It’s not April Fools Day. The following story did not come from The Onion but the AP, so I’ll have to assume this isn’t a joke,
AP: Obama looks at climate engineering
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.
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.
“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”
…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. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.
Still, “we might get desperate enough to want to use it,” he added.
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. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.
We don’ have enough problems? Now Obama wants to play God and control the weather? Is he also President of the Sun?
Scientists in the Land of the Rising Sun have concluded that it is the sun itself that is the major cause of Global Warming, not man.
I know, it is shocking that the Sun may play a role in global temps. If that wacky possibility is true, then we may be in for the opposite of Global Warming,
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
So for, the science seems to back this up. The Sun might actually have something to do with it!
University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) Dr. John Christy’s 10-year chart of Global Temps
Does Obama really believe he can control the earth’s temperature? What’s he going to do about the lack of solar activity, give the Sun a hug? Ask what its grievances are and then apologize to it on our behalf?
God help us. On second thought…