Profound Risks of Geoengineering, Scientists Misrepresent Climate Change, Sweden's Tiny Urban Gardens
November 14, 2025

As scientists who have worked on the science of solar geoengineering for decades, we have grown increasingly concerned about the emerging efforts to start and fund private companies to build and deploy technologies that could alter the climate of the planet. The basic idea behind solar geoengineering, or what we now prefer to call sunlight reflection methods (SRM), is that humans might reduce climate change by making the Earth a bit more reflective, partially counteracting the warming caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Many people already distrust the idea of engineering the atmosphere—at whichever scale—to address climate change, fearing negative side effects, inequitable impacts on different parts of the world, or the prospect that a world expecting such solutions will feel less pressure to address the root causes of climate change. Notably, Stardust says on its website that it has developed novel particles that can be injected into the atmosphere to reflect away more sunlight, asserting that they’re “chemically inert in the stratosphere, and safe for humans and ecosystems.” But it’s nonsense for the company to claim they can make particles that are inert in the stratosphere. Even diamonds, which are extraordinarily nonreactive, would alter stratospheric chemistry. Any particle may become coated by background sulfuric acid in the stratosphere. That could accelerate the loss of the protective ozone layer.

Deflecting the sun to fight climate change could trigger droughts and hurricanes, the Royal Society has warned. In a new report, experts argued solar radiation modification (SRM) could reduce global temperatures but “worsen rather than ease” climate change and make the sky look less blue. In May, the Government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) announced £56.8m for 21 “climate cooling” projects, which include injecting aerosols into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth. However, the report found there were “major uncertainties” and argued the plan may have devastating knock-on effects, particularly if deployed by rogue groups. Prof Jim Haywood, of atmospheric science at the University of Exeter, said: “What you do in one place can cause climate change in a different place. “Stratospheric aerosol injection deployment in the northern hemisphere could impact the position of the tropical monsoon and lead to droughts in sub-Saharan Africa. “Everyone there relies on subsistence farming, so it quickly devastates if there is a drought there. “In the southern hemisphere, it could lead to an increase in North Atlantic hurricane frequency and intensity, it could lead to winter droughts over the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula.” A “termination effect” whereby sun dimming technology was suddenly stopped, could also lead to rapid warming of up to 2C in decades, and cause devastating effects for ecosystems.

Last year, a climate scientist named Patrick Brown, along with seven co-authors, published a study in the journal Nature about the connections between wildfires in California and global warming. Dr. Brown confessed in a Free Press article that he had framed his research not just to reflect the truth, but to fit within what he described as the climate alarmist storyline preferred by prestigious journals in the United States. He did this, he says, by intentionally focusing only on climate as a factor in wildfires, and not on the myriad other causes that contribute to the blazes consuming ever more land across the country. The formula for getting published, he wrote, “is more about shaping your research in specific ways to support pre-approved narratives than it is about generating useful knowledge for society.” And when it comes to climate science, he alleged, that preapproved narrative is that “climate change impacts are pervasive and catastrophic.” [Climate scientist] Dr. Pielke argues that many of the widely cited cost estimates connecting weather disasters to climate change are mistaken. (Climate advocates regularly assert that climate change is costing the U.S. billions of dollars every year.) His research, he says, shows that extreme weather appears costlier because properties are more valuable. In other words, wealth increase is the real story. He regularly takes issue with media portrayals of extreme weather. The reality is more complex, he says. If climate science doesn’t make space for alternative viewpoints, it risks its foundational ideals of open inquiry and debate and rigorous, evidence-based critiques,

