Are geoengineering questions on-topic?

Question

A number of questions, such as this recent one

Ways, Through Science, to Counteract Hurricane Forces?

seem to me beyond .the scope of this site. This is a classic case of someone misidentifying technology or engineering as "science".

You can't make a question be about science by merely putting the word "science" in it. The question is about modifying a natural process. This is engineering by definition, and perhaps should be asked on Engineering SE rather than Earth Science SE.

On the other hand, that site may not want those questions and there may not be a good fit for them anywhere else. Are they within scope?

Answer 1

IMHO they are on topic here - although whether the expertise exists here to get good answers is a different matter. Geoengineering ideas are of course about engineering, and one could argue that a question focussing entirely on the engineering implementation of such a scheme wouldn't be a great fit here, but there is science - and usually earth science - behind them.

Similar questions may also be in scope at Engineering.se, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of overlap between sites.

Answer 2

I don't think it's as simple as: geo-engineering, on or off topic?

There are certainly some geoengineering questions that could be a good fit here, such as: "what are the possible unintended consequences of using ships to throw up ocean spray to increase the Earths's albedo, to mitigate global warming?"

Then there are lots of others that are either asking about crank ideas, or (intentionally or not) about building fictional worlds, and those don't belong here.

In the particular case cited above, that looks like a pretty bad question for several reasons (too broad, too likely to prompt a rambling discussion, and a reasonably close duplicate).