THE MODELS WERE WRONG THEN, BUT SURELY THEY’RE NOT WRONG NOW:

Shot: Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet: Three geoengineering projects seek to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean. “Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing. These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors. . . . ‘There’s a huge political hesitancy to do outdoor perturbative experiments,’ said Jessica Seddon, a senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. ‘It’s going to take some extraordinary bravery to acknowledge that in certain circumstances those experiments will be needed, have informational value and should be constrained but not banned.'”

Chaser: How China Miscalculated Its Way to a Baby Bust: A missile scientist used mathematical models to push the nation’s one-child policy. Its legacy is proving hard to shake. “The rapid shift under way today wasn’t projected by the architects of China’s one-child policy—one of the biggest social experiments in history, instituted in 1980. At the time, governments around the world feared overpopulation would hold back economic growth. A Moscow-trained missile scientist led the push for China’s policy, based on tables of calculations that applied mathematical models used to calculate rocket trajectories to population growth.”