would require platforms that could deliver several million metric tons per year of material to the stratosphere."

"Neither rockets nor balloons are suitable for hauling such a large mass to this high perch. Consequently, full-scale deployment would require a fleet of novel aircraft — a few hundred in order to achieve a 1 °C cooling target," said the paper. "Procuring just the first aircraft in the manner typical of large commercial or military aircraft development programs might take roughly a decade, and manufacturing the required fleet would take several years more."

While Keith acknowledged his scheme's current technological limits and cautioned against near-term deployment, he nevertheless advocated for policymakers to consider the possibility of deployment "earlier than is now widely assumed."

On the basis of his calculations, Keith, who made roughly $72 million off the sale of his carbon capture company to Occidental Petroleum, recently suggested to the New York Times that following through on his scheme would not only lower temperatures but might also change the hue of twilight.

Of course, orange twilight is far from the only possible side effect of such efforts to meddle with the sun and sky.

Numerous scientists have indicated that solar geoengineering might lead to humanitarian and ecological disasters.

In recent years, hundreds of scientists have signed an open letter calling for an international non-use agreement on solar engineering, stressing that "the risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood and can never be fully known. Impacts will vary across regions, and there are uncertainties about the effects on weather patterns, agriculture, and the provision of basic needs of food and water."

Blaze Newspreviously reported that a 2017 study published in Nature Communications indicated that aerosols released only in the northern hemisphere might increase droughts, hurricanes, and storms elsewhere.

"This is a really dangerous path to go down," Beatrice Rindevall, chairwoman of the Swedish Society for Nature, told the Times. "It could shock the climate system, could alter hydrological cycles and could exacerbate extreme weather and climate instability."

Oxford University atmospheric physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert has characterized solar geoengineering as a threat to mankind.

"It's not only a bad idea in terms of something that would never be safe to deploy," said Pierrehumbert. "But even doing research on it is not just a waste of money, but actively dangerous."

"There certainly are risks, and there certainly are uncertainties," Keith told the Times. "But there's really a lot of evidence that the risks are quantitatively small compared to the benefits, and the uncertainties just aren't that big."

While still a professor at Harvard, Keith attempted to run an experiment, possibly over Arizona. Unable to find a partner to launch a high-altitude balloon and met with objections by Indian groups and other critics, Harvard contracted the Swedish space corporation to run the test. That test was similarly met with controversy and aborted.

After his experiments were foiled, Keith pledged not to be "open in the same way" with future endeavors. He also left Harvard for the University of Chicago, which the Times indicated is permitting him to hire 10 new faculty members and kick off a new $100 million geoengineering program.

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Rogue geoengineering outfit claims to be dumping unmonitored particles into stratosphere to change the weather



A rogue solar geoengineering start-up claims to have begun using balloons to launch reflective clouds into the stratosphere for the purpose of changing the weather.

Although the initiative may be presently little more than a publicity stunt, Luke Iseman, cofounder and CEO of Make Sunsets, told the MIT Technology Review that he hopes this provocative cloud-seeding effort will help launch what may be a lucrative "cooling" industry.

What are the details?

According to Make Sunsets' website, "we need to start cooling the world immediately."

While Iseman condoned property destruction in a blog entry as one way to bring about this end, the method he has personally resolved to use is geoengineering, specifically by way of "albedo enhancement" or albedo modification (i.e., the reflection of sunlight).

David Keith's research group at Harvard University defined albedo modification as a solar geoengineering method designed to "reflect a small fraction of incoming sunlight back to space in order to attenuate anthropogenic changes in temperature and other climate variables."

Spraying sulfate aerosols and other reflective substances (e.g., calcium carbonate particles, aluminum dioxide, or diamonds) into the atmosphere, around 12-16 miles above the Earth, can allegedly accomplish what volcanic eruptions have otherwise achieved in the way of partially blocking sunlight and temporarily cooling global mean temperatures.

MIT Technology Review reported that Make Sunsets appears to have launched balloons containing reflective particulates from a site in Mexico.

The company's website claims the test flights deployed less than 10 grams of "clouds" each, suggesting that "one gram of sulfur delivered to 20km altitude creates as much radiative forcing as one ton of CO2 released in the atmosphere does in a year."

