The Mad Scientist have a plan

One of the truly great comedy scenes in cinematic history is from Mel Brooke's classic, Blazing Saddles. Not the campfire scene though that too has relevance to the global warming debate. No, what I am referring to is the New Sheriff scene where Cleavon Little (the new sheriff) surrounded by hostile townsfolk points his own gun to his head and convinces them (the townsfolk) to drop their guns lest he shoot himself.

This scene of absolute slap stick absurdity is what I thought of when I read this story on the Science 2.0  blog "Geo-Engineering For Global Warming Needs International Laws With Teeth". When I read the title I was sure it was going to be another story about how we need some new international treaty to allow for geo-engineering, which it is. However the way they get at it, like the sheriff sticking a gun to his own head, is by asking the world to save the scientist from themselves.

Until a global policy is in place, scientists and organizations can easily circumvent international laws regarding geo-engineering by getting domestic approval, as we saw with LOHAFEX and environmental activist Russ George dumping iron in the ocean to create algal blooms, in defiance of treaties prohibiting it. 

More geo-engineering, manual manipulation of the environment, to slow global warming's impact is going to happen unless a global governance structure with some teeth is put into place, says University of Iowa law professor Jon Carlson.

So because scientist and activist groups can not control themselves from deploying there engineering schemes, an international organization must be established in order to sanction their schemes. They note that geo-engineering the climate might be harmful and have many unintended consequences:

"Geo-engineering is a global concern that will have climate and weather impacts in all countries, and it is virtually inevitable that some group of people will be harmed in the process," Carlson said in a statement. "The international community must act now to take charge of this activity to ensure that it is studied and deployed with full attention to the rights and interests of everyone on the planet."

Using the threat of an out of control scientific community, hell bent on playing with the climate to save us from ourselves which by the way is the very thing they are fanatically opposed to, man playing around with the climate, they propose to have yet another group of scientific bureaucrats sanctioning, well, men playing around with the climate.

One of the many concerns they express is for some of the more " complex and controversial" methods such as

... injecting chemicals like hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, creating an aerosol shield that reduces the amount of solar heat reaching the earth's surface.

The proponents for this new "international organization" seem not to even consider the fact that there seems to be no way under current "international agreement" to stop China and other developing countries from spewing vast amounts of this "geoengineering solution" into the atmosphere already. Or for that matter they seem not to see the irony in that while the environmental community rails against and tries to enact international restrictions on nations spewing " hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere" they are simultaneously advocating for international agreements to sanction the spewing of " hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere".

In probably the single greatest understatement of all time the authors state, without a smiley face or even an LOL the following observation.

So it's no surprise lawyers advocate the creation of a new international governing body separate from existing organizations that would be tasked just with approving or rejecting geo-engineering plans.

Putting aside the outdated idea of national sovereignty, it would only be a surprise if lawyers, did not propose some new international governing body. That after all is what lawyers do, they create government agencies in order to either lobby or sue them. See the US Congress or the EU parliament, It is the closest thing to a self perpetuating machine yet devised..

In the end though the scheme is what it always is, redistribution, with a twist, an absurd twist.

As a model, Carlson suggests the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His proposed organization would give all countries a place during discussions, but reserve decisions to a small group of directors, each of which has a weighted vote that's based on their country's greenhouse gas production. That is, countries that produce more greenhouse gases will spend more money to combat global climate change, and so will have more votes.

So, China, which now emits the most greenhouse gasses and by the way also emits a tremendous amount of " hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere", do they get a credit for that? I digress, China, under this scheme would have the most votes on a panel to charge themselves for the expense of geo-engineering to correct a supposed problem which they themselves caused. Brilliant. I can just see China voting to write billions of dollars in checks to fund this scheme, can't you? In fact I  be would not be surprised if China did not send a bill to the agency for their contribution  to geo-engineering based upon their tremendous outpouring of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide.

But it is not only to fund the geo-engineering of the planet that this new panel needs to be enacted. No, it is also to protect the injured parties from any "unintended consequences of the geo-engineering scheme.

Carlson's proposed body would oversee a compensation fund to help people and countries that are harmed by other country's approved geo-engineering activities, or by unseen effects of those activities

Can you say a man made ice age? As I have pointed out before any attempt to cool the planet will, given Murphy's Law, probably be met with a sudden upsurge in volcanic activity setting off a global ice age.

