Wellington, Jan 13 (IANS): For the public, it's a thumbs-down when it comes to climate engineering measures -- the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change, says a study.

The results are from researchers at the University of Southampton and Massey University (New Zealand) who had undertaken the first systematic large-scale evaluation of public reaction to climate engineering.

The work is published in Nature Climate Change journal.

Some scientists think that climate engineering approaches will be required to combat the inexorable rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels, reports Science Daily.

Climate engineering could involve techniques that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or approaches that slow temperature rise by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface.

Co-author professor Damon Teagle of the University of Southampton said: "Because even the concept of climate engineering is highly controversial, there is pressing need to consult the public and understand their concerns before policy decisions are made."

Lead author, professor Malcolm Wright of Massey University, said: "Previous attempts to engage the public with climate engineering have been exploratory and small scale."

He added: "In our study, we have drawn on commercial methods used to evaluate brands and new product concepts to develop a comparative approach for evaluating the public reaction to a variety of climate engineering concepts."