A botched geoengineering experiment to limit the amount of sunlight hitting Earth hasn’t dimmed donors’ enthusiasm for funding the research
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.
Longtime Google executive Alan Eustace, who helped fund the University of Washington’s marine cloud brightening program, declined to comment on whether he would continue to support its solar geoengeering tests. Other people or groups backing the program did not respond to requests for comment.
They include the Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation, which was established by cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen and his wife, Lyna Lam; the Kissick Family Foundation launched by the late investor John Kissick; and the Cohler Charitable Fund of former Facebook executive Matt Cohler.
The program’s other supporters are inventor Armand Neukermans, venture capitalists Chris and Crystal Sacca, and software engineer Dan Scales.
I don’t know how I feel about this …. As we zoom past climate change targets toward more and more risk of catastrophic tipping points, we really need more options. This issue demonstrates some of the risks of geo-engineering, so they had to stop it, but we need small local research projects like this to figure out how to do it globally because it’s looking more and more like we may need to risk it