To summarize, the mad scientist of the geo-engineering community, unable to contain themselves, need a new international organization to sanction what they do. China and other greenhouse emitters will pay for their global experiments and also compensate harmed parties, or nations, should their experiments go awry. People actually take this insanity seriously you know.

"Lay  your guns down or I'll shoot the ...scientist."

Mad Scientist Alert! "If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist,"

The Mad Scientist are out in the open again. Not that they ever went away, it is just that they don't usually get much attention in the mainstream media. Here from the Tennessean we have an AP story with pictures of some of the actual participants of this mad scientist moment leisurely discussing their plans to alter the Earth.

Does anyone else see the irony of scientist declaring that mankind has altered the climate due to their insatiable lust for, uh, progress, now  wanting to alter the climate to compensate for man altering the climate? As if the progress of man in order achieve a better and longer life is somehow unnatural which needs to be counter acted  by using technologies that would not have been possible without the progress that caused the supposed problem to begin with.

I really love the sub head to this article too a sort of subliminal double meaning.  Not that warming intensifies, but rather that warming intensifies talks, let us hope it stays there. because as we know everyone wants to save the planet. This of course includes our friends at the Novim Group, we'll see if there is any connection here.

Well here is the article

Scientists ponder risks of manipulating climate

Warming intensifies talk on saving planet

Written by
Charles J. Hanley
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICHELEY, England — To the quiet green solitude of an English country estate they retreated, to think the unthinkable.

Scientists of earth, sea and sky; scholars of law, politics and philosophy in three intense days were cloistered behind Chicheley Hall's old brick walls: Four dozen thinkers pondered the planet's fate as it grows warmer, weighed the idea of reflecting the sun to cool the atmosphere and debated the question of who would make the decision to interfere with nature to try to save the planet.

Sorryyyyyy, I just could not let this go, the idea of thinkers pondering the unthinkable cloistered behind old brick walls. Maybe I've just read too many Robert Ludlum novels in my time but this sends chills up my spine.

The unknown risks of "geoengineering," in this case, tweaking Earth's climate by dimming the skies, left many uneasy.

"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist," said Kenyan earth scientist Richard Odingo, "but I worry."

Arrayed against that worry is the worry that global warming may abruptly upend the world we know, by melting much of Greenland into the sea, by shifting India's life-giving monsoon, by killing off marine life.

 This sounds very much like the hyperbole that our hero Dr Richard Muller spoke out against in his famous video "Greenland melting into the sea" ? If the previous paragraphs did not chill you how about this for a Mad Scientist motto:

"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist,"

Well aren't they special!

If climate engineering research isn't done now, climatologists say, the world will face grim choices in an emergency. "If we don't understand the implications, and we reach a crisis point and deploy geoengineering with only a modicum of information, we really will be playing Russian roulette," said Steven Hamburg, a U.S. Environmental Defense Fund scientist.

Oh boy, you can see it coming can't you! The God like scientist need to do research! They need some money to investigate what needs to be done to save the world from you sinful pathetic little human beings. You have gone and wrecked the Earth and now they will need to investigate ways to save us from our wasteful, sinful nature. Oh how the thinkers ponder cloistered behind their brick walls, protected from the disease of human kind.

The question's urgency has grown as nations have failed, in years of talks, to agree on a binding long-term deal to rein in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-sponsored science network, foresees temperatures rising as much as 6.4 degrees Celsius (11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, swelling the seas and disrupting the climate patterns that nurtured human civilization.

About the only thing swelling in regards to climate, is the swelling egos of the scientific community,

Science committees of the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress urged their governments last year to look at immediately undertaking climate engineering research, to have a "Plan B" ready, as the British panel put it, in case the diplomatic logjam persists.

Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society, subsequently organized the Chicheley Hall conference with Hamburg's EDF and the association of developing-world science academies. From six continents, they invited a blue-ribbon cross section of atmospheric physicists, oceanographers, geochemists, environmentalists, international lawyers, psychologists, policy experts and others to discuss how the world should oversee such unprecedented research.

Yes Plan B ! Wow, this sounds vaguely familiar. I mean what could go wrong with all this "thinker" firepower cloistered together to save the world. I am reassured, how about you?

