Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/04/2009 8:34:52 PM PST by StopGlobalWhining
The U.S. Congress will explore deliberate tinkering with the climate in its first ever hearing on geoengineering early next month, ScienceInsider has learned.
Congressional committees have shied away from focusing hearings on the controversial topic until now. One reason might be that talk of a technical fix could distract from needed emissions cuts, especially with the U.S. Senate and international negotiators debating new controls on carbon pollution.
The House of Representatives' science and technology committee has slated the hearing on the controversial subject for 5 November. The exact focus of the hearing is not known, but the meeting could be a first step towards establishing dedicated federal support for geoengineering research, which currently does not exist.
Bill Fulkerson, an energy policy expert with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said that geoengineering research is “the most neglected part of the climate strategy we have” and that a research program is “exactly what’s needed.”
While the committee has not announced the hearing or finalized its list of witnesses, sources say it may feature John Shepherd, a scientist of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom who led a recent study by the U.K. Royal Society on geoengineering; Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science; or Lee Lane, an official with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy's geoengineering project. All three have called for government funding of geoengineering research.
Alex Dery Snider, spokeswoman for the House science and technology committee sent ScienceInsider this statement:
The Committee is looking to gain a greater understanding of a complicated but timely subject. We feel it would be irresponsible to ignore the issue because it is complex or potentially controversial. Our hearing should by no means be read as an endorsement of taking action. This is the appropriate venue to begin a thoughtful, in-depth conversation that includes the full range of perspectives on the topic. This is just the first step in what will be a very long discussion.
For a humorous read I recommend "The Cooling", by Lowell Ponte from about 1977 or so. This was at the peak of the media frenzy about how earth was about to enter another ice age, and the scientists were proposing all sorts of crazy schemes to prevent this catastrophe.
Some things I remember were a Soviet-American effort to dam the Bering Straits, Soviet nuclear explosives to reverse the flow of Southern flowing Siberian rivers to bring warmer water to the Artic sea, and dumping charcoal on polar ice caps.
Thank goodness no major eco-wacko damage was done then, but now these ignoramuses feel they have another chance with the climate change hysteria the media loves to hype.
God save our planet from these nut cases!
Ping.
maybe that guy who wanted to paint the world white will get his chance.
Hey! Don’t you know that those mental giants in Congress don’t have enough challenges associated with wrecking our country to keep them busy? No! Now they want to take a whack at wrecking the entire planet!
professional lawmakers know a gravy train when they see one.
Pong...
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT Bill Fulkerson. Salivating over the thought of that grant money eh.
sounds like a winner
hope those morons can manage to do it under budget
IMHO - it may be too late for that. I would bet my last dollar that some of the stupid governments on this planet have already been doing black box geoengineering projects in response to the false warming signals. We obviously have the weird looking chem trails just about everyone has seen that seem to persist and grow into clouds. We get them all the time out here in Kalifornia. A few days ago the Chicom idiots seeded some clouds for rain and ended up causing one of the earliest snowfalls ever in Beijing. What I have also been seeing in Kalifornia is something a little stranger, if that is even possible. Best way to describe them is to call them dark rays. They seem to travel from the surface up into the sky on angles. Have a poor picture of the first one I saw near Sacramento while driving. Recently saw some and imaged them a little better down here in So Cal. Anyone else seeing the dark rays in the sky ?
I’m Sure Anything They Do Will Work Great!
There is 0.0% possibility of any unintended consequences.
“Bill Fulkerson, an energy policy expert with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said that geoengineering research is “the most neglected part of the climate strategy we have” and that a research program is “exactly what’s needed.”
Translation: More taxpayer dollars down a rat hole.
More seriously, though, if you're engaging in the delusion that the world's temperature can be prevented from rising more than 2 deg C, then you must engage in the delusion that you can actually come up with technology and mandates to make this so.
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