As Jim Treacher quipped on Twitter last month, that whole “‘Obama is a megalomaniac’ thing is such a ridiculous right-wing smear. By the way, now he wants to take over the weather.”
In the latest edition of Silicon Graffiti, (coming to you this week from Space Station V in geosynchronous orbit high above my garage in Northern California, the only place I could find high enough to avoid being buzzed by Air Force One), we’ll explore the proposal that John Holdren, the president’s new science advisor, put on the table last month.
As the AP wrote at the time:
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.”
Indeed they’re not, and Holdren’s peculiar pollution particle plan is just one of several risky geoengineering schemes ideas that scientists are kicking around to stop global warming. Even though, As the London Telegraph noted at the end of last year, “2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a ‘scientific consensus’ in favour of man-made global warming collapsed.”
But then, as a Rasmussen poll noted last month, only 34 percent of American voters now believe that global warming is manmade, but 48 percent of the “Political Class”, as Rasmussen puts it, do.
Which may explain why Editor & Publisher, the house organ for the newspaper industry ran an essay in 2007 titled, “Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity, Newspapers.”
Of course, as they’re coverage of the 2008 presidential election reminds us, newspapers have gotten over objectivity on every issue under the sun.
So turn on your telescreen and enjoy six minutes or so of orbital insanity — which could very well be coming to your a galaxy near you, if President Obama’s science advisor has his way.
And for 30 or so previous editions of Silicon Graffiti, click here and keep scrolling.
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34 Comments
1. Pajamas Media » Beam Me Up, Barry!:[...] Click here to watch video! [...]
May 5, 2009 - 1:34 pm 2. SAY NO TO BIG GOVERMENT:Show Obama, Reid and Pelosi the tea party protests were not “astroTurf” but they were the beginning of a massive movement against massive Government growth and the control that comes with it. Tell them to Empower Individual Americans to take responsibility for their own lives and for the individual to have control over the direction of our country Sign the petition for Individual Empowerment!!! http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Indv1776/petition.html THE ONLY WAY THIS WILL WORK IS IF YOU COPY AND SEND IT TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY THAT HAVE THE SAME OPINIONS AS YOU. ALSO COPY AND POST IT ON OTHER NEWS SITES, BLOGS, EMAIL IT TO ORGANIZATIONS ETC
May 5, 2009 - 1:42 pm 3. jvon:This is the most idiotic idea in the history of stupid ideas.
IF countries like the United States carry any blame for accidentally affecting the weather by their CO2 emissions, which happen as a byproduct of industrial activity — if — what happens if we do something like this and it has real, measurable negative effects on other countries?
We will have in effect INTENTIONALLY created a situation which caused harm to other people. It won’t matter, after the fact, that a bunch of scientists said that we should do it or that it was a good idea.
Historically speaking, cooler weather causes crop failures, famine, and death on a wide scale. The risk here, assuming this system could actually work (and let’s face it, it sounds like something Dr. Evil might come up with) is tremendous.
May 5, 2009 - 1:50 pm 4. Sebastian Shaw:President Hubris/Avarice are all present. Obama is thinking he is God; he isn’t. He’s just a man with a bloated ego & a narcissism personality disorder. This is an example of Obama’s arrogance in a stupid idea as his sycophant yes people (including the MSM) encourage the man-child. It’s sad & sickening.
May 5, 2009 - 2:05 pm 5. Andrew_M_Garland:Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
There is a very close correlation between global temperature and solar output. See the graph. That even seems reasonable in its own way. (smile)
May 5, 2009 - 2:18 pm 6. Fantom:I suggest, if B.O. is serious about this, to place micheal moore and al gore in geosynchronous orbit. This would kill two birds(Left wing loons BTW) with one so called stone.
It would block out enough sun we would have to burn the rainforest to keep warm, and it would remove two of our biggest sources of hot air.
May 5, 2009 - 2:35 pm 7. Delia:More left-wing loonery at its whackiest.
May 5, 2009 - 3:32 pm 8. Roderick Reilly:The most stunningly stupid thing about all these mega-engineering proposals is that — assuming they could even be carried out — each and everyone would have a definite deleterious effect on Earth’s environment, either globally, or over large swaths of the planet. I’m baffled and floored, is this supposed “catastrophic global warming” so dire a threat that we must destroy the environment to save the Earth?
