This experiment will almost certainly come to nothing.

Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. Now, per the Telegraph, U.K. scientists will do the next best thing:

Experiments to dim sunlight to fight global warming will be given the green light by the Government within weeks.

Outdoor field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, are being considered by scientists as a way to prevent runaway climate change.

A confession of bias: On top of being ineradicably skeptical about the global climate “agenda,” I am also a 44-year-old layman with a lifetime’s worth of apocalyptic science-fiction reading under my belt, and thus perhaps not the ideal person to judge such endeavors. I’m the sort of hopelessly risk-averse naif, after all, who would have told you it was a bad idea to encourage Chinese military scientists to recklessly engage in gain-of-function research with deadly viruses in a poorly secured lab. So what do I know?

But it’s hard not to wonder at a scientific method that, in the words of commentator Gregg Easterbrook, responds to mere uncertainty about climate with “let’s tamper with the source of all life.” I certainly remember being lectured constantly by my eco-conscious grade-school that aerosols were in fact deadly poison: dissipating the ozone layer, immiserating the Third World, killing off the globe’s most lovably vulnerable creatures, etc. Now I guess we’re going to inject them straight into the sky to block out the sun. (In fairness, it beats some of the other options that have been proposed.)

Leave aside the fact that environmental activists have now persuaded the British government to adopt the philosophical worldview of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Leave aside the fact that it seems like a poor idea to artificially mess with a system as complex as the climate of Great Britain in order to respond to speculative fears about the climate. We are told by the leader of research that “Everything we do is going to be safe by design. We’re absolutely committed to responsible research, including responsible outdoor research.” All well and good, of course, until crop yields are accidentally wrecked for an entire season or somesuch. This experiment will almost certainly come to nothing; it is nevertheless hard not to laugh at the audacious folly of our elites when their proposed response to humanity wrecking the environment by artificially mucking about with it is to save the environment . . . by artificially mucking about with the engine of all biological life. At least there’s no danger of unanticipated consequences here!