An Associated Press reporter was invited to sit in on their discussions, generally off the record, as they met in large and small groups in plush wood-paneled rooms, in conference halls, or outdoors among the manicured trees and formal gardens of this 300-year-old Royal Society property 40 miles northwest of London, a secluded spot where Britain's Special Operations Executive trained for secret missions in World War II.

 If it weren't so scary it would be hilarious, well I guess it can be both. Really equating the mission of "God like" scientist to Special Operations from World War II. I love the idea that the discussion were primarily off the record, sort of like a secret society or something.

Provoking and parrying one another over questions never before raised in human history, the conferees were sensitive to how the outside world might react.

"There's the 'slippery slope' view that as soon as you start to do this research, you say it's OK to think about things you shouldn't be thinking about," said Steve Rayner, co-director of Oxford University geoengineering program.

Many geoengineering techniques they have thought about look either impractical or ineffective.

Oh come on Steve, what a ridiculous statement, you are the co-director of Oxford University geo-engineering program, you are being paid to think about this nonsense!

One idea has promise

Painting rooftops white to reflect the sun's heat is a feeble gesture. Blanketing deserts with a reflective material is logistically challenging and a likely environmental threat. Launching giant mirrors into space orbit is too expensive.

It really is not necessary either, if Northern Hemisphere winters continue on their current trend, roofs will be painted white....naturally.

On the other hand, fertilizing the ocean with iron to grow CO2-eating plankton has shown some workability, and Massachusetts' prestigious Woods Hole research center is planning the biggest such experiment. Marine clouds are another route. Scientists at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado are designing a test of brightening ocean clouds with sea-salt particles to reflect the sun.

Those techniques are necessarily limited in scale, however, and unable to alter planetwide warming. Only one idea has emerged with that potential.

Oh I wait with baited breath for the pronouncement from on high, or rather from behind the brick wall, but I bet I know what it is!

"The leading contender is stratospheric aerosol particles," said climatologist John Shepherd of Britain's Southampton University.

The particles would be sun-reflecting sulfates spewed into the lower stratosphere from aircraft, balloons or other devices, much like the sulfur dioxide emitted by the eruption of the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo in 1991, estimated to have cooled the world by 0.5 degrees C (0.9 degrees F) for a year or so.

I knew it, the man made volcano solution. Let's spew aerosols into the atmosphere and  hope that we don't have another Pinatubo, or worse, eruption sending the world into a man made ice age. God these guys are brilliant! Hey I have an idea, why not just remove government regulations on sulfur dioxide emissions from factories. kind of like China, and save the money on all those "aircraft, balloons and other devices". By the way when our God like scientist start talking about "other devices" it is time to buy a gun and plant a garden.

Engineers from the University of Bristol, England, plan to test the feasibility of feeding sulfates into the atmosphere via a mileslong hose attached to a tethered balloon.

Shepherd and others stressed that any sun-blocking "SRM" technique, for solar radiation management, would have to be accompanied by sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions on the ground and some form of carbon dioxide removal, preferably via a chemical-mechanical process not yet perfected, to sck the gas out of the air and neutralize it.

Otherwise, they point out, the stratospheric sulfate layer would have to be built up indefinitely, to counter the growing greenhouse effect of accumulating carbon dioxide.

You know we are in serious trouble when they start handing out acronyms "SRM". Solar radiation management, now that sounds like a natural solution to a man made problem doesn't it.  I do like the idea that they are now addressing the idea of sucking the sulfur dioxide out of the atmosphere, just in case. And all this is supposed to be more economical than carbon sequestration or cleansing?

I doubt any of this has anything to do with our climate at all. It is about cloistered thinkers who have no concept of the real world having been self-deluded behind their walls into believing that they have a God like control over mankind and the Earth.

Be afraid, very afraid, these people have shown that they are not a joke, though they are a joke, they now wield real power in the world we mortals live in.

UPDATE:

Is that Jason J Blackstock of Novim Group and CIGI fame waving his hand in the picture at top of post? I'm sure he would be there I wonder if the list of participants to this meeting is secret.

