Wednesday, April 08, 2009

"Obama May Block Sun's Rays to End Global Warming"


No, this isn't a hungover April Fool's joke. The Obama administration means business on climate change, even if its plans will destroy businesses large and small. Fox News reports that "Obama May Block Sun's Rays to End Global Warming".

To be fair, the headline is misleading. They really mean Obama's ego will be used to block the sun's rays.

Eh, sorry, couldn't resist.

The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

(Is it so dire that we can call it "global warming" again -- or is it "climate change"?)

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.

One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

(This has all the makings of a bad James Bond movie... only Barack Obama is playing Ernst Stavro Blofeld.)

"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching.

Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

(Or being trapped in car with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd during a cross-country trip.)

At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.

...But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air — making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested — could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

...Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide — the chief human-caused greenhouse gas — out of the air and store it.

(Artificial volcanoes and millions of artificial trees sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere... gee, I can't think of anything that could go wrong with that.)

At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.

Yeah, like printing trillions of dollars up.


I wonder what temperature on Earth would make this crew of scammers and idiots happy? Is there a right temperature for the planet?

Just wondering.

Update: TheBad:

So, what brilliant scheme are we pitching today, Brain?

Other than the same thing we do every day (taking over the world), here is what I propose, Pinky: to combat the human-created pollutants in the atmosphere that have been changing our climate, we intend to pump human-created pollutants into the atmosphere in order to change our climate.


Hat tip: Sean.


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