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The great geoengineering gamble
Climate experiments rightly raise hackles, but we need to find out whether these fixes could work.
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Current temperatures are already linked to more intense heatwaves globally, according to the World Weather Attribution research project.
PHOTO: AFP
Anjana Ahuja
Amid rising global temperatures and widespread heatwaves, metaphorical storm clouds are gathering. In May, a city council in California voted unanimously to halt an experiment into a potential climate-fixing technology.
The trial, which university researchers had already begun, involved spraying sea salt particles into the clouds above San Francisco Bay. The experiment was meant to test whether making clouds brighter could reflect more sunlight back into space, and thereby cool the local climate. The clampdown by Alameda City Council follows the scrapping earlier in 2024 of a Harvard University project to release sulphur particles into the stratosphere above Sweden.