Everyone thinks they are saving the planet

The absurdity of the entire AGW theory and the unintended consequences are sometimes both staggering and amusing. Consider this article from Popular Science -"New Clean-Fuel Rules For Ships Could Actually Hurt the Environment". It discusses the seemingly very worthwhile new regulations to cut air pollution from the overseas shipping industry.

The regulations call for reducing the sulfur in shipping fuel—which is basically unrefined petroleum sludge—from 4.5 to 0.5 percent by 2020. Scientists project that this switch will cut sulfur-pollution-related premature deaths from 87,000 worldwide per year to 46,000.

Of course we want to reduce these known pollutants from the atmosphere...right? I mean it is all about man not leaving a mark on the ecosystem ...right? But not so fast there Eco Warriors:

But the sulfate aerosols spewing from supertanker smokestacks also produce planet-cooling clouds called ship tracks, which form when water droplets coalesce around sulfate particles. These clouds, which are big enough to be seen from orbit, reflect sunlight back into space, preventing the equivalent of up to 40 percent of the warming caused by human-produced carbon dioxide. “The IMO has done a good job addressing air-quality issues,” says Daniel Lack, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA. “But there’s a climate impact that wasn’t necessarily considered.”

So by cutting real pollution we in fact will be eliminating the mitigation of (imaginary) pollution -CO2. But that's not all !:

Worse, the fuel switch won’t improve ships’ carbon emissions—if the industry were a country, it would be the sixth-largest CO2 emitter. The IMO plans to regulate CO2, but until then, it might be best to leave well enough alone.

Got all that? Now consider that our Eco Warriors and their mad scientist allies have been so concerned that we are going to fry the planet by spewing evil CO2 into the atmosphere that they are regularly spending countless (tax payer) dollars investigating the possibility of spewing these same real pollutants into the skies to save us from the imaginary one.

So at the same time part of the Eco-scientific community is studying the negative affects of sulfate aerosols on the Earth:

Reductions of SO2 emissions in the 70-90% range should be required for both new and existing ships as soon as possible, but no later than 2015—

Another group of Eco-scientist is trying to figure out the best way to pump it back in.

We used a general circulation model of Earth's climate to conduct geoengineering experiments involving stratospheric injection of sulfur dioxide and analyzed the resulting deposition of sulfate. When sulfur dioxide is injected into the tropical or Arctic stratosphere, the main additional surface deposition of sulfate occurs in midlatitude bands, because of strong cross-tropopause flux in the jet stream regions. We used critical load studies to determine the effects of this increase in sulfate deposition on terrestrial ecosystems by assuming the upper limit of hydration of all sulfate aerosols into sulfuric acid. For annual injection of 5 Tg of SO2 into the tropical stratosphere or 3 Tg of SO2 into the Arctic stratosphere, neither the maximum point value of sulfate deposition of approximately 1.5 mEq m−2 a−1 nor the largest additional deposition that would result from geoengineering of approximately 0.05 mEq m−2 a−1 is enough to negatively impact most ecosystems.

And everyone thinks they are saving the planet and making a good buck in the process. Of course this is nothing new to us.
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Chief mad scientist alert! again

FROM- NYT
Holdren’s Ice Age Tidal Wave
By John Tierney

As a long-time student of John P. Holdren’s gloomy visions of the future, like his warnings about global famines and resource shortages, I can’t resist passing along another one that has just been dug up. This one was made in 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama’s science adviser, in an essay just unearthed by zombietime (a blog that has been republishing excerpts of his past writings). In the 1971 essay, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.

They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:

The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.

But that would just be the beginning. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich continued:

If man survives the comparatively short-term threat of making the planet too cold, there is every indication he is quite capable of making it too warm not long thereafter. For the remaining major means of interference with the global heat balance is the release of energy from fossil and nuclear fuels. As pointed out previously, all this energy is ultimately degraded to heat. What are today scattered local effects of its disposition will in time, with the continued growth of population and energy consumption, give way to global warming. … Again, the exact form such consequences might take is unknown; the melting of the ice caps with a concomitant 150-foot increase in sea level might be one of them.

I confess that I don’t quite understand Dr. Holdren’s particular 1971 vision of global warming — why would nuclear fuels be contributing to it? — but let’s not get bogged down in details. What interests me are not the disaster specifics but rather Dr. Holdren’s tendency to foresee worst-case situations that require new public policies. (In the 1970s, he and Dr. Ehrlich discussed controlling population by giving sweeping powers to a new “Planetary Regime.”) I’ve previously written about criticism that a climate-change report from the White House and federal agencies exaggerates the threat of natural disasters. Does Dr. Holdren have a worst-case bias in his interpretation of data?



