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Saturday, January 27, 2007

The political news has been so bleak lately that it's been hard to find motivation to write about anything, but US urges scientists to block out sun< is one of my favorite news stories in literally years, and I want to celebrate it.

The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: "Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered"....Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption.


It's an idea that is as logical as it is audacious: An outside-the-box solution to the global warming problem that would almost certainly work to lower worldwide temperatures. There really isn't any way around it scientifically: Less sunlight=lower temperatures. Period. A chiid would understand this.

You would think that the "experts" who are so "concerned" about the horrible effects of global warming would welcome such a solution.

You'd be wrong.

The high priests of the global warming witch-cult, on the contrary, essentially responded to the proposal by sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "La la la, can't hear you": The IPCC draft said such ideas were "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects".

That response had me smiling. Uncosted? These are the people who blithely ignore the trillions in costs that the Kyoto requirements would immpose on the American economy. Please. And unknown side-effects? Just yesterday the London Times screamed their most inflammatory global warming headline yet: LAST WARNING: 10 YEARS TO SAVE THE WORLD. "The results could include the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef," shrieked the article, "the forced migration of hundreds of millions of people from equatorial regions, and the loss of vast tracts of land under rising seas as the ice caps melt....In Europe the summers could become unbearably hot, especially in southern countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, while Britain and northern Europe would face summer droughts and wet, stormy winters."

Given the dire future hurtling toward us, wouldn't the global warming imams embrace a scientific method guaranteed to lower temperatures? No. For them, it's reduction of "greenhouse gases" or nothing.

Their obstinancy, I think, is revealing. What has happened here with the sun-blocking concept is the the Bush administration has called their bluff, making it clear for anyone paying attention that the global warming movement is not about climate, it's about politics. I'm reminded of the recent controversy involving the Weather Channel's "Climate Expert" (yes, that's her official title) Heidi Cullen, where she essentially demanded that meteorologists who refuse to endorse the theory of human-caused global warming be decertified.

When this pronouncement was met by angry denunciations from meteorologists, Cullen got mealy-mouthed and, in an Orwellian moment, said that she was only tryng to "elevate the discussion."

The point of my post was never to stifle discussion. It was to raise it to a level that doesn't confuse science and politics.


That's the most infuriating thing about all of this: Nothing is being called what it is: Openly political positions are somehow "above politics"; silencing dissenters is "elevating the discussion." Computer models are more scientific than the most basic planetary physics.

Sheesh.

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