The idea that the only way to deal with how humans are changing the climate is to have scientists and engineers figure out a way to change it back again has attracted some clever monikers over the last few years. Journalists and bloggers have called geoengineering everything from “the MacGyver-ish solution” to “Plan B” to “the panic button.”

Last year, The New America Foundation held a conference that asked whether it was “the horrifying idea whose time has come.” When Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt devoted a chapter to geoengineering in their book SuperFreakonomics, they ended up having to defend themselves from accusations that they were climate deniers. As Dubner wrote