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Let the weathermen rule

Like a script from a B grade science fiction movie we have now reached the stage where scientist in some macabre version of governance now control or at least have tremendous influence on the political and social fabric of the world. These ideologues, who can not even get a summers forecast right, through the manipulation of computer game scenarios now seek to impose their vision of a warped Utopia upon mankind. Never has the scripture been so prophetic:

"Professing to be wise, they became fools"

Via Climate Science (UK)

FROM-UK Telegraph

'Planned recession' could avoid catastrophic climate change

Britain will have to stop building airports, switch to electric cars and shut down coal-fired power stations as part of a 'planned recession' to avoid dangerous

At the moment the UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by a third by 2020.

However a new report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said these targets are inadequate to keep global warming below two degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

The report says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.

This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a "planned recession".

Kevin Anderson, director of the research body, said the building of new airports, petrol cars and dirty coal-fired power stations will have to be halted in the UK until new technology provides an alternative to burning fossil fuels.

"To meet [Government] targets of not exceeding two degrees C, there would have to be a moratorium on airport expansion, stringent measures on the type of vehicle being used and a rapid transition to low carbon technology," he said.

Prof Anderson also said individuals will have to consume less.

"For most of the population it would mean fairly modest changes to how they live, maybe they will drive less, share a car to work or take more holidays in Britain."

More than 190 countries are due to meet in Copenhagen in December to decide a new international deal on climate change.

Speaking at an Oxford University conference on the threat of climate change, Profjkj Anderson said rich countries will have to make much more ambitious cuts to have any chance of keeping temperature rise below four degrees C.

"If we do everything we can do then we might have a chance," he said.

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EDITORIAL: Obama's mad science adviser

It is not like people have not been pointing out that we have a nut job in this position in the White House. Check out here,here, here, here, and here. Over at Master Resource they did a series on this nut and have recently been re-posting it. Nah nothing wrong in Washington that a little science can't fix...right?

FROM-Washington Times

Compulsory abortion and sterilization aren't youthful indiscretions

When it comes to having past views that should frighten every American citizen, Ezekiel Emanuel (see above editorial) has nothing on the president's "chief science adviser," John P. Holdren. The combination of Mr. Holdren with Dr. Emanuel should make the public seriously concerned with this administration's moral compass concerning care for the old and weak.

Earlier this month, Mr. Holdren served as co-chairman when the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology met for the first time. It's a disgrace that Mr. Holdren is even on the council. In "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," a book he co-authored in 1977 with noted doomsayers Paul R. and Anne H. Erlich, Mr. Holdren wrote: "Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

In case compulsory abortion wasn't enough to diffuse his imaginary population bomb, Mr. Holdren and the Erlichs considered other extremist measures. "A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men," they wrote. "The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control."

It gets worse. The Holdren-Erlich book also promotes "Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods." After noting that, well, yes, there were "very difficult political, legal and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems," Mr. Holdren and his co-authors express hope that their idea may still be viable. "To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements," they wrote. "It must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets or livestock."

Most Americans can be forgiven for thinking that mass sterilization through drinking water is never acceptable and that someone who supported such horrors should have no place on a prestigious White House council. The question naturally arises why President Obama chooses to surround himself with extremists like Mr. Holdren or Dr. Emanuel. No matter how much they claim their views have "evolved," health and science under Obamacare would be a frightening prospect with people like this advising the president.

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Obama's Science Fiction 'Czar'

FROM-RCP

By David Harsanyi

Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy -- better known as the "science czar" -- has been a longtime prophet of environmental catastrophes. Never discouraged but never right.

And thanks to resourceful bloggers, you can read excerpts from a hard-to-find book co-authored by Holdren in the late 1970s, called "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," online.


In it, you will find the czar wading into some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.

It's not surprising. Holdren spent the '70s boogying down to the vibes of an imaginary population catastrophe and global cooling. He also participated in the famous wager between scientist Paul Ehrlich, the now-discredited "Population Bomb" theorist (and co-author of "Ecoscience"), and economist Julian Simon, who believed human ingenuity would overcome demand.

