Geoengineering. Excerpts:
Tinkering with Earth's climate to chill runaway global warming - a radical idea once dismissed out of hand - is being discussed by the White House as a potential emergency option, the president's new science adviser said Wednesday...One option raised by Holdren and proposed by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays.
It still is radical, and stupid:
But he said there could be grave side effects. Studies suggest that might include eating away a large chunk of the ozone layer above the poles and causing the Mediterranean and the Mideast to be much drier.
And those are just the predicted problems. Scientists say they worry about side effects that they don't anticipate.
Scare tactics:
He and many experts believe that warming of a few degrees more would lead to disastrous drought conditions and food shortages in some regions, rising seas and more powerful coastal storms in others.
Mankind seemed to prosper in past warm periods. It is harder to adapt to cold periods. Cold is harder on food supplies and energy consumption. More scientists are talking about global cooling now. Suppose geoengineering hastens cooling?
Politicians need to get out of making science policy, or at least put science before politics when making policy. -D
P.S. The Obama "science advisor," on another subject, said:
The U.S. anti-ballistic missile program is not ready to work and shouldn't be used unless it is 100 percent effective. The system, which would be used to shoot down missiles from countries like North Korea or Iran "needs to be essentially perfect ... that's going to be hard to achieve."
Um, if it's "not ready to work" what shot down that satellite last year and why do we have operational anti-ballistic missile ships and bases?
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