Aug 11, 2025 11:42 AM
https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2025/08/how-c...ing-trials
EXCERPTS: It has been a very warm summer in the UK. By mid-July, we’d had our third heat wave of 2025 [...] The UK’s first heatwave of the year, in mid June, caused the deaths of an estimated 600 people in England and Wales.
This isn’t normal. Or, at least, it wasn’t normal – a new report in the International Journal of Climatology highlighted how normalised extreme temperatures are becoming in the UK, as a result of climate change. As the Met Office explained, “the last three years have been in the UK’s top five warmest on record, with 2024 the fourth warmest year in records dating back to 1884”.
[...] It’s not just the high temperatures that are an issue, it is the increasing extremity of temperatures. Temperatures haven’t been rising steadily at the same rate evenly across the year – we are now far more likely to suffer extreme highs and extreme lows...
[...] It isn’t even just the heat; it’s also the extreme rainfall events, both in terms of average daily rainfall and extreme flooding events. ... Six of the 10 wettest winter half-years for England and Wales have been in the 21st century.
[...] The UK is not prepared for extreme heat. While air conditioning is relatively commonplace in hotels, shops, cinemas, and other large indoor spaces, it is not routinely installed in UK homes...
[...] So, what can be done? In April of this year, the UK government greenlit small-scale experiments into geoengineering (much to the chagrin of chemtrail conspiracists across the land)...
The project involves five proposed outdoor experiments. One of the projects will explore the efficacy of rethickening arctic sea ice.. [...] Another of the proposed projects studies how milligram quantities of mineral dusts age in the stratosphere [...] The other projects are more likely to draw the ire of the chemtrail busters, however, because they focus on exploring the effects of seawater spray and electric charges on cloud reflectivity...
[...] This might all sound risky, but ARIA do make a point of stating that the experiments “will only go ahead after a period of meaningful public engagement with local communities, and will all be subject to oversight by the programme’s independent oversight committee” and that “all ARIA-funded experiments will be time-bound, limited in size and scale, and their effects will dissipate within 24 hours or be fully reversible.”
In the extensive FAQ on their website, they make it clear that these experiments don’t involve any chemicals that are harmful to humans or animals, won’t affect the growing of crops, and won’t change the weather or the seasons. Also, they make it clear that they are not trying to block out the sun. However, those FAQs did little to reassure anyone who was worried about geoengineering and chemtrails..
[...] While some of the theories may appear sound, the climate is a hugely complicated system – or collection of systems – and any change to it might be wildly unpredictable. According to the BBC, studies have demonstrated that Solar Radiation Modification “could cause strong warming high above the tropics, changing large-scale weather patterns, warming the polar regions and altering rainfall patterns around the world”. Brightening cloud cover in south-west Africa off the coast of Namibia, while well intentioned, could cause a drought in South America, which could in turn starve the Amazon rainforest.
Equally, while geoengineering may be capable of bringing down global average temperatures, there’s nothing to say that such a reduction would happen evenly – it may result in even more extreme climate issues in specific areas of the world. It’s very complicated, and we simply don’t know what could happen as a result.
Meanwhile, there are solutions that we do know would work, that are not beset by such uncertainty, and these form the other strain of criticism ARIA has received: spending our time chasing geoengineering solutions can be a huge distraction from the essential work of decarbonisation, carbon neutrality, and reducing emissions. By introducing a technological Hail Mary, we could essentially send the message that it’s fine to carry on as we are, because science is going to come along and solve it all. If and when those proposed technical solutions fail, it will be too late to actually take the mitigating action we need.
This criticism is particularly pertinent, given that the Big Tech and FinTech industries have invested heavily into geoengineering research... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: It has been a very warm summer in the UK. By mid-July, we’d had our third heat wave of 2025 [...] The UK’s first heatwave of the year, in mid June, caused the deaths of an estimated 600 people in England and Wales.
This isn’t normal. Or, at least, it wasn’t normal – a new report in the International Journal of Climatology highlighted how normalised extreme temperatures are becoming in the UK, as a result of climate change. As the Met Office explained, “the last three years have been in the UK’s top five warmest on record, with 2024 the fourth warmest year in records dating back to 1884”.
[...] It’s not just the high temperatures that are an issue, it is the increasing extremity of temperatures. Temperatures haven’t been rising steadily at the same rate evenly across the year – we are now far more likely to suffer extreme highs and extreme lows...
[...] It isn’t even just the heat; it’s also the extreme rainfall events, both in terms of average daily rainfall and extreme flooding events. ... Six of the 10 wettest winter half-years for England and Wales have been in the 21st century.
[...] The UK is not prepared for extreme heat. While air conditioning is relatively commonplace in hotels, shops, cinemas, and other large indoor spaces, it is not routinely installed in UK homes...
[...] So, what can be done? In April of this year, the UK government greenlit small-scale experiments into geoengineering (much to the chagrin of chemtrail conspiracists across the land)...
The project involves five proposed outdoor experiments. One of the projects will explore the efficacy of rethickening arctic sea ice.. [...] Another of the proposed projects studies how milligram quantities of mineral dusts age in the stratosphere [...] The other projects are more likely to draw the ire of the chemtrail busters, however, because they focus on exploring the effects of seawater spray and electric charges on cloud reflectivity...
[...] This might all sound risky, but ARIA do make a point of stating that the experiments “will only go ahead after a period of meaningful public engagement with local communities, and will all be subject to oversight by the programme’s independent oversight committee” and that “all ARIA-funded experiments will be time-bound, limited in size and scale, and their effects will dissipate within 24 hours or be fully reversible.”
In the extensive FAQ on their website, they make it clear that these experiments don’t involve any chemicals that are harmful to humans or animals, won’t affect the growing of crops, and won’t change the weather or the seasons. Also, they make it clear that they are not trying to block out the sun. However, those FAQs did little to reassure anyone who was worried about geoengineering and chemtrails..
[...] While some of the theories may appear sound, the climate is a hugely complicated system – or collection of systems – and any change to it might be wildly unpredictable. According to the BBC, studies have demonstrated that Solar Radiation Modification “could cause strong warming high above the tropics, changing large-scale weather patterns, warming the polar regions and altering rainfall patterns around the world”. Brightening cloud cover in south-west Africa off the coast of Namibia, while well intentioned, could cause a drought in South America, which could in turn starve the Amazon rainforest.
Equally, while geoengineering may be capable of bringing down global average temperatures, there’s nothing to say that such a reduction would happen evenly – it may result in even more extreme climate issues in specific areas of the world. It’s very complicated, and we simply don’t know what could happen as a result.
Meanwhile, there are solutions that we do know would work, that are not beset by such uncertainty, and these form the other strain of criticism ARIA has received: spending our time chasing geoengineering solutions can be a huge distraction from the essential work of decarbonisation, carbon neutrality, and reducing emissions. By introducing a technological Hail Mary, we could essentially send the message that it’s fine to carry on as we are, because science is going to come along and solve it all. If and when those proposed technical solutions fail, it will be too late to actually take the mitigating action we need.
This criticism is particularly pertinent, given that the Big Tech and FinTech industries have invested heavily into geoengineering research... (MORE - missing details)