Most people probably haven’t heard of Aria – the secretive UK government agency funding efforts to dim the sun.
Aria, or the ‘Advanced Research and Invention Agency’, has allocated £57 million for so-called ‘geoengineering’ projects that aim to slow global warming.
One of these projects is Marine Cloud Brightening, which involves ships spraying saltwater into the sky to enhance the reflectivity of low-lying clouds.
The salt will force water droplets in the clouds to come together or ‘coalesce’, which will make them more reflective and stop so much sunlight reaching Earth.
Ilan Gur, chief executive of Aria, said: ‘In climate change, we’re essentially in a race against time in terms of the consequential, potentially devastating changes to the planet.’
But some experts have warned that such outdoor experiments – which are due to begin in the next five years – could have ‘unwanted side-effects’.
So, you may be wondering – who, exactly, are Aria and where does their money come from?
Read on to find out more about the public-funded agency, which is spending£4.1 million a year on wages for its staff alone.
Aria, a research funding agency of the UK government, aims to ‘unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone’.
‘We empower scientists and engineers to pursue research that is too speculative, too hard, or too interdisciplinary to pursue elsewhere,’ it says on its website.
The research agency was originally the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief aide, and was set up in 2021 by ex-Tory business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
The body, based in London, has been given a staggering £800 million budget – of taxpayers’ cash – to go towards ‘high-risk, high-reward’ scientific research.
As Aria states on its website, other research projects it is supporting include programmable plants that remove move CO2 and smarter robot bodies that ‘ease the labour challenges of tomorrow’.
Ilan Gur, the chief executive, is being paid around £450,000 annually, The Telegraph reports – three times more than the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile Antonia Jenkinson, the chief finance officer, takes home around £215,000 and Pippy James, the chief product officer, around £175,000.
In total, Aria is blowing £4.1 million a year on wages despite having just 37 staff, with the top four staff at the company pocketing nearly £1 million of taxpayers’ cash each year between them.
Most people probably haven’t heard of Aria – the UK government agency funding efforts to curb global warming.
Marine Cloud Brightening, which involves ships spraying saltwater into the sky to enhance the reflectivity of low-lying clouds. Pictured, Dymchurch beach on the Kent coast
When it was first set up Mr Cummings laid out his vision for the research agency, telling the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee that Aria must have ‘extreme freedom’ from the ‘horrific bureaucracy’ of Whitehall.
One committee member, Katherine Fletcher MP, said that this proposed lack of oversight made Aria vulnerable to capture by the ‘tinfoil hat brigade’ offering unusual and potentially transformative research, which was never likely to succeed.
Questions have also been raised about their willingness to share information.
A report, published in March this year by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), showed that Aria had received a Freedom of Information (FOI) request seeking information about its ‘Scoping Our Planet’ project.
The request had come from online newsletter ‘Democracy for Sale’, which had asked for information regarding who had been funded under the project, which seeks to support schemes to ‘fill the gaps in Earth system measurement to respond confidently to the climate crisis’.
Aria responded by stating that it did not consider the requested information to be ‘environmental information’.
Following a complaint to the ICO, the initial request was upheld and the information was provided.
The ICO’s report reads: ‘The Commissioner agrees that there is public interest in Aria being transparent about the projects which it is funding.’
Experts hope that by reflecting some sunlight back into space, they can curb the impact of global warming. Pictured, cyclists making their way through Richmond Park during a spectacular sunrise in London
In an online piece for Prospect Magazine, English lawyer David Allen Green said the secrecy of Aria shows ‘an elite wanting public money but not public accountability’.
He warned there is a notion within government ‘that publicly funded projects should be closed from public scrutiny, that those with public power know best and that such information should remain private to those with power’.
On its website, ARIA says: ‘As a publicly funded agency, our responsibility to the taxpayer is our first priority. We therefore require visibility of the actual costs we are funding.’
Marine Cloud Brightening is one of 21 so-called ‘geoengineering’ projects receiving £57 million from Aria, of which five will involve outdoor trials.
Another University of Cambridge-led project receiving part of the funding is described as an early exploration for the potential of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI).
It would involve a study on how milligram quantities of mineral dusts age in the stratosphere while contained in an air balloon.
During this controlled experiment, none of these materials will be released into the atmosphere, and all the materials will be returned to the ground for recovery and analysis by scientists, Aria said.
However, some scientists are concerned that expensive endeavors could fail or even backfire, causing destructive weather patterns and making climate change worse.
According to official data, the UK only receives an average of 1,400 hours of sunshine per year anyway – averaging only 3.8 hours per day. Pictured, a house in Dunsden, Oxfordshire under the gloom on November 6
According to official data, the UK only receives an average of 1,400 hours of sunshine per year anyway – averaging only 3.8 hours per day.
£57 million is a huge amount of taxpayers’ money to be spent on this assortment of speculative technologies intended to manipulate the Earth’s climate,’ he told the Telegraph.
‘Just because they ‘work’ in a model, or at a micro-scale in the lab or the sky, does not mean they will cool the climate safely, without unwanted side-effects, in the real world.
‘There is therefore no way that this research can demonstrate that the technologies are safe, successful or reversible.
‘The UK Government is leading the world down what academic analysts call “the slippery slope” towards eventual dangerous large-scale deployment of solar geoengineering technologies.’
Meanwhile, Dr Naomi Vaughan, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia UEA, said sunlight reflecting methods could create a ‘new risk’ to society.
‘Scientists are cautious about solar radiation management research because of how it could be used or misused in the future,’ she said.
WHAT ARE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF GEOENGINEERING STRATEGIES?
Scientists have proposed all sorts of solutions to fight climate change, including a number of controversial geoengineering strategies.
Among the many include:
Afforestation: This technique would irrigate deserts, such as those in Australia and North Africa, to plant millions of trees that could absorb carbon dioxide.
Drawback: This vegetation would also draw in sunlight that the deserts currently reflect back into space, and so contribute to global warming.
Scientists have proposed all sorts of solutions to fight climate change. File photo
Artificial ocean upwelling: Engineers would use long pipes to pump cold, nutrient-rich water upward to cool ocean-surface waters.
Drawback: If this process ever stopped it could cause oceans to rebalance their heat levels and rapidly change the climate.
Ocean alkalinisation: This involves heaping lime into the ocean to chemically increase the absorption of carbon dioxide.
Drawback: Study suggests it will have of little use in reducing global temperatures.
Ocean iron fertilisation: The method involves dumping iron into the oceans to improve the growth of photosynthetic organisms that can absorb carbon dioxide.
Drawback: Study suggests it will have of little use in reducing global temperatures.
Solar radiation management: This would reduce the amount of sunlight Earth receives, by shooting reflective sulphate-based aerosols into the atmosphere.
Drawback: Carbon dioxide would still build up in the atmosphere.
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