The UK government is to fund “Bill Gates’ geoengineering experiments” to explore combatting global warming by cooling the earth.
This isn’t quite right. The Advanced Research and Intervention Agency (ARIA), a non-departmental public body which funds scientific or technological research, has confirmed Bill Gates is not involved in funding or developing the programme.
Social media users are sharing a misleading headline from a blog which claims that the UK government is to fund Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ “geoengineering experiments”.
While a research programme into climate cooling is being funded by an agency funded by the UK government (a summary of which is reported accurately in the article), a spokesperson for the organisation confirmed to Full Fact that Mr Gates is not involved in its funding or development.
Screenshots of the headline have been circulating on Facebook, which states: “UK Government to Fund Bill Gates’ Geoengineering Experiments to Fight ‘Global Warming’ by Cooling Earth.”
The posts often include a picture from the article of Prime Minister Keir Starmer shaking hands with Mr Gates. This picture was taken in 2022, when Mr Gates visited Parliament and met the Labour leader before he became Prime Minister.
Another version of the article, which repeats the same claim, is also being shared online.
However, what the headline claims is not accurate.
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It’s true that the Advanced Research and Intervention Agency (ARIA), an arms-length research and development funding agency and a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, is soliciting proposals for a project exploring ‘climate cooling’.
But an ARIA spokesperson told us via email: “Bill Gates, individually or through any of his foundations or funds, is not involved in funding or developing ARIA's Exploring Climate Cooling Programme.”
Climate cooling methods are a form of geoengineering; specifically interventions which have the aim of lowering the Earth’s temperature, either on a global or regional basis, and reversing climate change
Techniques that have previously been theorised include stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening—increasing the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface (by re-growing ice sheets for example)—and constructing space-based reflectors to shade the Earth from a proportion of incoming sunlight.
Applications for the 12-month programme, which has £56.8 million in funding, are open until 9 December.
According to the programme thesis and objectives, it aims to explore and attempt to answer questions about the “practicality, measurability, controllability and possible (side-)effects of approaches for actively cooling the Earth through indoor and (where necessary) small, controlled, outdoor experiments”.
The programme will fund the experiments themselves, the modelling, simulation, observation and monitoring required to support the experiments, as well as research into the “ethical, governance, law, and geopolitical dimensions” of the approaches under investigation.
The solicitation document states that successful outcomes from this program could include ruling particular options out from further study as “technically infeasible”, ruling them out as “infeasible due to risks that cannot be adequately constrained”, or highlighting approaches that show promise and would benefit from further research and development.
Microsoft founder Mr Gates has previously provided direct financial backing to Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, which carried out the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx). The programme set out to help scientists learn more about the efficacy and risks of solar geoengineering.
The project had proposed a specific solar geoengineering experiment which involved releasing between 100g and 2kg of calcium carbonate approximately 20km into the atmosphere via a weather balloon with the aim of measuring changes in the surrounding air mass such as changes in aerosol density, atmospheric chemistry, and light scattering.
However, work was suspended in August 2023 and it was announced in March 2024 that the experiment would no longer be pursued.
Since 2007 a grant-making research fund created by Mr Gates called the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research has also given out grants to 13 research projects and various scientific meetings totaling $8.5 million (although decisions on projects that receive funding are made by two lead scientists, Dr David Keith of Harvard University and Dr Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science).
These funded projects have included research into removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, analysis of solar radiation management and a task force on geoengineering.
We have previously fact checked a number of claims about geoengineering which are either misleading or missing important context, including many about “chemtrails” and that the Canadian government has not “admitted” to blocking the sun.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because a spokesperson for the government-funded research body involved has confirmed that Bill Gates is not involved in funding or developing the programme.
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