Bill Gates support for 'bonkers' study of dimming the sun is 'grossly irresponsible:' Author
Michael Shellenberger compares 'global cooling' experiment to 'nuclear winter'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Microsoft founder Bill Gates is throwing financial support behind the development of a sun-dimming technology that aims to reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, thereby triggering a global cooling reaction.
"Apocalypse Never" author Michael Shellenberger called the idea "bonkers" in an appearance on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday, before warning against the "grossly irresponsible" experiment.
The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, which is being conducted by Harvard University scientists, will study whether spraying a sun-reflecting aerosol, such as non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into the atmosphere could offset the effects of global warming, according to a Forbes report.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I've co-authored articles with the Harvard investigator," Shellenberger told host Tucker Carlson. "We’ve told him personally this is a terrible idea. The vast majority of scientists disagree with this.
"What they are proposing to do is identical to what we feared would occur after nuclear war in the 1980s, which is nuclear winter, the idea that you cool the planet deliberately. The effects on crops are completely unknown. They call this an experiment, but they know that there is no way to figure out what the large-scale planetary effects of this kind of thing would be."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Shellenberger predicted Gates and others involved in the experiment would encounter opposition "at every step of the way."
"It's grossly irresponsible," he said. "They know for a fact that they will never get international agreement on this. So they are basically trying to socialize the idea, normalize the idea, make us comfortable with an idea that should make us externally uncomfortable."