{"id":377886,"date":"2025-05-10T14:39:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T12:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=377886"},"modified":"2025-05-10T14:39:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T12:39:53","slug":"sun-dimming-quango-has-800-million-of-taxpayer-money-to-blow-and-a-ceo-on-450k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=377886","title":{"rendered":"Sun-Dimming Quango has \u00a3800 Million of Taxpayer Money to Blow \u2013 and a CEO on \u00a3450k"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Sallust<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, this site reported that \u00a350 million worth of taxpayer money<\/a> was about to be approved to blot out the Sun in the name of staving off \u2018global warming\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Telegraph<\/a> <\/em>has more on developments and the eye-watering sums of money being quietly allocated to Aria to develop potentially irreversible interventions in the natural world, while also paying extravagant salaries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Plans to block sunlight to fight global warming have inadvertently shone a light on Aria, the Government\u2019s opaque research arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency was set up in 2021 by Kwasi Kwarteng, the ex-Tory business secretary, and was originally the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson\u2019s former chief aide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet few people on the street know what it is, what it does, or how much taxpayer cash is flowing into its well-financed coffers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, it has a shiny website stocked with techno-waffle promising to help scientists \u201creach for the edge of the possible\u201d and foster \u201copportunity spaces\u201d but there has been little clarity on its day-to-day operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, we learnt it will spend \u00a356.8 million on 21 \u201cclimate cooling\u201d projects, which include looking into the logistics of building a \u201csun shade\u201d in space and injecting plumes of salt water into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to dim the Sun,\u201d representatives from Aria said rather disingenuously at a press briefing, knowing full well that should experiments prove successful, that is their ultimate aim.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t take long to follow the gravy train. As tiresomely usual, it\u2019s the same old story of pigs in the trough:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Prof Mike Hulme, of Cambridge University, pointed out that the experiments were setting Britain on a \u201cslippery slope\u201d towards mass deployment of technologies that will be impossible to prove are safe, effective and reversible until they are actually in the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He warned: \u201c[The sum of] \u00a357 million is a huge amount of taxpayers\u2019 money to be spent on this assortment of speculative technologies intended to manipulate the Earth\u2019s climate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aria has been given an eye-watering \u00a3800 million budget to play with, with little to show for it so far, except some off-the-wall ideas, and astronomically high wage bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ilan Gur, the Chief Executive, is being paid around \u00a3450,000 annually \u2013 three times more than the Prime Minister, while Antonia Jenkinson, the Chief Finance Officer, takes home around \u00a3215,000 and Pippy James, the Chief Product Officer, around \u00a3175,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Aria is blowing \u00a34.1 million a year on wages despite having just 37 staff, with the top four staff at the company pocketing nearly \u00a31 million of taxpayers\u2019 cash each year between them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Likening Aria\u2019s approach to a scattergun, the Telegraph<\/em>\u2019s judgement is that the quango \u201cis operating like a speculative venture capital fund, essentially playing poker with the public purse\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worth reading in full<\/a> if only to register just how much and how expensive the insanity is becoming. No wonder Reform did well last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, this site reported that\u00a0\u00a350 million worth of taxpayer money\u00a0was about to be approved to blot out the Sun in the name of staving off \u2018global warming\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":377888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819134,691834968,691820918,691818154,691834969,691834970,691833395],"class_list":{"0":"post-377886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-alarmism","9":"tag-dominic-cummings","10":"tag-geoengineering","11":"tag-net-zero","12":"tag-quango","13":"tag-sunlight","14":"tag-woke-waste","16":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0Screenshot-2025-05-08-132139.jpeg?fit=1481%2C845&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1AiW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":378304,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=378304","url_meta":{"origin":377886,"position":0},"title":"A Closer Look at ARIA: Britain\u2019s Secretive \u00a3800 Million Sun-Dimming Quango","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"14\/05\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The UK\u2019s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), established in 2023 with an \u00a3800 million purse of taxpayer funds, received a burst of publicity last week when it was unveiled that the agency was planning to \u201cdim the sun\u201d to fight global warming. 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