Setting out on a major geo engineering project is a folly or a cynical PR greenwash - maybe both. Anything to avoid change of entrenched interests. We already have a highly viable path to transition to Renewable power while optimizing all sorts of sustainability loops.

This is a great article. I'm glad to see this sentiment is finally starting to gain traction:

>She fears that the rising dangers of climate change will put growing pressure on nations and other actors to move forward with solar geoengineering, even if no one has done the necessary research to reduce scientific uncertainty and sort out the technical challenges.

>“We don’t think the alternative is decisions not happening at all,” she says. “We think the alternative is decisions being made in a panic or on lack of evidence.”

Unfortunately the article ends on that point and we don't get the rebuttal of the lofty idyllic academics or fearful policymakers.

Yep. Someone is surely going to do something at some point if we continue on this course. Hand-wringing from relative safety of above-sea level places at high latitude is cheap. If you're in charge of millions of people in peril, even if it's a horrible idea, if you don't actually know its a horrible idea, well...

Also it does annoy me when people say "well it went badly wrong in the Matrix/Snowpiercer/etc., therefore we should not even talk about it, as it is clearly stupid. It may be stupid, or it may not be, but that should be determined on its own (de)merits, not because fiction used the idea as a plot device.