A Mysterious Startup Is Developing a New Form of Solar Geoengineering

This story originally appeared on Undark and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In July 2012, a renegade American businessman, Russ George, took a ship off the coast of British Columbia and dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate dust into the Pacific Ocean. He had unilaterally, and some suggest illegally, decided to trigger an algae bloom to absorb some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—an attempt at geoengineering, a tech-based approach to combating climate change. It was a one-off, the largest known geoengineering experiment at the time, and a harbinger for more to come. Now a startup called Stardust seeks something more ambitious: developing proprietary geoengineering technology that would help block sun rays from reaching the planet. Stardust formed in 2023 and is based in Israel but incorporated in the United States. Its approach is novel: Most geoengineering research today is led by scientists in the US at universities and federal agencies, and the work they are doing is mor ... Read full article.