Harvard Researchers Are Preparing to Geoengineer the Atmosphere

[caraher]

11. This only makes things worse

In addition to the aforementioned fact that the real problem should be named "carbon pollution" (ocean acidification being yet another manifestation), there's the further problem is that the worst prospect for geoengineering comes if it works.

The reason "working" would be a disaster is that once you start an intervention, you have to keep it up. Because as soon as you stop, if you haven't reduced the greenhouse gas levels, you've actually increased the gap between the new "set point" for temperature and what it is before it has equilibrated. The result is that the rate of warming is greater than it would have been had you done nothing, and this makes adaptation that much harder (less time to adapt) and increases the likely extinction rate.

And if you imagine that governments would recognize this possibly disastrous outcome and take every conceivable measure to ensure the interventions continue, once begun, no matter what, just take a look at what is happening right now in the US. Had Obama launched a "successful" geoengineering program, it would have been immediately scuttled by Trump.