Obama to consider Climate-Engineering

[ericire12]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090408/ap_on_sc/sci_obama_science_adviser_2

WASHINGTON – 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."

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."

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.

Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.

The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."

Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.

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.

[MikeBjerum]

When I was doing my time in the land of fruits and nuts there was an idea to put giant fans in the mountains to ventilate the LA basin.  This was based on the fact that it is temperature inversions and ocean breezes trapping the smog against the mountains and in the basin.  Very good sience, but the idea was so weird that it made a great episode of (I think this was the show) Beverly Hillbillies.

Sounds like the President is mixing good sience with fantasy 

[runstowin]

This kind of junk science is what happens when government gets involved in areas it has no business being in.

[shooter32]

More of our tax money..

[tt11758]

In the interest of saving this country from the effects of politicians trying to do something "important" I urge an immediate and lengthy round of Congressional hearings into the detrimental effects of the Designated Hitter Rule in major league baseball.

[Sponsor]

[WatchManUSA]

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 is the height or arrogance!  These guys are so damn smart that they think that they can outsmart nature.

They want to pollute the upper atmosphere to “fix” global warming?  What if there was some unintended consequence?

Of course messiah Obama is omnipotent and is all knowing and ever present. 

[tombogan03884]

There is ALWAYS an unintended consequence.

[Hazcat]

Some one NEEDS to smack these idiots in the face with some facts!

We are currently in the beginning of a cycle of low sunspot activity (scientists say these cycles last about 10 years) and so of course, temps are actually dropping.

The GW fools started this hype during a period of hyper activity re: sun spots.  Just as in the 70s the 'Ice Age' crap started at a low point of sun spot activity.

Add in faulty measurements of temp (facts; official temp gages located next to furnaces and in the middle of paved ares) and ice melt (recently missing counting several thousand square miles of new ice) and of course the REALLY BIG reason....

MONEY and POWER and you get these GW disciples!

[MikeBjerum]

Expanding on the Cat's comment:

We live in a time of instant gratification and "pat me on the back" syndrome, not to mention the get famous quick so I can get a book deal and on the speaking circuit.  Everyone from the scientists to the politicians are trying to make hay on their fifteen minutes of fame so they can stretch it to 25 years of wealth and security.  However, weather cycles are decades and centuries if not millenia in length.

Daily, weekly, monthly, anual and time weighted averages all put too much emphisis on the short term.  We all need to look at the Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong range trend, and then we need to look at it through the lens of history.  Go to the Field Museum in Chicago and look at their climate change exibit.  This ain't the first time it has happened, and to say it is happening faster today than last time leaves out the fact that 10,000 years ago as we entered the ice age we are now in we didn't go as deep as earlier ones.

If you want to through science at me make sure you throw all science at me, because it is too easy to turn one more page than you are showing me.

Change is never easy, and we all want to keep the familure, but this is a living planet, and it is going to change whether we help it or not!

[JC5123]

Has anyone noticed that every time these GW groupies hold a rally it snows record amounts? Could it be possible that God and Nature really DO have a sense of humor?