The science community seems ever less credible. Perhaps it isn't so much that science practice has changed for the worse as that the appearance of fair minded truth seeking has been dissolved by their public dalliance with pop sociology and crass political pronouncements.

Dr. Keith, an organizer of the conference, said that at one time he thought scientists should not talk in public about “geoengineering” remedies for global warming — like injecting chemicals into the upper atmosphere to cool the poles, or blocking sunlight by making clouds more reflective or stationing mirrors in space.

Like many other researchers, he explained, he worried that the potential for a climate fix, even an imperfect one, would only encourage people to continue the profligate burning of fossil fuels that got the planet into trouble in the first place.

Never mind the science, let amateurish notions about social engineering dictate behavior. Right.

Developing artificial techniques to cool the earth “is going to dampen the fervor for mitigation to a certain extent for some people,” said Thomas Homer-Dixon of the University of Toronto, an expert on how societies adapt to economic and ecological change.

On the other hand, he said in an interview, a serious discussion of geoengineering might finally sound an audible alarm for others. “When people in the general public realize that serious scientists are thinking seriously about doing this,” he said, “they are going to say, ‘O.K., we really need to look for alternatives.’”

Just so. Or maybe just not so. Whatever. It's the story that counts . . . err, well, not really.

And who should decide what action should be taken or when?

“I have no idea,” Dr. Keith replied. But just as international organizations were formed to regulate the use of radio frequencies, organize air traffic control, track space debris and deal with other problems, it might be possible to create an international organization to deal with these questions, he said.

“We are backing our way into global governance, very slowly,” he said.

Nonsense. International organizations do not regulate anything, though there are grifters aplenty who would like to impose control. There are agreements between some of the principals that are observed when convenient. Others more or less openly ignore the whole thing. It is only a portion of the planet that is bound by controls. The "known world" so to speak. Elsewhere there be dragons and such.

In any case, many of the scientists noted, humans are already geoengineering — with the greenhouse gases they are pumping into the atmosphere.

One way or another, Dr. Keith said, in 200 years the earth will be “an artifact,” a product of human design.

No, not design. There is no designer. This is a very difficult idea it seems, though I once thought that scientists could grasp it. Silly me. Humans do design, but they all do it, often at cross purposes. Each adds a vector to a composite effort whose direction and force can only be seen in hindsight. You can then make up a just so story about some design that could have achieved that result, but nobody knew it at the time. Children's bed time stories.