I don't know enough about climate change debate to weigh in on the cage match between Levitt/Dubner, the environmental blogs, and, it seems, most of the liberal environmental blogosphere. I know enough about journalism to know that asking your sources to feed you a quote you have written is a fairly major no-no, and doesn't make me inclined to trust the rest of the critique that kicked this brouhaha off. It's bad enough when journalists pull the "would you say" trick, because human cognitive evolution being what it is, too many people will allow you to put words in their mouth. But no one I know would even consider announcing to their sources what they would like to hear.
That aside, what about geoengineering, for those of us who are convinced that climate change is real and urgent? I share the general queasiness with the idea of massive attempts to control the climate--it seems to me that a backfired attempt could be awfully bad. On the other hand, I also share the dismay that, outside of major economic recessions, we don't seem to have a good plan for cutting emissions. Most of Europe's reductions have been achieved via the collapse of the East German and other post-Soviet industrial economies, Britain's 'dash for gas" after the energy sector was privatised, and purchases of questionable offsets--not from actual reductions as a result of greenhouse policy.