Scientists Issue Warning about Bill Gates’ Plan to ‘Dim the Sun’
Researchers wrote in an open letter slamming the plans
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A group of international scientists has called for all nations to ban public funding and deployment of Bill Gates' efforts to "dim the sun."
As Neon Nettle reported last year, the Harvard geoengineering project, largely funded by Gates, “plans to test out a controversial theory that global warming can be stopped by spraying particles into the atmosphere that would reflect the sun’s rays.”
Meanwhile, researchers wrote an open letter, slamming the plans in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change journal this week:
“Solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system,” they wrote.
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Solar geoengineering aims to reduce the earth’s temperature using technology to reduce the incoming sunlight.
Such methods include spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reduce solar energy spreading.
Such methods are seen as a response to global warming and climate change.
The authors of the letter, however, warned there are “uncertainties” of using such technologies on weather and the supply of food and water.
The letter also warned that the world’s poorest nations would be left vulnerable unless the technology is put under international control.
During the recent COP26, a major UN climate change summit in Scotland, proposals to study solar geoengineering were examined.
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The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report in March recommending an investment of $100-$200 million in solar geoengineering research as part of a “robust portfolio of climate mitigation and adaptation policies.”
NASEM argued that releasing substances into the atmosphere must be subjected to strict regulation.
Opponents of the plan fear a “slippery slope toward engineering the climate.”
Director of the Sweden-based environmentalist think-tank WhatNext?, Niclas Hällström, said:
“There is no merit in this test except to enable the next step.
"You can’t test the trigger of a bomb and say, ‘This can’t possibly do any harm.’”
Co-CEO of environmentalist organization ETC Group, Jim Thomas, said that he and his peers also oppose the idea.
“This is as much an experiment in changing social norms and crossing a line as it is a science experiment,” Thomas warned.
As Forbes reported last year:
Widespread research into the efficacy of solar geoengineering has been stalled for years due to controversy. Opponents believe such science comes with unpredictable risks, including extreme shifts in weather patterns not dissimilar to warming trends we are already witnessing. Environmentalists similarly fear that a dramatic shift in mitigation strategy will be treated as a green light to continue emitting greenhouse gases with little to no changes in current consumption and production patterns.
