I thought the bit about Russia was insightful. East of the Urals, Russia is very sparsely populated. Take a look at this border region between Russia and China to see just how underutilized Eastern Russia is for farming, especially once the growing season increases. The light area within the Chinese border is all intensely cultivated land. The darker area in Russia is wilderness.

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.4321743,133.5037235,409161m/...

Re: Russia's population: it's aging, and relative to China? China could field an army larger than the entire population of Russia if they were sufficiently motivated.

Are there any geoengineering projects that would really work? What if we are on the precipice of a methane-driven feedback loop and military/intelligence secretly knows this?

In any case perhaps that's not how they think. The powerful nations of the world are still largely dominated by their militaries and military-type thinking, which leads people to think in terms of defense and strategic conflict not neutral engineering or cooperative approaches.

I found https://projectvesta.org/ interesting.

I am personally not totally convinced because the quantity of olivine that should be moved is greater that the oil we are currently moving annually, but still it looks slightly better than SO2 because there is no ocean acidification, from my layman perspective.

>Are there any geoengineering projects that would really work?

For cooling earth dispersing sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere is generally believed to be economically and technologically viable [1]. For more predictable and controllable results we can deploy sun shades made of thin foil into orbit.

Alternatively we can develop the tech to be self sufficient in reasonable luxury on Mars or the Moon. Great for anyone with enough money to go there, and for the slightly less wealthy the tech will be applicable to make your mansion on earth more comfortable

I'll just mention how all three of those plans would benefit from cheap access to space. So if I had a few million from selling my start up and I was worrying about climate change I might start a rocket company. Or maybe produce electric cars to help turn this ship around instead. Maybe both.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_inject...

> that's not how they think

I think this is the answer. I don't think the situation is as out of control as everyone is led to believe. It's just not being handled as everyone would believe. Imagine if it was possible to geoengineer our way out of climate change? Think about the powerful implications that would create in terms of ability to affect others climate situation around the world and what that means to those currently in power.

China's population is also aging.

Evidence suggests that solar geoengineering with SO2 would work.

Occam's razor I'm more likely to believe in just incompetence than a cabal of elites who know that geoengineering won't work without having conducted any real experiments