By Ramin Skibba at Undark: In April, in the Bay Area town of Alameda, scientists were making plans to block the sun. Not entirely or permanently, of course: Their experiment included a device designed to spray a sea-salt mist off the deck of a docked aircraft carrier. The light-reflecting aerosols, the scientists hoped, would hang in the air and temporarily cool things down in the area. It would have been the first outdoor test in the United States of such a machine, had the city council not shut it down before the experiment was concluded.
One of the goals of the experiment was to see if such an approach might eventually show a way to ease global warming. In a statement to the media on June 5, the researchers — a team from the University of Washington that runs the Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement program — said the “very small quantities” of mist were not designed to alter clouds or local weather. The City of Alameda, along with many of its residents, though, were unconvinced, raising concerns about possible public health risks and a lack of transparency. City officials declined an interview request, but at the city council meeting at which the proposal was unanimously rejected, one attendee noted: “The project proponents went to great lengths to avoid any public scrutiny of their project until they had already operationalized their scheme. This is the complete antithesis of transparent, fact-based, inclusive, and participatory decision making.”
The concept of using technology to change the world’s climate, or geoengineering, has been around for a couple of decades, although so far it has been limited to modeling and just a handful of small-scale outdoor experiments. Throughout that time, the idea has remained contentious among environmental groups and large swaths of the public. “I think the very well-founded anxiety about experiments like this is what they will lead to next and next and next,” said Katharine Ricke, a climate scientist and geoengineering researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California San Diego.
In the best-case scenarios, successful geoengineering experiments could put a pause on or slow down the warming of Earth’s climate, buying time for decarbonization and perhaps saving lives. But other possibilities loom too: for example, that a large-scale experiment could trigger droughts in India, crop failures, and heavy rainstorms in areas that are wholly unprepared.
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