Reported Experiments to ‘Dim the Sun’ Spark Alarm: ‘Never Seen a Film?’

The U.K. government’s reported plans to allow experiments that could “dim the sun” has sparked comparisons to apocalyptic action film plots and villainous schemes cooked up by cartoon characters.

While some see the initiative as a desperate but necessary step amid rising global temperatures, others express alarm at the prospect of interfering with natural systems.

Why It Matters

As scientists and political leaders say climate change is intensifying and pushing the planet toward dangerous thresholds, innovative approaches to cooling the Earth gain heightened significance.

Researchers suggest that dimming the sun’s rays by reflecting a fraction of solar radiation could potentially help lower surface temperatures and potentially mitigate extreme heat events.

In the U.S., for example, NASA warns that warming temperatures could mean the amount of land consumed by wildfires in Western states is projected to increase by two to six times by the year 2050.

Such geoengineering methods are viewed as tools that might buy time for societies to scale up carbon reduction efforts.

Climate change has also proved a divisive political issue. Whilst there is a broad scientific consensus on the issue, climate skepticism is still prevalent in some quarters.

In the U.S., President Donald Trump’s administration have ushered in major rollbacks of environmental regulations.

Sun — The sun rises behind the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on April 09, 2024 in San Francisco, California.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

What To Know

According to a report from The Daily Telegraph, the U.K. government is poised to authorize small-scale outdoor trials aimed at reducing solar radiation and its Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) has set aside $66.5 million (£50 million) for the endeavor.

The experiments could involve the controlled release of reflective substances—designed to mimic natural aerosols—into the atmosphere. This method is intended to decrease the amount of solar energy reaching the surface, potentially easing heat extremes in a warming climate.

They could also involve brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, the Telegraph reported. This could be accomplished by spraying sea salt in the lower atmosphere to increase the reflectivity of clouds over the ocean.

Clouds form when water vapor condenses around tiny particles like dust or salt. Adding more particles creates more, smaller droplets, which reflect sunlight more effectively.

The trials will reportedly be conducted with strict safety protocols.

“Everything we do is going to be safe by design,” professor Mark Symes, the program director for ARIA, told the Telegraph. “We’re absolutely committed to responsible research, including responsible outdoor research.

“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.”

The proposed experiment has been met with mixed reactions.

“Montgomery Burns approves,” wrote one X user in response to an article about the plans, a reference to the unscrupulous billionaire businessman in The Simpsons, who in one famous episode of the animated comedy, attempts to block out the sun.

What People Are Saying

Reacting to the story on GB News, comedian Steve Allen said: “I love science… but have they never seen a film?…’I know what we’ll do, we’ll just scorch out the sun’—Matrix! You’re 20 minutes in, that’s how it happens.”

Utah Senator Mike Lee said on X: “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you trust the UK to ‘dim the Sun’ without causing problems?”

In a statement shared with Newsweek, Mike Hulme, professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge said: “This program is consuming a large amount—£50m plus—of scarce U.K. public research funding that should be much better invested into technologies to accelerate next generation clean energy technologies and also unto advancing technologies for removing CO2 from the air. It is illusory to think that deliberate manipulation of clouds and of the atmosphere’s composition to create a sun-screen for the planet is a safe, governable and desirable form of environmental management.

“It holds out a false promise that climate change risks can be defused in this way; the naivety of it is breathtaking.”

Matthew Henry, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter’s College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences told Newsweek: “It is important to note that injecting aerosols to cool the planet would only work for as long as the injection occurs. If, for any reason, we suddenly stop, all the masked warming from aerosol injection would occur quite suddenly. Hence, we certainly should not use solar geoengineering as an excuse to not cut emissions.

“However, I believe we need to study solar geoengineering as it is the only potential tool we have to reduce temperatures on a short timescale. Once we reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures only stabilize (they don’t go back down), and the melting of glaciers and sea level rise will continue.

“While it is possible to remove carbon from the atmosphere, it remains slow and expensive for now. We are currently on track for, at least, two degrees of warming, which already might have devastating impacts.”

Henry added that climate models used to study climate change can also assess geoengineering interventions, but they have significant uncertainties. Small-scale experiments funded by ARIA could help refine these models by providing real-world data to better represent localized processes, Henry said.

An ARIA spokesperson told Newsweek: “These approaches are not a substitute for decarbonization, which is the only long-term and sustainable way to reduce the risk of encountering climate tipping points.

“The projects in the program are designed to explore potential approaches to actively reduce global temperatures in the immediate term, to act in conjunction with long-term decarbonization efforts.”