For years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has claimed that human-caused climate change has accelerated sea level rise. But that claim is false. This does not mean that climate change isn’t happening. It is. It simply means that it has not caused the sea level to rise. Top scientists know this fact and have deliberately misrepresented it for years, deceiving the public. In September, I reported on one of the first global studies of sea level rise that used tide-gauge data, which is the only real-world data that goes back long enough, to the mid-19th Century, that would allow one to detect whether sea level rise had accelerated, decelerated, or remained steady. The only reliable long-term real-world data is tide gauge data, and they do not show acceleration. Since then, I exchanged over 50 emails with one of the world’s leading sea level rise scientists, Robert Kopp from Rutgers University, and heard back from IPCC, NASA, and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What I learned shocked me. For years, the world’s top scientists have known that they cannot prove there has been an acceleration of sea level rise, and yet they have told the public that they can. We’ve known since 2018 that 89% of the atoll islands that scientists and the media claimed would be destroyed by sea level rise had instead grown or stayed the same size. Sea level rise is not “observably accelerating” over time horizons that would show a trend. The only scientific basis for claiming it is accelerating is through modeling. The observable tide-gauge data do not show this.

Local cops have gotten tens of millions of dollars’ worth of discounted military gear under a secretive federal program that is poised to grow under recent executive action. The 1122 program ... presents a danger to people facing off against militarized cops, according to Women for Weapons Trade Transparency. “All of these things combined serve as a threat to free speech, an intimidation tactic to protest,” said Lillian Mauldin, the co-founder of the nonprofit group, which produced the report released this week. The federal government’s 1033 program ... has long sent surplus gear like mine-resistant vehicles and bayonets to local police. Since 1994, however, the even more obscure 1122 program has allowed local cops to purchase everything from uniforms to riot shields at federal government rates. The program turns the feds into purchasing agents for local police. Local cops have used the program to pick up 16 Lenco BearCats, fearsome-looking armored police vehicles. Those vehicles represented 4.8 percent of the total spending identified in the ... report. Surveillance gear and software represented another 6.4 percent, and weapons or riot gear represented 5 percent. One agency bought a $428,000 Star Safire thermal imaging system, the kind used in military helicopters. The Texas Department of Public Safety’s intelligence and counterterrorism unit purchased a $1.5 million surveillance software license. Another agency bought an $89,000 covert camera system.

Some 10,000 American troops are currently supporting the Trump-ordered counternarcotics operations in the Caribbean. At this point the military intervention has killed 27 people, including individuals who are likely not Venezuelan. President Trump's most recent explanation to reporters for this unprecedented Pentagon build-up off Venezuela's coast was surprisingly reminiscent of the failed "war on drugs" which hearkens all the way back to the days of Richard Nixon, when he famously declared it "public enemy number one". There was a time ... where the CIA itself was the biggest narco-trafficker in United States and perhaps the entire Western hemisphere. This was to fund regime change and covert operations in Latin America after a belated Congressional crackdown on taxpayer funding for black ops. In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News [published a] series of articles linking the CIA’s “contra” army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. During the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The CIA’s drug network, wrote [journalist Gary] Webb, “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ‘crack’ capital of the world.” Black gangs used their profits to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from one of the CIA-linked drug dealers.

The CIA experienced “as many failures as successes” in exploring the intelligence applications of LSD and other drugs, according to the October 1975 U.S. Senate testimony of the Agency’s former top chemist, Sidney Gottlieb, the man most closely associated with the notorious MKULTRA behavior control research projects. The long-secret transcripts of Gottlieb’s testimony to the staff of the United States Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (“Church Committee”) were published today by the National Security Archive, 50 years after the historic intelligence oversight hearings, along with a selection of declassified CIA memos and other records concerning MKULTRA. The Church Committee transcripts are among the highlights of the Digital National Security Archive collection, CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKULTRA. Gottlieb was a key bureaucratic player who signed off on hundreds of MKULTRA subprojects and who developed clandestine relationships with universities, prisons, hospitals, private laboratories, and private foundations that made it difficult to trace the programs back to the Agency. The Church Committee faced considerable obstacles in reconstructing the story, especially since Gottlieb and CIA director Richard Helms destroyed most of the original project records in 1973.

