On April 22, The Guardian reported that the United Kingdom’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency is set to launch a series of outdoor experiments using “solar radiation management,” or SRM, to “cool the Earth” by redirecting the sun’s heat into space. ARIA has cited the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change’s finding that “the pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change” as the driving force behind these experiments. 

Many scientists have criticized geoengineering proposals, saying they fear that investing heavily in such projects would give oil and gas companies a pass to keep polluting and warning that the technology could have severe consequences for biodiversity and human rights. 

Right-wing media and conspiracy theorists quickly attacked the new program, calling it “openly evil” and scary while also using the opportunity to generally oppose renewable energy sources and other feasible climate change solutions and amplify misinformation as part of a long-running campaign against transitioning from fossil fuels. 

• Solar radiation management refers to a group of geoengineering techniques aiming to redirect the sun’s heat into space, rather than back down to Earth. When too much solar radiation gets absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it causes the Earth to heat up. Scientists have been trying to remove greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to ease this heat-trapping effect, but SRM seeks to manage the sun’s rays directly by increasing the reflectivity of clouds, building mirrors in space to shield the Earth and help deflect some radiation from the sun, or thinning out certain types of clouds to allow more radiation to escape into space. [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 10/3/24]
   
• ARIA has outlined potential approaches to experimenting with various types of SRM, but the program appears to still be in the early stages of planning. ARIA lists the techniques mentioned above as possibilities for “small, controlled, geographically confined outdoor experiments” that “are presented throughout this thesis for constructive feedback.” [ARIA, accessed 4/28/25] 
   
• Experts say transitioning away from fossil fuels would combat climate change. In 2023, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote with “high confidence” that burning fossil fuels at our current rate “will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term.” The IPCC added: “Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards. … Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming.” [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 3/20/23]

• Climate denier Marc Morano claimed on Fox that the “billionaire class” is funding geoengineering because “they want to prove a point, I think, in the end, that global warming is man-made or climate change is man-made. And it’s because governments are injecting these chemicals into the sky.” Earlier in the segment, Jesse Watters Primetime, guest Rachel Campos-Duffy said, “We know green policies are nothing but a Trojan horse — sinister pieces of legislation wrapped up nicely in solar panels and bird- and whale-killing windmills.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 4/25/25; Media Matters, 11/14/22]
   
• Discussing ARIA’s project on Fox, renewable energy opponent Bjorn Lomborg said that geoengineering could be helpful “if global warming becomes a real problem,” but claimed that other solutions are “not actually fixing climate change right now.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 4/25/25; Fox News, The Will Cain Show, 4/24/25]
   
• Right-wing influencer Russell Brand said that he doesn’t “know enough about ecology” to determine whether humans are warming the planet, but “what I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the people who are making the claims that they’re going to help you by dimming the sun are working for Satan.” [Twitter/X, 4/24/25]
   
• Discussing the program on Fox’s Gutfeld!, podcaster Michele Tafoya said that “the sun was supposed to be a good thing. I thought the sun was going to solar-power the world.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 4/24/25] 
   
• On Hannity, Fox contributor Joe Concha complained, “We were told that solar panels fight climate change and defuel energy. So, now the plan is to block out the sun so the solar panels don’t get, you know, energy? We’re truly governed by children.” Fox contributor and guest host Jason Chaffetz claimed, “This is where government funding goes.” Concha added that “the whole climate change thing” is “a scam, basically.” [Fox News, Hannity, 4/24/25]
   
• Far-right influencer Carl Benjamin (known as Sargon of Akkad) called it “openly evil” to consider “blocking out the sun,” adding that solar panels in England are “a dramatic and just incredible waste of money that future generations will laugh at us for even attempting.” [YouTube, 4/23/25]
   
• Discussing the ARIA experiment, conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf claimed that a geoengineering technique called cloud seeding is “causing wildfires to burn hotter in California” and “damaging the ecosystems in Australia.” [Twitter/X, 4/28/25, The Atlantic, 9/12/23]

• Fox News has spread falsehoods about offshore wind for years, such as calling windmills “bird murderers” and “whale murderers,” priming the technology as a target for President Donald Trump. Trump has now paused permitting and leasing for new projects and recently issued a stop-work order for a major offshore wind project in New York that was slated to provide power for 500,000 homes starting in 2026. [Media Matters, 2/4/25; The Associated Press, 4/16/25; Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 1/25/25]
   
• Fox repeatedly attacked the Inflation Reduction Act — which included a historic $369 billion in climate and energy funding, among other provisions — in the two years after it was signed into law, regularly and falsely branding the policy as the Green New Deal, a proposal the network has spent years demonizing as “totalitarian” and a “takeover.” [Media Matters, 8/21/24, 2/25/19, 2/14/19]
   
• Right-wing media attempted to politicize a major power outage that hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of France at the end of April by making it a symbol of the dangers of decarbonization and renewable energy. In the U.S., opponents of renewable energy claimed the power outage exposed the irreconcilable shortcomings of wind, solar, and storage batteries and used it to validate Trump’s hostility toward these technologies and to justify his “drill, baby, drill” agenda of oil and gas expansion. But power outages have also long impacted fossil fuel energy grids, and renewable energy has proved resilient in the face of past extreme weather. [Media Matters, 4/30/25]
   
• Conspiracy theorists have spread debunked claims that geoengineering caused hurricanes and wildfires. Some have claimed that climate-fueled extreme weather events are a result of weather manipulation and not of burning fossil fuels, or falsely conflated atmospheric phenomena such as aircraft contrails with geoengineering efforts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has clarified that “no technology exists that can create, destroy, modify, strengthen or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form,” and decried the “large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology” that is spread online. [Media Matters, 10/9/24; CBS News, 1/16/25; CNN, 3/25/25; BBC, 7/3/24; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 10/3/24]