Holdren was asked by Ehrlich to pick five natural resources that would experience shortages because of human consumption. He lost the bet on all counts, as the composite price index for the commodities he picked, including copper and chromium, fell by more than 40 percent.

Then again, it's one thing to be a bumbling soothsayer but quite another to underestimate the resourcefulness of mankind enough to ponder how "population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution," as Holdren did in "Ecoscience" in 1977.

The book, in fact, is sprinkled with comparable statements that passively discuss how coercive population control methods might rescue the world from ... well, humans.

When I called Holdren's office, I was told that the czar "does not now and never has been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive measures to limit fertility."

If that is so, I wondered, why is his name on a textbook that brought up such policy? Did he not write that part? Did he change his mind? Was it theoretical? No straightforward answer was forthcoming.

No big deal. Even today, many environmentalists and anti-immigration activists believe in the myth of population disaster. In this world, human spammers are a disease, not a cure.

And Holdren never has ceased peddling calamity as science.

Today, for instance, though Holdren publicly has tempered his aversion to population growth, he still advocates that government nudge us toward fewer children.

Instead of coercion, though, he is a fan of "motivation."

When, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Holdren was asked about his penchant for scientific overstatements, he responded that "the motivation for looking at the downside possibilities, the possibilities that can go wrong if things continue in a bad direction, is to motivate people to change direction. That was my intention at the time."

"Motivation" is when Holdren tells us that global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020. Or when he claimed that sea levels could rise by 13 feet by the end of this century when your run-of-the-mill alarmist warns of only 13 inches.

"Motivating" -- or, in other words, scaring the hell out of people -- about "possibilities" is an ideological and political weapon unsheathed in the effort to pass policies that, in the end, coerce us to do the right thing.

Holdren's past flies in the face of Barack Obama's contention, made on the day of the science czar's appointment, that his administration was "ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology."

Holdren embodies the opposite, actually.


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Mad Scientist Watch

Put the lime in the coconut, then you feel better

via- Heliogenic Climate Change
FROM-UK Telegraph

Lime in oceans 'would reduce CO2 levels'
Adding lime to the oceans could slow down or even reverse carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to a new project, known as Cquestrate, unveiled at a climate change conference.

About half of the CO2 released into the air by humans each year is absorbed by the oceans.
Although it helps slow the rate of global warming, it increases ocean acidity and poses a potential problem to marine life.

Under proposals from the Cquestrate project, they aim to reduce ocean acidity while increasingly absorbing CO2 by converting limestone into lime, thereby adding the lime to seawater

The lime would react with CO2 dissolved in the water, converting it into bicarbonate ions, thus decreasing the acidity of the water, allowing the oceans to absorb more CO2 from the air and reduce global warming.

Cquestrate, proposed by Tim Kruger, a former management consultant, was one of 20 schemes proposed at the Manchester Report, a two-day event looking for the best ideas to tackle climate change at the Manchester International Festival. A panel of experts chaired by Lord Bingham, formerly Britain's most senior judge, will select the 10 best ideas that will be featured in a report next week.

Mr Kruger told The Guardian: "It's essential that we reduce our emissions, but that may not be enough. We need a plan B to actually reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to research such concepts now – not just the science but also the legal, ethical and governance considerations."

While the idea is good in theory, Mr Kruger added that in order for it to properly work, the world would need to mine and process abotu 10 cubic kilometres of limestone each year to soak up all the emissions the world produces. The CO2 resulting from the lime productino would also have to be captured and buried at source.

Chris Goodall, one of the experts assessing the proposals said the concept looked good but further research was needed to ascertain how feasible it was.

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Mad Scientist Watch

FROM-FP Passport

Britain's Royal Society to study climate "geoengineering"

An interesting editorial in The Guardian by a member of Britain's Royal Society, the country's national academy of science, announced -- with a bit of modesty bordering on self-skepticism -- plans to look into "geoengineering" schemes to combat climate change:

The Royal Society has set up a study group on geoengineering climate. Without the answers there will be no way to take sensible decisions on this issue, based on evidence and facts rather than beliefs and suppositions (either for or against the idea). It may well be that our study will conclude that such schemes are not feasible, or too costly, have serious side-effects, or are too difficult to control. But it may not; and it is likely that we will need a lot more information before we can really decide."