Iseman claims that his artificial clouds, not composed of vapor but rather of fine particles, will remain in the sky anywhere from six months to three years, depending on the altitude and latitude at which they are released.

It is not clear where Make Sunsets' test balloons went or what effect they might have had, because Iseman did not equip them with monitoring apparatuses.

These experiments were potentially deleterious feats of "geoengineering activism" carried out "basically" to "confirm that [he] could do it."

While Iseman's team did not seek or acquire any approvals from government authorities ahead of the tests, the Biden administration recently expressed interest in developing technologies that could help partially block out the sun.

TheBlaze previously reported that President Joe Biden signed Congress' "Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022" on March 15, providing funding for a five-year research plan to be coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The OTSP will come up with a "scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions in the context of near-term climate risks and hazards."

Stratospheric aerosol injection, the method employed by Make Sunsets, is among the various solar geoengineering interventions the OTSP will study.

While government agencies proceed with these studies, Iseman intends to continue with his tests "as quickly and safely as we can," convinced they are not "morally wrong."

The real dangers of fake clouds

Like Iseman, Chris Sacca, founder of the climate tech investment fund Lowercarbon Capital, is convinced that "sunlight reflection has the potential to safeguard the livelihoods of billions of people."

Others in the field do not share their confidence.

Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, told the MIT Technology Review, "The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement" these geoengineering efforts.

"To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea," said Pasztor.

Noah Diffenbaugh, professor at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, told KNTV that this type of geoengineering is "a relatively cheap, relatively effective potential intervention at the global scale that’s likely to have a lot of side effects."

A 2017 study published in Nature Communications indicated that while SAI might be used to produce "preferential local climate responses ... for the geoengineering parties, there could be potentially devastating impacts (eg, Sahelian drought) in other regions."

Dr. Anthony Jones, lead author on the study, told Carbon Brief, "If solar geoengineering were to be deployed solely in the northern hemisphere, then the resultant changes would reduce precipitation in the Sahel, and other regions such as India, and reduce the number of storms in the North Atlantic basin."

"To put it short, northern hemisphere solar geoengineering would be good for the southeast US, the Caribbean, and Mexico in terms of dissipating storms, but be very bad for the Sahel. In contrast, solar geoengineering in the south would enhance precipitation in the Sahel, but would also enhance the number of storms in the North Atlantic," added Jones.

Lili Fuhr of the Center for International Environmental Law suggested that SAI initiatives amount to a "gigantic gamble with the systems that sustain life on Earth. It could be weaponized, it could be misused – imagine if, say, India and Pakistan disagreed over one of them doing this."

A 2016 study published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics suggested that "for stratospheric particle injection schemes, stratospheric ozone depletion would be a major concern ... especially in the near future."

The Guardian reported that 380 scientists signed an open letter demanding a global non-use agreement for solar radiation management, citing a number of the above concerns and others.

One of the chief concerns raised in the letter is that the "risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood and can never be fully known. Impacts will vary across regions, and there are uncertainties about the effects on weather patterns, agriculture, and the provision of basic needs of food and water."

The scientists demanded that experiments like Iseman's be banned internationally.

Making a cool profit

Although Make Sunsets' efforts down the road could possibly help generate cyclones, hurricanes, and droughts further afield, it might not be a total loss for Iseman and the two venture capital funds backing him. Iseman's company is already selling "cooling credits."

For $10, Make Sunsets promises to "release at least 1 gram of our clouds into the stratosphere for you, offsetting the warming effect of 1 ton of carbon for one year."

This promise stands despite the founder's admission that there was no equipment on the balloons he launched to verify the efficacy of the tests. The company also noted on its site that "there's a lot of uncertainty and assumptions here" concerning its claims about offsets and utility.

Edward Parson, an expert in environmental law at the University of California Los Angeles, told the Guardian that Iseman's claim that his company could restore the world to its pre-industrial temperature norms is "absurd."

Klaus Schwab's Climate Plan Is Literally from 'The Simpsons' #Shorts | DM CLIPS | RUBIN REPORT
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Klaus Schwab's Climate Plan Is Literally from 'The Simpsons' #Shorts | DM CLIPS | RUBIN REPORT