ARIA’s £57million crazy techo-solution to stop climate change

Diagram illustrating solar geoengineering methods: airplanes release aerosols in the stratosphere and ships spray sea salt into clouds, both reflecting sunlight to cool the Earth.

The UK Government’s new DARPA style research agency–Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, ARIA–today announced 21 research projects, costing the British tax-payer £57 million, aimed at developing technologies to ‘cool the climate’, so-called solar geoengineering. I have been studying and writing about these speculative technologies for many years, see for example my 2014 book ‘Can Science […]

What Tony Blair Gets Right About Net-Zero

A person walks near large industrial fans at a carbon capture facility; adjacent text reads, "The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change and Achieve Net-Zero.

The latest report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, ‘The Climate Paradox: Why We Need To Reset Action on Climate Change’  has caused an almighty row within the Labour Party and amongst the UK’s climate commentariat and climate campaigners and activists.  The Guardian newspaper has felt it necessary to editorialise about the Report, […]

My 1999 ‘Climate Book of the Year’

Book cover with the title "The Carbon War: Dispatches from the End of the Oil Century" in bold red and black text on a white background, recognized as a standout 1999 Climate Book.

Leggett,J. (1999) The Carbon War: Dispatches from the End of the Oil Century. London: Penguin Books. 337pp. This essay continues my series of monthly posts in which I select one ‘climate’ book to highlight and review from one of the 44 years of my professional career in climate research (starting with 1984, my first year […]

‘Small-Step Funding Models Fit Better for Climate Research’

Logo of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) with a gradient background transitioning from blue to light yellow.

I have this item of Correspondence appear in Nature Climate Change today. I contrast the research funding model of the UK Government’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) with the funding model that established, 25 years ago this summer, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. I conclude my comparison thus: “Research into the sociology […]

Is the quest for net-zero a form of scientism?

Mike Hulme |

Discussing a tendency in contemporary politics to reduce issues to questions of scientific measures of climate change, Mike Hulme argues for more diverse understandings of climate and change and its impacts on society. I discussed these ideas in my lecture at the London School of Economics, ‘Epistemic Pluralism and Climate Change’ on 10 March 2025, […]