After this rather remarkable bit of don't-get-your-hopes-too-high-ism, John Shepherd, the author, gets around to defining just what geoengineering means:

Geoengineering schemes for moderating climate change come in two main flavours. First there are those that aim to increase the amount of sunlight that is reflected away from the Earth (currently about 30%) by a few percent more. Second there are some that aim to increase the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, by enhancing the natural sinks for CO2, and maybe even by deliberately scrubbing it out of the air.

In other words, the Royal Society will be studying the possibility of reflecting sunlight away from the earth on a massive scale, and looking at new ways to sink CO2 into the ocean, or scrub clean the atmosphere. Pretty Jules Verne-seeming stuff, as Shepherd acknowledges:

"If world leaders are unable to agree on effective action to deal with climate change ... we may in future be glad that someone took these ideas seriously. Seriously enough to separate the real science from the science fiction, anyway."

What's remarkable is that the Royal Society, founded in 1660, represents nothing if not the nation's crusty scientific establishment. And while the author presents these schemes with much hesitation and ado, it does seem an indicator of just how much more urgent, and desperate, the discussion over climate change is beginning to seem in the U.K.

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CHIEF Mad Scientist Alert!

"in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."
Listening to these guys, that is exactly how I feel.


AP Newsbreak: Obama looks at climate engineering

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.


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This story is getting a lot of attention today, as it should since this is a very important person in a very powerful position that can influence policy. Before I get into it. let me say that I seriously doubt it will ever happen, (the shooting of particles into the atmosphere). The reason is that it would pretty much require an international agreement or treaty of some sort to make it happen. In other words the most powerful countries in the world at least would have to agree to do it, won't happen.

Every time this comes up though I point out the absolute absurdity of it. First off if they are real serious about it why not just abolish all clean air restrictions and go back to polluting as we did post WW2? Until we got a handle on real air pollution beginning in the 70's, this was precisely what we did, emit aerosols into the atmosphere.

To show exactly how bizarre the entire AGW theory is,that real air pollution and those aerosols in the atmosphere are the reason given by proponents of AGW for the cooling that occurred in those decades despite the ramp up of CO2 emissions! They basically say that pumping all that pollution into the atmosphere during the boom of post war industrialisation masked the warming that would have occurred from CO2 this is why it cooled for about thirty years. Then when we cleaned up our air through technological advances and legislative mandates, the CO2 generated heating was let lose so to speak.

So by that reasoning, China which does not have advanced pollution control technology on their coal plants and is emitting real air pollution far beyond what the US did in the 60's is actually cooling the world?

Do you begin to see the absurdity of it all? Yet the scary part is this; A man in the position of John Holdren is so bitten by the bug so to speak, that he seriously considers this as an option, or is willing to say anything to convince people that to save the world such lunacy must be on the table.

If this truly is a serious suggestion, I got one better, kill two birds wit one stone-let's build more coal fired coal plants without pollution control on them!

Might I also point out again, that it could also backfire if we suddenly had several large volcanic eruptions. So our mad scientist have saved us from their man made global warming by injecting particles into the atmosphere, then surprise we have a couple big natural volcanic eruptions, the combination of which sends the globe into an ice age. Yeah scientist! 

Another Mad Scientist Moment

from live science

Scheme to Curb Global Warming Could Backfire


One proposed plan to save the planet from global warming — by injecting particles to intercept the sun's light — would have the unintended, and ironic, effect of making a key alternative energy source, solar power, less effective, a new study points out.

Several "geoengineering" schemes have been proposed to curb the warming effect of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. One of these takes its cue from observations of the effects of huge volcanic eruptions on global climate.

For example, when the Philippines' Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it rocketed volcanic ash and gases up into the atmosphere. Some of this volcanic confetti hovered in the stratosphere, circulating around the world, and caused the global surface temperature to drop by almost 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius) for two years afterward. ....

Might I also point out again, that it could also backfire if we suddenly had several large volcanic eruptions. So our mad scientist have saved us from their man made global warming by injecting particles into the atmosphere, then surprise we have a couple big natural volcanic eruptions, the combination of which sends the globe into an ice age. Yeah scientist!