We cannot avoid the need for geoengineering

I tend to agree. First, we should stop the damage that's being done. But even with the best will in the world that's going to take time, and then we'll still need to undo what we've already inflicted. Though I don't think spraying sulphates into the clouds is going to be the way forward.

Here’s what’s going to happen: Every year for the foreseeable future, scientists, activists, and citizens concerned about climate change will have a discussion in one form or another about geoengineering. There will be editorials and vague proposals in journals; there will be think pieces on the need not to do it, but to talk about it. These will increase in volume and urgency as our situation becomes ever clearer, perhaps starting right now, with the release of the latest and most dire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

But then, one day, you will look up, and the planes will be in the sky. They will be dumping tiny aerosol particles designed to deflect bits of sunlight back into space. Maybe this will happen when 10 million people have to vacate coastal Bangladesh and start pouring into India. Maybe when the last resident of Kiribati finally gives up hope and moves to Fiji.

Maybe a few billion dollars per year could retrofit some planes and send them into the stratosphere, where they would endlessly dump out sulfate aerosols until the planet starts to cool. And by most scientists’ estimates, it would cool the planet. Those simple facts are the driving force that will turn our never-ending conversation cycle of scary-but-necessary-but-dangerous-but-crucial into planes in the sky.

Of course, that doesn’t negate all the problems with solar radiation management’s use. It doesn’t fix ocean acidification. Once we start this project, some models say we really, really shouldn’t stop. There is a danger that geoengineering will lead to complacency in the fight to transition away from fossil fuels. And finally, this would be a planetary-scale experiment with so many variables as to make firm predictions of the results nearly impossible.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/geoengineering-is-inevitable-1829623031