“Any human-caused release of carbon dioxide is geoengineering,” it argues on its website, which asks people to buy “cooling credits” to fund its work. The venture, named after the deep red sunsets that would occur if particles were seeded into the stratosphere, says its “shiny clouds” will “prevent catastrophic global warming” and help save millions of lives. It claims to have already run two internal test flights for its plan to inject sulphur via balloons into the stratosphere, more than 20km above the Earth’s surface. Make Sunsets, backed by two venture capital funds, launched in October. Last year, an exploratory flight in Sweden of a high-altitude SRM balloon, led by Harvard University researchers, was halted after objections by environmentalists and Indigenous leaders.īut at least one US startup is now hoping to leap ahead with solar geoengineering. Previous attempts at running experiments for what is known as solar radiation management (SRM) have faced staunch opposition. Diagram showing three potential solar geoengineering methods. We are in a tough position we are running out of time, so it’s important we know more.”ĭiagram showing three potential solar geoengineering methods. “Climate change is causing widespread impacts, it’s costing lives and wrecking economies. “I don’t think we should deploy it yet and there are still a ton of concerns, but we need to better understand it,” Field said.
“Until recently, I thought it was too risky, but slow progress on cutting emissions has increased motivation to understand techniques at the margins like solar geoengineering,” said Chris Field, who chaired a National Academies of Sciences report last year that recommended at least $100m being spent researching the issue. Several American researchers, somewhat reluctantly, want to explore options to tinker with the climate system to help restrain runaway global heating, even as they acknowledge many of the knock-on risks aren’t fully known. It is “not new research, but a report that highlights some of the key knowledge gaps and recommendations of priority topics for relevant research”, said a spokesperson for the White House’s office of science and technology policy, adding Joe Biden’s administration wants “effective and responsible CO2 removal” as well as deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
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