For two decades, the world’s governments have failed to meet their own commitment to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas. As frustration builds among scientists, some of them have begun to argue for research on a potential last-ditch option in case global warming starts to get out of control. It is called geoengineering — or directly manipulating the Earth’s climate.

The idea sounds like science fiction, but it is not.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to establish a committee on global geospatial information management in order to enhance international dialogue and cooperation on spatial data infrastructures. The UN recognizes the benefits of geospatial information for application to humanitarian, peace and security, environmental and development challenges as well as to responses to climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, famines, population displacement, and food and economic crises.

On Aug. 8, 1975, geoscientist Wallace Smith Broecker published "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" in the journal Science, the first time the iconic phrase "global warming" was used in a scientific paper.

Climate change could result in "sudden and abrupt" shocks to countries around the world and have "far-reaching implications for global stability and security," a senior United Nations' official has warned.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, told the U.N. Security Council Wednesday that natural resources would be "at increasing risk from climate change and its impacts."

Critics fear that manipulating weather patterns could have a calamitous effect on poorer countries