Ego-engineering

Bill Gates and Richard Branson are making sizable donations (conveniently unsized in the reports) to groups engaged in geo-engineering research and advocacy. This is the speculative science that will solve our climate change problems by dicking about with the atmosphere.

While it's some way short of full-blown terraforming, the megalomania quotient is pretty high. Branson has previous when it comes to looking down on us puny humans, literally so given his progression from balloons to sub-orbital spacecraft, while Gates is clearly a big dumb objects kinda guy at heart.

Of course, this may just be part of their respective programmes to be recognised as benefactors of mankind, which my University of Life diploma in psychoanalysis tells me is down to guilt arising from the sharp practices that set them on the roads to riches in the first place (86-DOS and tax evasion).

Actually, maybe the guilt isn't such a big deal for them. Maybe this is just the ultimate Ozymandias kick. Instead of "the weather forecast, sponsored by PowerGen", we can look forward to "the weather, courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation".

Mind you, that would be better than having the clouds repeatedly forming into the shape of a bearded, smirking man's face.