Over the Northern Hemisphere's summer, the world's temperatures hovered near 1.5° C above pre-industrial temperatures, and the catastrophic weather events that ensued provided a preview of what might be expected to be the new normal before mid-century. And the warming won't stop there; our current emissions trajectory is such that we will double that temperature increase by the time the century is out and continue beyond its end.

This frightening trajectory and its results have led many people to argue that some form of geoengineering is necessary. If we know the effects of that much warming will be catastrophic, why not try canceling some of it out? Unfortunately, the list of "why nots" includes the fact that we don't know how well some of these techniques work or fully understand their unintended consequences. This means more research is required before we put them into practice.

But how do we do that research if there's the risk of unintended consequences? To help guide the process, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has just released guidelines for ensuring that geoengineering research is conducted ethically.

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On Thursday, the United Nations' Environmental Programme (UNEP) released a report on what it terms the "emissions gap"—the difference between where we're heading and where we'd need to be to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It makes for some pretty grim reading. Given last year's greenhouse gas emissions, we can afford fewer than four similar years before we would exceed the total emissions compatible with limiting the planet's warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial conditions. Following existing policies out to the turn of the century would leave us facing over 3° C of warming.

The report ascribes this situation to two distinct emissions gaps: between the goals of the Paris Agreement and what countries have pledged to do and between their pledges and the policies they've actually put in place. There are some reasons to think that rapid progress could be made—the six largest greenhouse gas emitters accounted for nearly two-thirds of the global emissions, so it wouldn't take many policy changes to make a big difference. And the report suggests increased deployment of wind and solar could handle over a quarter of the needed emissions reductions.

But so far, progress has been far too limited to cut into global emissions.

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