Recently, this site reported that £50 million worth of taxpayer money was about to be approved to blot out the Sun in the name of staving off ‘global warming’.
The Telegraph has more on developments and the eye-watering sums of money being quietly allocated to Aria to develop potentially irreversible interventions in the natural world, while also paying extravagant salaries:
Plans to block sunlight to fight global warming have inadvertently shone a light on Aria, the Government’s opaque research arm.
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency was set up in 2021 by Kwasi Kwarteng, the ex-Tory business secretary, and was originally the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief aide.
Yet few people on the street know what it is, what it does, or how much taxpayer cash is flowing into its well-financed coffers.
Sure, it has a shiny website stocked with techno-waffle promising to help scientists “reach for the edge of the possible” and foster “opportunity spaces” but there has been little clarity on its day-to-day operations.
This week, we learnt it will spend £56.8 million on 21 “climate cooling” projects, which include looking into the logistics of building a “sun shade” in space and injecting plumes of salt water into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth.
“We’re not trying to dim the Sun,” representatives from Aria said rather disingenuously at a press briefing, knowing full well that should experiments prove successful, that is their ultimate aim.
It doesn’t take long to follow the gravy train. As tiresomely usual, it’s the same old story of pigs in the trough:
Prof Mike Hulme, of Cambridge University, pointed out that the experiments were setting Britain on a “slippery slope” towards mass deployment of technologies that will be impossible to prove are safe, effective and reversible until they are actually in the sky.
He warned: “[The sum of] £57 million is a huge amount of taxpayers’ money to be spent on this assortment of speculative technologies intended to manipulate the Earth’s climate.”
Aria has been given an eye-watering £800 million budget to play with, with little to show for it so far, except some off-the-wall ideas, and astronomically high wage bills.
Ilan Gur, the Chief Executive, is being paid around £450,000 annually – three times more than the Prime Minister, while Antonia Jenkinson, the Chief Finance Officer, takes home around £215,000 and Pippy James, the Chief Product Officer, around £175,000.
In fact, Aria is blowing £4.1 million a year on wages despite having just 37 staff, with the top four staff at the company pocketing nearly £1 million of taxpayers’ cash each year between them.
Likening Aria’s approach to a scattergun, the Telegraph’s judgement is that the quango “is operating like a speculative venture capital fund, essentially playing poker with the public purse”.
Worth reading in full if only to register just how much and how expensive the insanity is becoming. No wonder Reform did well last week.
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Dox Ilan, antonia and pippy ….
In a way, I’m not concerned, because as a retiree I no longer pay income tax. What does concern me, however, is that these money-grabbing lunatics are threatening to mess around with my climate without my consultation, let alone permission. That I cannot accept.
You still pay tax on everything you consume, except some foods.
It’s fairly minimal mostly. 10% on some goods at home.
as a retiree I no longer pay income tax.
Lucky you, zzw
As a UK pensioner I do and it is increasing annually.
I’m also a retiree – a retired mining engineer, but keeping my hand in – and I still pay tax when . . . the utterly idiotic profligacy of Net Zero is NOT something I should be being FORCED to spend MY money on!!
And if anybody is interested, let’s talk about the viability of the global mining industry being capable of supplying the metals and minerals that would enable NetZero2050 to happen, shall we, an aspect that I have never heard discussed by ANY idiotic catastrophist politician, let alone scientist (of the likes of Dessler).
It’s an eye-wateringly toxic mixture of hubris, stupidity and greed. The Climate Cabal will stop at nothing to keep the Biggest Lie In Human History chugging along for at least a little while longer.
When some one works out how to hold pollies bureaucrats and CEOs responsible for the wasted money and the damage this will stop.
holding them responsible , take every cent from them, there families, and any companies owned by the former
Deja vu.
£450K for a friend or ‘ally’ to waste money we haven’t got:
The UK national debt grows at a rate of £5,170 per second!
https://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/
Thankfully bitcoin is still on the up.