These fools have no idea how stupid and crazy they sound to us mere mortals.
May 5, 2009 - 3:49 pm 9. David Thomson:It’s about the money. A large number of elites are highly invested in dubious green technologies. Al Gore, Jr. was a man of modest needs after leaving Washington, DC in 2000. Today, he is estimated to be worth one hundred million dollars. And Gore will be a billionaire if the Obama administration gets its “climate change” legislation passed in the U.S. Congress.
May 5, 2009 - 4:02 pm 10. Ed Driscoll » New Silicon Graffiti Video: Beam Me Up, Barry! | 墙绘客:[...] Go here to read the rest: Ed Driscoll » New Silicon Graffiti Video: Beam Me Up, Barry! [...]
May 5, 2009 - 4:42 pm 11. Topics about Gampling » Archive » New Silicon Graffiti Video: Beam Me Up, Barry!:[...] John McRae added an interesting post on New Silicon Graffiti Video: Beam Me Up, Barry!Here’s a small excerptAs Jim Treacher quipped on Twitter last month, that whole “‘Obama is a megalomaniac’ thing is such a ridiculous right-wing smear. By the way, now he wants to take over the weather.” In the latest edition of Silicon Graffiti, (coming to you this week from Space Station V in geosynchronous… [...]
May 5, 2009 - 4:55 pm 12. Self-hating Boomer:This is nothing new. It’s all politics and no science. It’s an attempts to frame the issue as a choice between sucky and suckier. No one likes the idea of launching spew ships into the atmosphere, and if the alternative is tax-n-trade, we’ll be corralled into it.
Science is being raped by this administration.
May 5, 2009 - 5:30 pm 13. John Moore:Actually, as a skeptic on AGW and one vehemently opposed to crippling our economy my CO2 emissions rationing, I welcome this approach.
If we can show that some geoengineering trick will do the job 40 years down the road if those untested climate models are actually right, then we don’t have to wreck our economy right now using silly stuff like unreliable, low density wind power, uneconomical and fickle solar power, etc.
Furthermore, we know that the anti-AGW people, no matter what they say, are not going to let us build nuke plants the way the rest of the world is doing.
May 5, 2009 - 5:47 pm 14. BPT:Here’s Australia’s Professor Ian Plimer: “Global warming fundamentalists exclude or suppress any information that challenges or contradicts their beliefs and use state power to pursue their objectives, sometimes contrary to the will of the people.” And they also like to parrot Toyota’s Prius talking points for some reason.
May 5, 2009 - 5:50 pm 15. Cybergeezer:Obama’s a butt wipe. Aint no detergent or disinfectant gonna clean him up.
May 5, 2009 - 7:07 pm 16. Wally Lind:These guys are getting nuttier by the day! Presumably there are enough stable people left in the democrat party to stop these poeple. Although I’m fascinated by the ferver these “anti-religious” people demonstrate in environment and climate change discussions. They can barely tolerate people who don’t share their views, and reveal their true nastiness to those who disagree with them.
May 5, 2009 - 8:53 pm 17. PM:Marsha is going to love this.
May 5, 2009 - 9:08 pm 18. Haggy Williams:I read this. Then I read it again. You’re kidding, right? I mean this whole post is just some sort of post April Fool’s Day thing, right. Cause, you know, Obambi is smart, right? He’s been to Harvard Law. He’s a graduate of Columbia. So this has got to be a put on. That’s the only answer that makes sense.
May 6, 2009 - 12:37 am 19. bubblehead:You reemember all those kids who slept through science and history class in school? They’re running the country now!
May 6, 2009 - 5:31 am 20. Instapundit » Blog Archive » NEW FROM SILICON GRAFFITI: Beam Me Up, Barry!…:[...] NEW FROM SILICON GRAFFITI: Beam Me Up, Barry! [...]
May 6, 2009 - 11:59 am 21. Ben:This scares me. And it will affect everyone on Earth, and like 99% of those people not only didn’t vote for him, but they aren’t even part of his country. Maybe he should stick to making decisions for the American sheep that voted for him and leave the rest of the world alone.
