A Northern California city council voted early Wednesday morning to cancel the nation’s first outdoor experiment into the potential to limit global warming by altering cloud behavior.
The five-member Alameda City Council voted unanimously to reject University of Washington researchers’ aerial spraying of liquefied salt from the deck of a retired aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, two months after the experiment began.
City officials said they were put off by the project’s lack of transparency. While researchers maintained they didn’t need any federal, state or local permits to begin the experiment, officials faulted them for announcing the project in the New York Times rather than notifying the city first.
The University of Washington’s Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement (CAARE) project drew international attention when it began in April. Launched in partnership with the nonprofit research groups SilverLining and SRI International, it was a relatively small experiment: It planned to spray sea salt particles for 5- to 30-minute periods a few times a day for at least four months to study how they move through the air. The next phase of the study would aim for the clouds to increase their density and reflectiveness.