Billionaire-Funded NGO Wants to Block Out the Sun With Aerosols

Nongovernmental organizations backed by liberal billionaires are persisting with efforts to block sunlight with aerosols, despite consistent setbacks.

According to a new report from The Daily Caller, the initiatives from these NGOs aim to reduce temperatures around the globe by making clouds brighter. In the process, they would then become more reflective of the sunlight.

One major roadblock that they’ve run into, though, is state governments that are prohibiting them from carrying out their plan.

California, for example, won’t allow scientists to spray liquefied salt and other aerosols into the atmosphere. 

Yet, these NGOs, led by billionaires such as Rachel Pritzker, the heiress of Hyatt Hotels, are undeterred.

In a statement she issued to Politico, Pritzker said:

“The Pritzker Innovation Fund believes in the importance of research that helps improve climate models and enables policymakers and the public to understand better whether climate interventions like marine cloud brightening are feasible and advisable. We will only get answers to these questions through open research that can inform science-based, democratic decision-making.”

Another NGO that is associated with Quadrature Capital, a hedge fund based in the UK, is The Quadrature Climate Foundation. Its chief science and programs officer, Greg De Temmerman, recently commented on its progress toward these projects.

He said recently:

“We remain firmly committed to advancing transparent, equitable and science-based approaches to understand and potentially mitigate climate risks.”

Another project, carried out by the University of Washington and funded by many groups, looked to reflect the sun rays by altering the clouds. But, two high-profile experiments that were supposed to go forward were shut down quickly.

The latest one was called the Alameda experiment, but it didn’t go through after local officials in the city of Alameda, California, rejected requests by researchers at the university to restart their test, which was scheduled to happen from the deck of an aircraft carrier that’s been decommissioned in the San Francisco Bay.

Another similar solar geo-engineering project was shut down in Sweden in March.

One of the supporters of the Alameda project, the Simons Foundation, commented on where they’re going from here. Its president, David Spergel, said:

“Our goal is to support the basic science needed to assess the role of aerosols in the atmosphere, particularly the stratosphere. We want to have the basic science in place so that society can evaluate the possible benefits and costs of stratospheric aerosol injection or marine cloud brightening.”

The foundation was started in 1994 by Jim Simons, a former manager of hedge funds, along with his wife Marilyn. It’s long supported a variety of research that the University of Washington has conducted.

While that group didn’t provide any money to the Alameda experiment, Spergel said “our funding is not going to be affected by their difficulties there.”

The experiment was supposed to last for a few months, but only ended up being in operation for about 20 minutes.