The climate change community has been an abject failure thus far. It misunderstood the problem, its causes and feasible responses. They all pulled the same old rusty tools out of their very sparse kits and tried to misuse them again. Regulations? Hah! Taxes? Hah! Minty fresh visions? Yeech! Finally some are beginning to think.

Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place.

But now, in a major reversal, some of the world's most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming.

Worried about a potential planetary crisis, these leaders are calling on governments and scientific groups to study exotic ways to reduce global warming, seeing them as possible fallback positions if the planet eventually needs a dose of emergency cooling.

"We should treat these ideas like any other research and get into the mind-set of taking them seriously," said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

The plans and proposed studies are part of a controversial field known as geoengineering, which means rearranging the earth's environment on a large scale to suit human needs and promote habitability. Dr. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist, will detail his arguments in favor of geoengineering studies in the August issue of the journal Climatic Change.

Practicing what he preaches, Dr. Cicerone is also encouraging leading scientists to join the geoengineering fray. In April, at his invitation, Roger P. Angel, a noted astronomer at the University of Arizona, spoke at the academy's annual meeting. Dr. Angel outlined a plan to put into orbit small lenses that would bend sunlight away from earth — trillions of lenses, he now calculates, each about two feet wide, extraordinarily thin and weighing little more than a butterfly.

In addition, Dr. Cicerone recently joined a bitter dispute over whether a Nobel laureate's geoengineering ideas should be aired, and he helped get them accepted for publication. The laureate, Paul J. Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, is a star of atmospheric science who won his Nobel in 1995 for showing how industrial gases damage the earth's ozone shield. His paper newly examines the risks and benefits of trying to cool the planet by injecting sulfur into the stratosphere.

The paper "should not be taken as a license to go out and pollute," Dr. Cicerone said in an interview, emphasizing that most scientists thought curbing greenhouse gases should be the top priority. But he added, "In my opinion, he's written a brilliant paper."

Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding.

"A lot of us have been saying we don't like the idea" of geoengineering, he said. But he added, "We need to think about it" and learn, among other things, how to distinguish sound proposals from ones that are ineffectual or dangerous.

I'll stop, no need to quote the whole thing since you can read it yourself. Consider:

"People used to say, 'Shut up, the world isn't ready for this,' " said Wallace S. Broecker, a geoengineering pioneer at Columbia. "Maybe the world has changed."

The world has been ready all along, it was climate change opportunists that weren't ready. It would ruin their bidness plans. But the silliness of those plans is becoming ever more obvious and they will, as ever, reinvent themselves. They will become born again geoengineers as soon as they figure out a way to profit from it.

Update:

List-o-Geoengineering-links at IFTF. Many are old, from the mid to late 90s. See the earlier post Social Dunces for old M&M discussion:

However difficult it may be to implement technological fixes for atmospheric change it will be far, far easier than trying to change society. However much things squirm around in physical reality when you intervene in a system, they are placid and constant compared to what happens when you tinker with social systems. It seems to me that political activists, politicians and many scientists fail to demonstrate the minimal maturity required to make useful techno-social decisions. They seem to believe in magic, perhaps as a consequence of taking their own sophomoric musings seriously, like people who play "planning games" and forget that reality is nothing like their simplistic model systems.

Update:

See this beebish article if you doubt that "The climate change community has been an abject failure thus far."

Climate analysts now fear a meltdown of EU climate leadership.

"I have been a big supporter of the EU ETS, but hearing the German news I feel more depressed than I ever have done about our ability to tackle climate change," said Professor Michael Grubb of the UK Carbon Trust, set up by the British government to help create a low-carbon economy.

"I really believed that Europe would lead the way through the EU ETS but now I wonder whether this will ever happen." . . .

The German news comes as the European Environment Agency released figures showing that the EU is badly under-achieving on its Kyoto targets.

EU emissions rose by 0.4% in 2004 relative to the previous year. UK emissions rose 0.2 %. In 2004, the combined EU-15 emissions were only 0.9% below 1990.

None of this is surprising - anyone who has given even a cursory amount of attention to the issue already knew that the euros were, um, blowing smoke. But it is a bit interesting that the blinkers are coming off a bit and the failures are being reported. At some point even the most deluded will have to face reality, or at least get alternate delusions, since the whole euro climate debacle is merely a political show. It has no substance. . . well, except for the smoke.

Update: Priorities

. . . when you have 9,000 priorities you have none. [via Maggie's Farm]

So, over the weekend, Mr Bolton [John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN] sat down with UN diplomats from seven other countries, including China and India but no Europeans, to rank 40 ways of tackling ten global crises. The problems addressed were climate change, communicable diseases, war, education, financial instability, governance, malnutrition, migration, clean water and trade barriers.

Given a notional $50 billion, how would the ambassadors spend it to make the world a better place? Their conclusions were strikingly similar to the Copenhagen Consensus. After hearing presentations from experts on each problem, they drew up a list of priorities. The top four were basic health care, better water and sanitation, more schools and better nutrition for children. Averting climate change came last.

There's an interesting dynamic to these things. Though the priorities established among these nations is obvious and sensible it is poison politics for those who have gone so far out on the climate limb, and even further out on the anti-American limb. Europeans, for example, can't support any sensible idea if the US backs it or if it speaks unspeakable truths about cliamte change religion. They become ever more ludicrous in their determination to cling to the failed policies of the past.

Update:

Dogma

Conservatives continue to deny the validity of global warming, because it runs contrary to their moral system. Recognizing global warming would call for environmental regulation and governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a perceived interference with the free-market, Conservatives' golden calf.

This is by George Lakoff, not a careful thinker, but it is a good example of the crippling dogma that has caused the failures of the climate change community. Regulation or any other sort of bureaucratic meddling will not do any good and is not a sane response to climate change. By insisting that regulation is required they expose their intellectual bankruptcy. They can't think usefully due to their fixation on power, authority and domination of society. Their goal isn't a sensible response to observed and theorized threats, it's just to rule the world. Climate change is an excuse to step up the pressure, though their prescriptions at best make things worse by squandering time and resources that might be used more effectively.

None of the activists on either side of this issue care about climate, the environment or any other issue. They just use these issues to seek power. The sane response is to thwart them all, ridicule their sloppy deceits, point and laugh at the dim wits that support them.