Blotting out the sun is a criminal act with no scientific justification. We no longer live in a democracy. It is a dictatorship controlled by people who haven’t the faintest idea what they are doing.
Its been a dictatorship since 1660…
It is one since Cromwell killed the king and ran the new model army.
Some say even before when the East India Company was created.
As far as laundering money is concerned, they know exactly what they are doing.
As far as laundering money is concerned, they know exactly what they are doing.
Story tip: Spanish fly
Britain could face months-long blackouts because of net zero
Grid operator has raised concerns that the switch from dependable gas to intermittent wind and solar power will ‘reduce network stability’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/10/britain-blackouts-net-zero-ed-miliband/
I have yet to trace the report referred to in the article. Unfortunately they fail to link to it. If anyone finds it, please post a link.
So if dimming the sun’s influence on Earth’s surface will halt global warming, isn’t that a tacit admission that “it’s the sun, stupid!”, so we can drop all the CO2 bullshit?
+10
Blocking the Sun. What could possibly go wrong?
The solar farm productivity would go down. That might upset the CAGW freaks.
Spending 800 million to blot out the Sun while spending more money to install solar panels for electricity generation is complete and utter madness. I have no other words for it.
All of this is in a country that gets 1400-1600 hours of sunshine per year, about 4 hours per day on average. This is according to GROK.
No country should be allowed to mess with the sun unless they can guarantee that the effects will be confined to their territory. AsI recall “weather modification” has been looked at as a potential weapon of war a number of the times.
Let’s ask taxpayers how much they are willing to spend to dim the Sun in their area.
Isn’t unblocking the sun precisely what the various clean air acts were for?
And now these fools want to gamble away the pleasant warmth we have gained from these acts.
What could possibly go wrong? Are these people idiots? Is there any useful science or observations to make any sense out of this latest tomfoolery? Or have you Brits let American Democrats thru Customs? The ideas and wage structure would suggest it…see Joe Biden’s $$$ giveaways at the end of his term.
We’re developing AI and now want to block out the Sun.
They seem to have been using “Animal Farm” and “1984” as a blueprint. But they were written a long time ago.
Are they now including “The Matrix” in their plans?
Pick up a copy of Neal Stephenson’s novel “Termination Shock”. I won’t spoil things by saying
the plot is a billionaire gets tired of waiting on government and decides to fix the climate by himself by doing geo-engineering.
Lets just say things don’t go as modeled. [Lol: kinda like CMIP-6, and CIMP-5, and …]
btw I have a T-shirt that says: “Make Orwell fiction again” Very appropriate for much of the planet!
£50 million, buttons really, and it’s only research.
Can you imagine if one of these projects worked and could reverse/prevent “climate change” for an affordable price, the eco-warriors would have a fit.
But this insane quango actually received 800 million.
Barking mad, they should all be sectioned and put away somewhere where they can do no harm. A coal mine would do.
Take away the government money and all of this nonsense disappears overnight. It is that simple.
Sadly it is not government money, it is tax payer money.
Has anybody actually shown that the current temperature is above optimum much less dangerous? Especially when one considers that when the earth warms, from whatever causes, the tropics don’t warm very much at all and the areas closer to the poles which could be argued are below optimum temperature for life etc. warm much more than the tropics. It has been assumed that the current temperatures are too warm and that trace greenhouse gases are responsible. Surely we would study that thoroughly before embarking on something this radical.
David, don’t ask silly questions – some peoples’ heads might explode.
Has anybody actually shown that the current temperature is above optimum much less dangerous?
Don’t you worry your little head about that as the omniscient ones will let you know when they’ve reached the optimum temperature and you’re out of danger. In the meantime they’re busy with the sun and dealing with nosey DOGE types.
This is on a tipping point of massive unintended consequences.
This should be outlawed.
I think its been working down here in NSW..
We haven’t had any decent period of sun for quite a while !! 🙁
Maybe some sunshine tomorrow, but then forecast for overcast/rain for the next week..
Getting ridiculous !!