Either way, adaptation is being forced upon us; but I think what you're saying is that resources should be diverted from climate modification to adaptation technology, right?
What do you have in mind?
Yup - that's what I'm saying, instead of putting all our eggs in the basket of climate modification, we should be hedging our bets by trying to increase our societies resilience to externalities (whether that be climate change, earthquakes, meteor strikes, or plagues).
Where will we be in 100 years if we've spent a few trillion attempting to reduce carbon emissions, only to find that it was too little too late, or that it is a natural warming cycle (and reductions had no effect)? We'll have wasted the resources, and more importantly the time, that would be better spent elsewhere.
So how? My first thought, is lets pay the most attention to those who are most unable to deal with a system shock - the poor, undeveloped countries. The rich countries will be able to fight our way through a catastrophic event, it won't be pretty, but we will. The poor will be slaughtered. Let's work on building their capacity to respond to an event. Whether people like it or not, this capability comes along with development.
So much like my argument in the "Population & DNA" thread in the General Science, I'm arguing for more development. Help the undeveloped become developed.