The United States is dusting off its old regime-change playbook in Venezuela. Although the slogan has shifted from “restoring democracy” to “fighting narco-terrorists,” the objective remains the same, which is control of Venezuela’s oil. The methods followed by the US are familiar: sanctions that strangle the economy, threats of force, and a $50 million bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as if this were the Wild West. In April 2002, a short-lived military coup briefly ousted then-President Hugo Chávez. The CIA knew the details of the coup in advance, and the US immediately recognized the new government. In the end, Chávez retook power. Yet the US did not end its support for regime change. In March 2015, Barack Obama codified a remarkable legal fiction. Obama signed Executive Order 13692, declaring Venezuela’s internal political situation an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security to trigger US economic sanctions. The White House has maintained that claim of a US “national emergency” ever since. Trump added increasingly draconian economic sanctions during his first term. The calls by the US government for escalation reflect a reckless disregard for Venezuela’s sovereignty, international law, and human life. A war against Venezuela would be a war that Americans do not want, against a country that has not threatened or attacked the US, and on legal grounds that would fail a first-year law student.

In Stockholm, Stina Larsson, 98, stood among fragrant lilacs, lilies and lavender, inspecting the garden that she has tended for more than 40 years. Ms. Larsson’s garden, situated on a postage stamp of land beside the Karlbergs Canal, is one of more than 7,000 garden allotments, known as koloniträdgårdar, in Stockholm. The gardens, established as part of a social movement around the turn of the 20th century, offer city dwellers access to green space and a reprieve from crowded urban life. Though most are modest in size — Ms. Larsson’s garden is about 970 square feet — koloniträdgårdar are prized for providing a rare kind of urban sanctuary, a corner of the city where residents can trade pavement for soil, and the buzz of traffic for birdsong. The garden programs were specifically designed to improve the mental and physical health of city dwellers. The idea was that a working-class family would be able to spend the summer there and work together but also have some leisure and fun. Cecilia Stenfors ... at Stockholm University, said her research shows that those who frequently visit green spaces, whether a forest or a koloniträdgård, “have better health outcomes, in terms of fewer depressive symptoms, less anxiety, better sleep and fewer feelings of loneliness and social isolation.” These positive effects can be particularly pronounced in older people and can help combat symptoms of age-related mental and physical decline.

A large chunk of the world’s plant diversity lies safely tucked away underground for future generations. By the numbers, the Millennium Seed Bank holds over 2 billion seeds from over 40,000 species, collected by scientists and volunteers from 279 organizations spanning over 100 countries. It’s likely the largest seed vault on Earth, with the other contender being located on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Located at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew facility in Wakehurst, seeds from all over the world are carefully cleaned, dried, and stored in walk-in freezers at -20°C, or about -4°F. For 25 years, the work has been carried out by experts who have developed the skills not only to store the seeds, but also to wake them up again, often using bespoke protocols for seed germination. “Within species there is incredible genetic diversity, which protects against disease, climate change and other threats,” Dale Sanders, biologist and former director of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, told AP. “Maintaining that diversity is essential if we want to preserve the diversity of life itself.” For all the archiving and record keeping and preservation, the MSB is hardly just a storehouse. To the contrary, it’s always growing something: funds for ecosystem restoration or botanical research, young scientists looking to begin a career in plant conservation, or plans to restore existing ecosystems by leveraging the vault’s vast reserves.

The urban tree canopy in Denver is one of the sparsest in the country. In 2020, when Linda Appel Lipsius became executive director of the decades-old Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) network, which oversees more than 200 community vegetable gardens throughout six metro Denver counties, she wanted to continue increasing community access to fresh food—a longtime goal of the garden program. But she had another aim, too: increasing the city’s tree coverage. Appel Lipsius decided to build a system of food forests throughout the Denver area. These dense, layered plantings incorporate fruit-bearing trees with other perennials to mimic natural forests. Now, DUG oversees 26 food forests, with 600 or so fruit and nut trees and 600 berry bushes. While urban trees are recognized for their multiple benefits, including cooling and carbon drawdown, “there are not a lot of players in Denver, or even in most cities around the country, who are focused on food trees,” Appel Lipsius said. “We were able to step into this space to help build and bolster the canopy while adding food-producing perennials.” Neighbors are welcome to enter and harvest a wide assortment of fruits, nuts, and berries. Beyond providing fresh food in neighborhoods that need it most, these agroforests reduce the urban heat island effect, create pollinator habitat, and combat pollution and climate change by absorbing and filtering harmful gases.

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