Researchers quietly planned a test to dim sunlight. They wanted to ‘avoid scaring’ the public.

[rangerrebew]

Researchers quietly planned a test to dim sunlight. They wanted to ‘avoid scaring’ the public.
Hundreds of documents show how researchers failed to notify officials in California about a test of technology to block the sun’s rays — while they planned a much huger sequel. 

A boat at sunset along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.
The west coast of North America is one area the Marine Cloud Brightening Program has considered for a 3,900-square-mile solar geoengineering test. A boat is seen off the coast of Costa Rica. | Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images

By Corbin Hiar
07/27/2025 07:00 AM EDT


A team of researchers in California drew notoriety last year with an aborted experiment on a retired aircraft carrier that sought to test a machine for creating clouds.  

But behind the scenes, they were planning a much larger and potentially riskier study of salt-water-spraying equipment that could eventually be used to dim the sun’s rays — a multimillion-dollar project aimed at producing clouds over a stretch of ocean larger than Puerto Rico.



The details outlined in funding requests, emails, texts and other records obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News raise new questions about a secretive billionaire-backed initiative that oversaw last year’s brief solar geoengineering experiment on the San Francisco Bay.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/27/california-sunlight-dimming-experiment-collapse-00476983?fbclid=IwY2xjawL0mhxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHpycHT0wCCsMk9lg7THC1wxEhFx_4bA7aopRGrMRqiNQvUu_Zm8fa77IMbdN_aem_KDtQ1GVFxv3CaaS1NbHDlg

[Timber Rattler]

I saw this movie and it didn't end well...

That view isn’t universally shared in the solar geoengineering research community. Some scientists believe that the perils of climate change are too dire to not pursue the technology, which they say can be safely tested in well-designed experiments, such as the one in Alameda. 

“If we really were serious about the idea that to do any controversial topic needs some kind of large-scale consensus before we can research the topic, I think that means we don’t research topics,” David Keith, a geophysical sciences professor at the University of Chicago, said at a think tank discussion last month. Keith previously helped lead the canceled Harvard experiment. 

EXCERPT

Or in other words, the peons are just too stupid to understand and appreciate that the "scientists" know better...   

[DefiantMassRINO]

Isn't the Canadian wildfire smoke, soot, and ash doing that for them?

Hang out near an active volcano.  They can also dim sun.


Off Costa Rica? WTF!  Isn't Costa Rica supposed to be some sacrosanct environmental Eden?  And they are effing with the environment there?

Someone needs to sink their damn boat.

Goddamned irresponsible.  Scientists are going to get us all killed.

[Timber Rattler]

Goddamned irresponsible.  Scientists are going to get us all killed.

Reminds me of Dr. Carrington in The Thing from Another World who insisted right up until the end that the "Thing" was intelligent, could be reasoned with, and could help humanity, despite all evidence to the contrary that it was attacking and killing the base staff.

Just stupid.