Al Gore: Geoengineering to Counter Warming Is "˜Utterly Mad'

Al Gore takes an extremely dim view of "geoengineering" — undertaking massive projects to manipulate the environment to counteract global warming, such as spreading particles in the atmosphere to deflect some sunlight.

The former vice president said Wednesday that turning to geoengineering proposals would be "insane, utterly mad, and delusional in the extreme," according to the Guardian.

"The idea that we can put a different form of pollution into the atmosphere to cancel out the effects of global-warming pollution is utterly insane," Gore said.

Gore, on a call with reporters, said consideration of geoengineering techniques by some scientists is "a mark of how desperate some of them are feeling due to the paralysis in the global political system."

The Washington Post has a primer on the topic here.