President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren has suggested that we consider blotting out sunlight to reduce global warming, according to an Associated Press report.
Holdren would shoot particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back into space– I sure hope plants and people don’t need those rays for say, photosynthesis or vitamin D production, respectively. And what would be the other unintended consequences?
Holdren, of course, is a people-hating population control fanatic, anyway, so perhaps he’s hoping to killing two birds (or half the population) with one stone.
Oh… and what about all those solar power projects Obama keeps talking about? Don’t they need as much sunlight as they can get?
So many questions, so few brain cells for Holdren to work with.
It sounds like Holdren might be wearing a Kyoto Hat…
People who live outside the USA know two things that appear to be oblivious to most Americans .
1. There are a lot of very intelligent Americans.
2. There are even more dumb Americans.
The recommendations of Holdren, and the rest of the misguided Climate Change brethren confirm that ‘2’ is absolutely correct.
Wow, that’s radical!
I saw a movie like this once where humans blotted out the sun to stop evil robots that were solar powered. The robots adapted and enslaved the human race.
Unless Im mistaken, the sun is a critical part of the muslim religion.
This could really get Obama in trouble with sun worshippers.
Does Dr. Holden’s idea imply that the big old yellow ball up there in the sky also has something to do with the earth’s temperature, its not all just CO2?
Maybe this is a clever political ploy to sell cap and tax of CO2 by threatening to end all life on our planet. Many folks will readily vote for cap and tax long before they trust “eco-scientists” blotting out the sun’s rays.
a very reputable climate scientist whose name i won’t drop here said in an interview that it would take an investment of about 1% of the total GDP to transform our energy systems and so cut emissions as much as they need to be in order to prevent further harm to our environment
Well this Holdrenism just about seals his fate as the most stupid man in America. He should look good next to that most stupid woman, Sen Pulosi who doesn’t think that natural gas is fossil fuel. I do hope America wakes up to the idiocy that is descending upon them.
The urgency to be seen as doing something about the non-problem is understandable.
That way, when the non-problem results in non-disaster, (stay with me, now) they can all throw their hats in the air and shout
” Flash Gordon…er, ah, that is…Barack Obama saved the Universe, AGAIN!”
You may be entirely right in your perception of Holdren, but I wouldn’t write off terraforming as an idea. Others with more good will and less political agenda have proposed approximately the same thing, e.g. Gregg Benford working with several others at Livermore National Laboratories.
Of course their proposals are in the nature of considering the idea as a cheaper insurance policy if modeled warming ever did actually manifest itself, rather than engaging in massive economic dislocation now.
Since the Obama administration appears to want to balance some of its yawning budget gap with carbon regulation, it does not appear they believe in Holdren’s ideas — at least not to the exclusion of throwing out a sea anchor on against any recovery when their own science advisor — for whatever purposes — is, at least implicitly, suggesting that global warming could be combated directly rather with economic penalties.
Of course any such program has it’s own range of unintended consequences but it seems to me that climate skeptics need not see a willingness to discuss purposeful human alteration of the climate as misanthropic.
Our entire effort at civilization has been to shape the climate on various scales, I wouldn’t write off the macro scale.
I think skepticism of Holdren and his motives is fair game, but this general kind of terraforming discussion seems like an obvious response if one is concerned that the climate might be inhospitable — and normally is one that environmentalists reject as “unnatural”.
For instance, if we were headed into another ice age (which we might be), I think it would be pretty suitable to discuss plans to engineer the atmosphere to capture more of the sun’s heat although there might be some negative externalaties to various methods proposed you have to weigh them against your certitude of an approaching ice age.
Maybe he could propose putting up a giant mirror to reflect solar radiation?
Wernstrom!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_of_the_Hot
Sounds like Holdren is campaigning for a promotion to the much more cush position of “Science Fiction Advisor”. The whole discussion falls much further on the side of fiction than science.
Is this guy some kind of a racist? Reducing Vit D from sunlight is more detrimental to persons with dark skin. Adding Vit D to milk many years ago was helpful to all kids especially to those with dark complexions that migrated north.
What does he want, another ice age? This is ludicrous.
One YouTube user has this posted on their site:
“What did they teach us in grade school makes climate?
1. Distance of earth from the sun
2. Tilt of the earth on its axis which affects the angle and intensity of the suns rays – this creates our seasons (Latitude determines what climatic zone one lives in)
3. Orbit of the earth around the sun
4. Rotation of the earth which makes for warming by day and cooling by night – this is what creates our winds and jet streams.”
Alarmists have abandoned what we do know of climate in favor of superstition.
I saw a movie like this once with a character named Dr. Strangelove. It’s too bad Peter Sellers isn’t among us any more because he could probably do a great impersonation of John Holdren.
In a way, I’m glad these clowns are upfront with their ideas. Maybe our half-awake populace (you know, the ones who voted for this travesty)will start to pay attention and realize what horror they have unleashed on our country and the world.