May 6, 2009 - 12:57 pm 22. Sebastian Shaw:When has President Obama used WIND &/or SOLAR powered engine plane instead of the carbon footprint of Air Force One? The answer is never. Wind & solar are dead ends to be a sustainable, profitable source of income. Is Barry smoking weed when he comes up with such preposterous ideas?
May 6, 2009 - 2:07 pm 23. Marsha:Just how brilliant is President Obama? Smartest guy ever I guess. Who else would even think of seeding the atmosphere to combat a problem that may or nor exist? Who else could seriously promote such stupidity with a straight face. Who else could get the American people to try such an idiotic policy? President Obama, that’s who. How lucky are we?
May 7, 2009 - 3:58 am 24. Mike2:“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.”
Beam me up Scotty. The New Age is here!
May 7, 2009 - 5:46 am 25. Craig:“Lowell Wood is Edward Teller’s protégé and our chief weapons scientist, thus the name, Dr. Evil. He proposes to control the global temp by shooting sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere. We can burn as much carbon as we want, just offset the warming effect by a cooling effect of the sulfate. Volcanoes illustrate this- regional and larger cooling occurs after a big eruption.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/12343892/can_dr_evil_save_the_world
You MUST go to the link and see the illustration!
May 7, 2009 - 6:46 am 26. Vodkapundit » Required Viewing:[...] it the best-ever episode of Silicon Graffiti? It might just [...]
May 7, 2009 - 2:55 pm 27. Jvan Mi:All the various positions espoused by the O team are a smoke screen to obfuscate the cap and trade arguement. A few people will believe one of these statements, and the total will be sufficient to justify raising huge taxes so the govm’t can “fix” the world. Just send them money. Meanwhile, go look up fabian socialists of the 1880s to 1930s, and compare them to Saul Alinsky’s doctrines. Look very closely at Wlison’s treatment of editors and writters that differed with his opinions.
May 7, 2009 - 4:24 pm 28. Mark:I’m thinking that we can go with nuclear winter to fix this right up. Takes care of the real problem which is too many people on the planet. Who wants to volunteer to stand at ground zero? Come on enviro-greenies, this is a win-win-win. It negates the depletion of planetary resources from the growing population, it cures global warming and it gets rid of all those nukes you despise. What’s not to like?
May 8, 2009 - 3:15 am 29. eon:And the Democrats and MSM are always accusing the GOP of being “anti-science” due to Creationism and Intelligent Design. (FTR, I have no problem with Darwin, and serious problems with the Texas State School Board on those subjects.)
But when I see idiocy like this (right out of those lamebrained “Matrix” movies), I maintain that the Democratic “leadership” are no more interested in “real science” than the C/ID crowd are. They just suffer from a different set of delusions, is all.
If they want to find out what their “brilliant” plan would accomplish, even if they could do it (which I suspect they can’t, fortunately), they can just Google “Mount Tambora, 1816″, “Krakatau, 1883″, and/or “Mount St. Helens, 1980″, plus “weather effects”.
The fact that they haven’t already figured this out tells me all I need to know about their competence in this area. That is to say, none.
clear ether
eon
May 8, 2009 - 3:59 am 30. Lily:I am guessing it would be cheaper to just drop $100 bills out of the space station to shade the planet.
May 8, 2009 - 6:14 pm 31. Evan:Hey, I live in Texas and it gets pretty hot, this of course has been going on since long before the morons in the enviro crowd decided to fix everything, or even figured out that they could con everyone into this and get rich off of all the suckers.
Cool the place down, keep it above 70 in the summer and my pastures will do just fine. Opps, forgot, the livestock police are after me for one thing and another. Oh well, can’t win them all.
May 9, 2009 - 11:54 pm 32. Ed Driscoll » The Outer Limits — Of Regulation:[...] into governmental overreach. You are about to experience regulation and meddling which reaches from The Outer Limits to the inner Cheerio… Filed under: Bobos In Paradise, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Liberal [...]
May 14, 2009 - 9:40 am 33. Ed Driscoll » Where No Geek Many Geeks Have Gone Before:[...] having doped out how to do a decent transporter effect for the end of last week’s
May 17, 2009 - 3:41 pm 34. Ed Driscoll » Air Obama Terrifies Another US City With An Unannounced Flyby:[...] you’ll excuse me, I’m heading back to the space station, where it’s [...]
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