NB My own view on the climate change question is probably summarised as "profoundly confused" - I don't trust much of the popular or political literature on the subject and I don't have the time to review the academic literature (which will be biased anyway - I worked in academia for long enough to know well enough how that game works).
So I find it all too easy to believe that we can have an impact - but I probably agree that directing climate in a constructive way is probably beyond our capabilities as a species.
Not that clear that local climate impacts would scale. It's a different mechanism at work: changing the energetics and every ecosystem on an entire planet (indeed, changing its emitted spectral lines) is a whole lot more than introducing new plants or physical structures to a couple square miles.
What I find so fascinating about climate change is that we are able to do this. It's a bit less huge than our atmosphere getting populated with oxygen for the first time, but still really exciting. Intellectually exciting, I mean, and personally terrifying.
http://www.economist.com/node/17722704
NB My own view on the climate change question is probably summarised as "profoundly confused" - I don't trust much of the popular or political literature on the subject and I don't have the time to review the academic literature (which will be biased anyway - I worked in academia for long enough to know well enough how that game works).
So I find it all too easy to believe that we can have an impact - but I probably agree that directing climate in a constructive way is probably beyond our capabilities as a species.