Bill Gates, being one of our betters, is always on the lookout for new ways to save dummies like you and me from our own bumbling idiocy. From pandemic prevention, to vaccinations, to climate change intervention, Gates has dedicated substantial portions of his billions to knowing what's best for you.
And now he wants to lower the temperature of the earth by...
*Checks notes*
Filling the atmosphere with more pollution?
Yes, that's right, a team of Harvard researchers, whose project is called SCoPEx, is planning tests in Sweden next year which would be the next step toward attempts to DIM THE SUN in order to cool the earth down.
The idea is that if you fill the air with enough tiny particulates, they'll reflect some of the sun's rays back up, thus lowering the temperature down here. They got the idea from volcanic eruptions.
Reasonable people everywhere (including a few reasonable environmentalists) were like, "Hey hold on a sec, man. You want to DIM THE FREAKING SUN??"
According to Reuters:
Harvard University scientists plan to fly a test balloon above Sweden next year to help advance research into dimming sunlight to cool the Earth, alarming environmentalists opposed to solar geoengineering.
And look who's footing the bill, it's Bill Gates!
SCoPEx said about 300 similar stratospheric balloons were launched worldwide in 2019. Backers of SCoPEx include Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
If all goes well, they are hoping to actually do some experiments where they put small amounts of calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere and measure what it does to the sunlight.
Still, if successful, it could be a step towards an experiment, perhaps in the autumn of 2021 or spring of 2022, to release a tiny amount – up to 2 kg - of non-toxic calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere
Because the best way to save the world from the effects of pollution is by adding more pollution.
Guys, don't mess with the weather. Please, just leave it alone. It's fine.
Because when you mess with the weather, it can mess right back with you.
They've been fighting off criticism from everyone, including people in the Swedish government who don't want these experiments to progress.
But David Keith who is a professor at Harvard and involved in the project says he knows "there are very many real concerns" about solar geoengineering, but apparently sharing a similar god-complex to Bill Gates, says there's nothing to worry about.
"There is a long history of people doing research on things that were socially unpopular at the time that we now see as important," he said, such as birth control.
Great example, David. Birth control. Fears assuaged.
There are consequences when you play God. But, hey, compared to the millions of babies killed by abortion each year, what's a little weather manipulation?
