Enter Stardust Solutions. The company has been working under the radar for a few years, but it has started talking about its work more publicly this year. In October, it announced a significant funding round, led by some top names in climate investing. \u201cStardust is serious, and now it\u2019s raised serious money from serious people,\u201d as James puts it in his new story.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s making some experts nervous. Even those who believe we should be researching geoengineering are concerned about what it means for private companies to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdding business interests, profit motives, and rich investors into this situation just creates more cause for concern, complicating the ability of responsible scientists and engineers to carry out the work needed to advance our understanding,\u201d write David Keith and Daniele Visioni, two leading figures in geoengineering research, in a recent opinion piece<\/a> for MIT Technology Review.<\/p>\n Stardust insists that it won\u2019t move forward with any geoengineering until and unless it\u2019s commissioned to do so by governments and there are rules and bodies in place to govern use of the technology.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s no telling how financial pressure might change that, down the road. And we\u2019re already seeing some of the challenges faced by a private company in this space: the need to keep trade secrets.<\/p>\n Stardust is currently not sharing information about the particles it intends to release into the sky, though it says it plans to do so<\/a> once it secures a patent, which could happen as soon as next year. The company argues that its proprietary particles will be safe, cheap to manufacture, and easier to track than the already abundant sulfur dioxide. But at this point, there\u2019s no way for external experts to evaluate those claims.<\/p>\n As Keith and Visioni put it: \u201cResearch won\u2019t be useful unless it\u2019s trusted, and trust depends on transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n