Featured Image Credit: Sean Gallup / Staff / DrPixel / Getty
A few of the world's richest billionaires have teamed up to tackle global warming, in a plan that aims to block out the sun with giant balloons.
Climate change is one of the biggest threats that the Earth is facing, as even small effects like the Earth tilting just 31.5 inches can have severe consequences for our future.
Scientists have made their own disturbing predictions about the future, and the harmful behaviors of some billionaires has a significant effect on the future of the Earth, but some of the richest individuals aren't willing to sit around and wait for the inevitable.
Led by names such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and OpenAI's Sam Altman, venture capital-funded startup 'Make Sunsets' has launched giant balloons over Mexico, where sunlight-reflecting aerosols have been released into the Earth's atmosphere.
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The aim of this is to block and reflect incoming solar radiation, which in an ideal world would lower the Earth's temperature and act as a positive change against the harmful effects of global warming.
The plan has drawn significant criticism from various areas of scientific research, with many pointing to the unintended consequences of Make Sunsets' ambitious plan.
It is claimed that this project could cause significant crop failures, regional droughts, and even an increase in natural disasters like hurricanes and tropical diseases.
As reported by MIT Technology Review, the project has been criticized by key researchers, who have "condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage," continuing on to argue that the company is "not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field."
Others concur this belief, as Adrian Hindes - a PhD candidate at Australian National University - explained to the Daily Mail in an interview that the company's efforts are: "at least at present, nowhere near at a scale necessary for actually causing global temperatures to decline meaningfully."
Make Sunsets has even drawn heavy criticism from the Mexican government too, as the country has chastised the conducting of 'rogue' experiments "without prior notice and without the consent of the Mexican government and the surrounding communities."
It seems, then, like Make Sunsets is fighting an uphill battle to legitimize their efforts, facing disapproval from almost everywhere they look.
Luke Iseman, the co-founder and CEO of Make Sunsets, isn't afraid of a little backlash though, and claims that while the actions of the company might make him "look like a Bond villain," he believes that "it's morally wrong, in my opinion, for us not to be doing this."
He hasn't exactly got the backing of social media either, as the comments of a post on the r/Futurology subreddit are almost unanimously against the company's actions:
"So sulphur production is legal as long as you write a white paper and [have] a slick website," says one user.
Another remarks: "Oh cool. So instead of worrying about some country going rogue and deciding to do this with unknown, maybe extreme, consequences, it's just... whatever random startup decided to move fast and break things today?"
While Make Sunsets definitely has the financial backing of some of the world's richest individuals, it will have to do a lot more it seems to convince the rest of the world that it's doing something worthwhile.
