What was peculiar about the story was how the rich countries, led by the US, came up with a plan to save humanity, having lost all hope and scope to save the planet.

Drawing from the Biblical myth of Noah's ark, they spent years building ships that could withstand any extreme weather event that a collapsed climate system would throw at them. These ships would house people carefully selected by the governments of these rich nations and billionaires who could afford to buy a ticket.

To say that the movie could, in the not-so-distant future, come true would not only be dramatic but also alarmist. But there is a possibility of a similar collapse.

A decade after the events of the movie, rich countries are pushing for research into yet another peculiar idea: Geoengineering.

Put simply, geoengineering refers to intentional large-scale engineering solutions to alter the physics, chemistry and biology of the climate system to ameliorate the detrimental effects of anthropogenic climate change.

Not exactly a Noah's ark; the proponents of geoengineering suggest that humans try and fix the atmosphere they messed up in the first place by deliberately altering natural processes.

It can include everything from reforestation to absorbing more carbon, painting rooftops white to be more reflective, or seeding the ocean with iron to grow more plankton and absorb more carbon.

The most commonly proposed methods are solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

In theory, SRM schemes would attempt to increase the amount of solar radiation reflected by our planet, by placement of mirrors in space or reflective aerosols in the stratosphere, and enhancement of the reflectivity of marine clouds.

CDR methods propose to accelerate the removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide through either natural processes or artificial industrial means.

Neither of the two methods is new or particularly revolutionary.

According to some accounts, between 1967 and 1972 the US Air Force is reported to have used weather control warfare over Vietnam and Laos, to increase monsoon rainfall and make conditions difficult for the North Vietnamese military to fight, in what they codenamed Operation Popeye.

CDR methods have natural analogues in biological and chemical processes and address the main cause, which is excess atmospheric CO2. They, however, are slow, expensive, and lack research on larger scales.

SRM techniques, instead, propose injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere where it would oxidize to form sulphate aerosols, H2SO4 (droplets of sulphuric acid). These aerosols would reflect sunlight back into space.

“A few grams of sulphate aerosols are sufficient to offset warming from a tonne of CO2. Annual injections of about 5 metric tonnes of sulfur dioxide would be required to offset the ‘business as usual’ CO2 emissions in the 21st century,” Govindasamy Bala, professor at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, wrote in a guest editorial for Current Science in 2014.

The cost would be as low as $5 billion a year, “only a fraction of the conventional climate change mitigation costs which are estimated at approximately $250 billion per year”, he wrote.

The natural analogue here is a volcanic eruption. When a volcano erupts, it sends an ash cloud largely composed of sulphur into the atmosphere. These sulphur particles then form aerosols that reflect sunlight back.

The example Bala cited was the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, which is estimated to have sent around 20 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. According to estimates, the volcano cooled the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius the following year.

This method has gained attention due to the affordability, effectiveness and rapidity that the theory presents.

Earlier this year, a US-based startup -- Make Sunsets -- launched three balloons near Nevada, each containing less than 10 grams of sulfur dioxide. The founders said they don’t know what happened to the balloons, but the act invited a ban from the government of Mexico.

The White House is separately coordinating a five-year research plan into SRM, and even the Montreal Protocol assessment report highlighted the technology.

Their impacts, on the other hand, need more study, experts have warned.

Experts and political leaders from various countries in September suggested that governments place a "moratorium" on large-scale experiments on solar engineering, while also pushing research into the controversial technique. The Climate Overshoot Commission stressed that the world looks for ways to reduce emissions and resources for adaptation.

“It would be imprudent not to investigate or discuss SRM because present evidence suggests the possibility it could complement other approaches,” the Commission wrote.

However, the report received flak for not using harsher terms against the use of the technique, which remains poorly studied.

“The idea that we can easily control climate change in an overshoot scenario should be viewed extremely skeptically – the unknowns of such a world means that there are no safe bets. The best course of action is the one we can take today. To peak emissions and then reduce them as fast as possible," said Professor Joeri Rogelj, Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, after the release of the report.

In his 2014 article, Bala highlighted three downsides of SRM:

1. Ocean acidification, which is caused by elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

2. Unless we actively remove CO2 using CDR methods, elevated CO2 levels will persist in the atmosphere for as long as a thousand years. The implication is that SRM would have to be maintained as long as CO2 concentrations are high.

3. Halting SRM when CO2 levels are high in the atmosphere would lead to rapid climate warming.

Other impacts could include damage to the ozone layer which would then cause faster warming of the planet, respiratory illnesses, and acid rain.

A bigger fear experts have expressed is the stop-gap nature of the technique. They have warned that while scientists hope to use the time gained as SRM cools the planet to accelerate emissions cuts, governments might use it to delay the reductions altogether.

“Keeping warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors. Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030 if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C,” the IPCC had said earlier this year.

The debate is only set to get louder as the United Nations Conference of the Parties nears, where carbon dioxide removal is already high up on the agenda. But, rather than engineering climate systems that scientists may have no control over, the world might have a better chance if the focus was on ensuring those climate systems don’t collapse.