Reaching a Comfort Level With Geoengineering - NYTimes.com

One thought often gets lost in when discussion turns to the issue: people are already engaged in geoengineering on a huge scale. People contribute to it every time they drive their car, eat a Big Mac or turn on the air-conditioning. That’s what Jane Long told me when I reported this fall on the study by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Dr. Long, an associate director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was the co-chairman of the panel that wrote the policy center’s report. When it comes to geoengineering, she said, emissions of greenhouse gases from industry, transportation and other human activities are altering the planet. “We are already doing it accidentally,” she said, “but the Earth doesn’t know that.”