Harvard University Cancels Plans to Block Out the Sun
Harvard University announced Monday that it’s canceling a solar geoengineering experiment to use particles to block sunlight high in the atmosphere in an attempt to cool the Earth.
Frank Keutsch, the principal investigator of the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), said in a statement that he was “no longer pursuing the experiment.” While he didn’t specify a reason, it was likely the result of intense scrutiny and criticism from advocates concerned that the experiment would cause inadvertent consequences on the world’s climate.
For the project, the researchers planned to send a high-altitude helium balloon into the stratosphere where it would release fine particulate matter such as calcium carbonate and sulfuric acid. The idea is for the particles to disperse sunlight and reflect it away from the Earth—temporarily cooling the climate. Instead, the device will now be “repurposed for basic scientific research in the stratosphere unrelated to solar geoengineering,” the statement said.