What Would Captain Planet Do?

Sometimes you have to pollute to not pollute: part 2

Posted in Climate Change, Politics by Dakota on April 12, 2009

I know a lot of you out there may have been worried about climate change, sometimes called global warming, and the large amount of greenhouse pollutants in the atmosphere. But worry no longer as the chief science adviser to the White House has a solution to the problem. As it turns out, all that needed to be done was to put more pollution in the atmosphere, but not greenhouse gases, opposite pollution.

It sounds like a joke but most unfortunately it is not. This idea has actually been suggested to the President and is being debated in scientific circles. It seems as if these people have not heard the phrase, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’. And it appears to me that this would be a very short sighted solution to a real problem, and could lead to unknown ramifications.

I also have a problem with the current administration endorsing ‘cap and trade’ but then debating extreme solutions, here’s an extreme solution; enforce emission standards for real! Cap and trade is hogwash. I wrote a post about cap and trade a few weeks ago that I’ll link to here; Uncle Chan wants you to buy him a dam!

If you would like to read more about the talk of adding pollutants to the earth’s atmosphere in an effort to affect climate change, take a look at this story from the Associated Press: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513242,00.html



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  1. dakota Said,

    Obama May Block Sun’s Rays to End Global Warming
    Wednesday, April 08, 2009
    Associated Press

    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.”

    • Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Natural Science Center.

    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.

  2. jen Said,

    why artificial trees? why not just reproduce real trees? why try to imitate what’s already there and successful? would it not make more sense to simply cultivate many trees, including on tops of buildings, to help suck up more CO2 and other pollutants? that seems like a more reasonable, efficient option.

    happy earth day, by the way!

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