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A 2020 laboratory experiment—not a real-world war game—found that participants could push a simplified solar-geoengineering scenario toward excessive cooling, with welfare losses. It shows how competing preferences might create strategic problems; it does not prove that countries will deploy the technology or fight over it.
What does “dimming the Sun” mean?
Solar geoengineering is a broad label for proposed ways to alter Earth’s energy balance. The National Academies’ 2021 report, Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance, focuses on three approaches:
- Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI): adding reflective particles to the stratosphere to reflect more sunlight.
- Marine cloud brightening (MCB): adding particles to brighten low clouds over selected ocean regions.
- Cirrus cloud thinning (CCT): modifying high-altitude ice clouds so more outgoing thermal radiation can escape.
These are distinct proposals, not one interchangeable technology. The phrase “dimming the Sun” is shorthand, and the strategies would not have identical effects or risks.
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What did the 2020 “game” actually test?
The PNAS paper “Solar geoengineering may lead to excessive cooling and high strategic uncertainty” reports a controlled laboratory experiment in which participants made decisions in a simplified economic game. They were not national leaders, and the experiment was not a simulation of an actual military confrontation or a forecast of deployment.
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The researchers report evidence of free-driving: aggregate geoengineering exceeded the level that was socially efficient, and participants’ welfare fell. In a countergeoengineering treatment, the paper reports high payoff inequality and heavy welfare losses. The abstract cautions against reading the results as a simple or inevitable “geoengineering war.”
The useful takeaway is narrower but important: when participants have different incentives and preferences, individually strategic choices can produce an outcome worse for the group. The experiment does not establish how often this would happen among governments, or what real-world institutions would do.
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Why could countries disagree about how much cooling is desirable?
Countries can experience climate impacts differently and may prefer different temperature outcomes. An actor that wants more cooling could, in theory, press for an intervention level beyond what would benefit the group overall. Other actors might oppose that choice or pursue a counter-intervention, potentially escalating disagreement.
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This is a strategic mechanism explored in economic models and experiments, not a demonstrated political outcome. The review “The Economics and Governance of Solar Geoengineering,” by Moreno-Cruz, McEvoy, McGinty, and Cherry, published online in 2024 and in a 2025 journal volume, emphasizes that assumptions matter: different models can reach different conclusions about crowding-out, free-driving, and governance.
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Why are security and power politics part of the debate?
A 2026 PLOS Climate perspective by Möller and Young argues that research scenarios should examine political competition, security motivations, and power—not assume long-term cooperation as the only setting. The authors point out that modeled optimal scenarios often presume countries can cooperate over very long periods.
That is an argument for broadening research scenarios, not evidence that states are preparing hostile deployments. A model that includes strategic competition asks a different question from one that assumes coordination; neither, by itself, establishes what governments will do.
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What a “solar-geoengineering conflict” scenario needs to specify
A headline about a war game, model, or conflict can obscure crucial differences. To assess what a scenario actually shows, check:
- Evidence type: Is it a laboratory experiment, a computer simulation, a policy scenario, or an observed event?
- Decision-maker: Are choices made by experimental participants, modeled countries, or actual governments?
- Decision structure: Is intervention unilateral or coordinated, and who gets to set the target temperature?
- Distribution of impacts: Who receives the intended cooling, and who bears regional side effects?
- Countermeasures: Can another actor counter the intervention, and how does the scenario represent that choice?
- Time horizon and exit: What assumptions does it make about duration, emissions cuts, and what happens if intervention stops?
- Security incentives: Does the scenario include political competition, or does it assume sustained cooperation?
Why cooling would not solve climate change
Solar geoengineering would not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or address impacts such as ocean acidification. The National Academies says it cannot substitute for emissions reductions. It also identifies potential risks involving ozone, regional climate—including the Indian monsoon—ecosystems, agriculture, health, and governance.
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Stopping an intervention after it has offset substantial warming could cause catastrophically rapid warming if emissions reductions had not also occurred. That termination risk is one reason the technology cannot be treated as a temporary replacement for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.
What the experiment does—and does not—tell us
The 2020 lab results support taking strategic incentives seriously: a group can face losses when individual choices push intervention beyond a socially efficient level, and counter-intervention can coincide with severe inequality and welfare losses in the experiment. They do not show that a real country has dimmed the Sun, that conflict is inevitable, or that experimental participants’ choices predict government behavior.
The National Academies’ report, the economics review, and the 2026 PLOS Climate perspective address different parts of the issue: physical approaches and risks, economic incentives and governance, and the need to examine competition and security. Taken together, they make the central question less “Can one actor control the climate?” than “Who decides what outcome to pursue, who bears the side effects, and what happens if cooperation breaks down?”
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