When rainfall is measured in feet, not inches, we are witnessing the climate change bearing down on us.

Catastrophic destruction tied to the Atlantic hurricane season, monsoon rains in Mumbai, and downpours in Niger are just a few of the many extreme weather events that are being intensified by global warming.

While the rise of a few degrees in temperature may not be enough for a person to run a fever, that change is enough to radically impact the earth's climate.

By the way of comparison, the earth was once rendered largely uninhabitable by a one to two-degree Celsius drop in temperature - an era now referred to as the Little Ice Age.

In response to the threat posed by global climate change, most nations have committed to significant mitigation efforts, through the Paris Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But will these collective efforts be enough?

Some scientists are trying another approach, exploring new tools to deliberately alter the global climate system.

These discrete and diverse technologies are often grouped under the all-encompassing and poorly defined rubric of "climate engineering" or "geo-engineering".

These radically different approaches aim to either halt the process of global warming by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or to counteract warming already under way.

The problems is, while several tools seem to be gaining ground in computer models, laboratories, and even real-world experiments, public discussion has not kept pace with their advancement.