Paul Nurse has a letter in the Guardian (where else?) on the subject of geoengineering. It's less bad than you might expect.
A time may come when mankind will need to consider geoengineering the climate to counteract climatic effects of greenhouse gases. If that time comes, we need to have a good understanding of whether such efforts will work and, just as importantly, whether they will have any negative side effects. Those who oppose such exploratory research on the grounds that we do not know what its effects may be ... are missing a fundamental point of research, which is to allow us to potentially rule out any technology that would have negative effects that outweigh the positive.
Researching stuff probably does little harm, although one can certainly question whether geoengineering research, or indeed any scientific research, should be a priority for government spending at the moment. Outside the ivory tower, times are hard, but it is not obvious that Sir Paul has noticed.
One little snippet of his letter caught my attention:
Geoengineering research can be considered analogous to pharmaceutical research. One would not take a medicine that had not been rigorously tested to make sure that it worked and was safe.
As Delingpole knows to his cost, Sir Paul likes his analogies, but I think that he may have erred this time. Because if we demand that putative medical treatments are thoroughly tested to see if they actually do what they claim, should we not demand the same from the climate models that Sir Paul and so many others believe justify us redesigning our economies on neanderthal lines.