It would be nicer in many ways if we could just use the natural ice sheet, but AFAIK by now we cannot rely on it, even if we magically removed all the political problems and suddenly started doing the right thing. Based on available information it's possible, or plausible, that irreversible processes are already under way.

I'd say the priority should be against the threats to the existence of people. Consequences for the main guilty parties is an important but separate issue. I do hope that this whole crisis could contribute to curbing corporate power (by gaining widespread popularity and push for this, among young people especially). But the priority is keeping the patient alive, because without this the question of also making them a good person is moot.

edit: I also think based on the descriptions that some of the ideas could be straightforward enough to just be executed by government services (akin to firefighters or coastal guard) without any contractors, but this more of a question of how the governments function, possible corruption etc.

> has been proven to work and be life sustaining for millions of years

This statement is wrong for a few reasons. Firstly, this is a system that repeatedly produces minor ice ages that transform large portions of continents into barren ice deserts for tens of thousands of years. It is also capable of producing major ice ages that last millions of years and cover large portions of the entire Earth in ice and this happens if there isn't enough CO2 in the atmosphere. Not exactly life sustaining. Secondly, ice, the climate that produces it and the Earth at large have no concern for the life that lives upon or within them. They are decidedly unforgiving and will kill any lifeform that doesn't fight for its life against them. Life exists in spite of the abiotic world and in direct conflict with its perpetual slide towards entropy. Given a long enough timeline this system will change into a state that is largely hostile towards human life. It is a massive misnomer to call it life sustaining.

> But you can't make money with preserving the health of the patient.

Have you not seen the cost of a gym membership?

There's money to be made everywhere. And in our society, it will be made regardless of the cost.

The ice is a reason for SRM. There are proposals to use aerosols specifically to protect arctic ice. Otherwise it's very likely to melt away before we're able to reduce emissions to zero, much less draw CO2 back down to safe levels.

The making robot bees analogy is good but I think you might be overlooking an important angle on the problem.

This is like inventing robot bee replacements, if bees were going extinct (which some people were worried about for a while, and some still are) … and while Bee populations may be collapsing but they don’t seem destined for extinction, just massive population losses that can in time recover like humans did from the Black Death… and it’s not even universally bad among all bee species.

However unlike Bees, of one species or another, which have a very clear path to repopulation and recovery overall if we don’t keep dumping pesticides on them (or at least keep looking for ones that don’t hurt them as much which has absolutely been an active area of research) … the climate may not be able to return to normal.

We’re not even sure that if we had a magic wand, and could change all human experience and industry across the whole planet so it was net carbon neutral (so neutral across co2, methane and all the other greenhouse gasses combined) starting right this very second. We might still have passed the tipping point and just be waiting for the current warmer climate based on current co2 levels to melt enough permafrost that we expose unaccounted for clathrates or deeply buried rotting bogs that will start putting out methane and continue the slide into all the predicted outcomes of uncontrolled climate change.

This system is so big and complex that we’re frantically trying to analyse it while simultaneously trying to frantically map the scope of the known unknowns meanwhile there are all the unknown unknowns that exist across the planet and every single major study acknowledges whenever they talk about the uncertainty in their measurements or their models or their survey data.

It’s one thing to invent something useless. It’s another thing to not have a plan B. Inventing robot bees is a plan B to help prevent mass starvation if bees were to go extinct, not very likely and even if they did not all crops need bees, plenty of other insects pollinate plants as well, which is why the robot bees is a little silly in practice but not in principle.

Studying geo-engineering is the Plan B for if we can’t turn back the clock due to either collective failure to change our ways enough, or fast enough, or soon enough… and when soon enough may have been yesterday and we may not even know it was yesterday until years from now when something else happens we didn’t fully understand or predict… it’s just stupid to not have been researching some plans B, C, and D. We shouldn’t necessarily give any of these more money than the current effort to actually fix the problem at its root cause but we should still be starting the research now before it’s too late for any possible plan to help. As to how much money, that’s a political issue thats too complicated for a simple HN comment that’s already getting quite long.