By Charles Pekow In the 2020 science-fiction novel The Ministry for the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a near-future climate catastrophe in which a deadly heat dome stalls over India, killing millions of people. Its government, in defiance of the United Nations, launches fleets of aircraft to seed the stratosphere with cooling sulfate aerosols, despite a dearth of knowledge on geoengineering risks. An international taskforce is hurriedly formed to deal proactively with the out-of-control climate crisis. Throughout the book, this body, dubbed the Ministry for the Future, races to …