The initiative is modelled on the US research agency Darpa, launched at the height of the Cold War, whose cutting-edge research contributed to the development of GPS, drones and the personal computer.
Aria has set out to tackle high-risk, high-reward scientific endeavours, from building humanoid robots to developing brain implants.
But it is the agency’s climate work that is raising eyebrows among academics. In a “programme thesis”, developed by Glasgow University’s Professor Mark Symes, Aria calls for proposals “exploring options for actively cooling the Earth”.
The thesis notes that engaging in such engineering would be a matter of “risk vs risk”, acknowledging there is debate as to whether society must “buy time” by “manipulating certain variables to reduce global temperatures on a short-to-medium term basis”.
Critics argue that developing geoengineering technologies as a solution to climate change is fraught with ethical problems. The risks include diverting resources from cutting carbon emissions, or creating false hope that a deus ex machina solution will emerge to save the planet.
Others worry that if a technology was developed, it would be impossible to garner international agreement on how to use it. Worse still, the cure could prove worse than the poison, resulting in unforeseen and catastrophic consequences for the biosphere.
Symes, however, insists “the work we are going to fund is not designed as a substitute for decarbonisation”. It is instead intended to provide fundamental research in case mankind trips over a “tipping point” that leads to sudden, uncontrollable global warming.
It will also research the “legal, ethical, governance and geopolitical dimensions” of different approaches to geoengineering.
Not everyone in the research community is convinced. In 2022, 500 scientists signed an open letter calling for a global moratorium on research into solar geoengineering. “The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonisation policies,” they said.
“Solar geoengineering is fraught with so many uncertainties, both politically and physically,” says Jeroen Oomen, assistant professor at Utrecht University and one of the letter’s signatories. “The prospect of solar geoengineering provides another avenue to suggest that fundamental changes to our political and economic systems can be avoided or postponed.”
While Aria’s paper does not push for any specific method for cooling the planet, it does provide some “not exhaustive” examples. These include “marine cloud brightening”, whereby ocean clouds could be created using saltwater to reflect the Sun’s radiation.
Other examples include “ice sheet thickening”, where Arctic ice could theoretically be restored. Start-ups such as Real Ice have proposed using drones to pump sea water into the air, which then condenses and forms new ice.
Even more outlandish are “space-based reflectors”, vast mirrors that could – theoretically – be launched into space to deflect a portion of the sun’s rays to reduce Earth’s temperature.