The critics don't exactly provide a persuasive case - neither here, nor in the previous open letter on the topic at https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/01/17/

The critics don't exactly provide a persuasive case - neither here, nor in the previous open letter on the topic at https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/01/17/climate-scientists-ban-solar-geoengineering/ https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/01/17/climate-scientis.... Indeed they argue their case so badly that they actually make me strongly support experiments in solar geoengineering where previously I would've been unsure. They do a terrible job of arguing against this tech on the basis of risk. They suggest that it could be counterproductive, but the ONLY mechanism they even suggest for how this could be the case is that geoengineering could reduce the incentive to tackle climate change in other ways, such as by reducing CO2 emissions. But if geoengineering works and has no problematic side effects, then... so what? This is pure status quo bias; the argument would be just as valid (or rather, just as absurd) if we flipped it and said that all attempts to reduce carbon emissions are dangerous and immoral because they reduce the incentive for solar geoengineering. This mindset - where attempting to develop any new safeguard against a danger is presumed to be unethical on the basis that it could reduce the incentive to use other safeguards - is not how we think about any other kind of risk and I see no reason at all why climate change risks should be a special case. And it gets even more aggravating when they argue against doing even small-scale experiments with this tech on the basis that "The current state of science is not good enough". Again, unless you are articulating some kind of plausible downside to the experiment, this is a fully general argument against all science. It makes no sense to argue against research into a technology on the basis that we don't yet know whether the technology will work - that's what the research is for! I have only a layman's understanding of climate science, and my first instinct is to be scared of attempts at global-scale climate engineering going catastrophically wrong and destroying the world, but if all the world's climate scientists can't articulate anything that I would understand as a risk and instead seem to be terrified by the prospect that the tech will solve climate change so effectively and harmlessly that it makes their ideologically preferred set of social changes unnecessary, then that sounds fantastically reassuring and I wish everyone working on this tech the best of luck.