Bill Becker offers “some news stories I wish I had seen on Earth Day.” Feel free to add you own!
NEW YORK – The United Nations announced today that the international climate negotiation originally scheduled for December in Copenhagen now will be held by conference call.
“Every part per million counts,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in the announcement. “If tens of thousands of negotiators fly to Copenhagen”¦. Well, you do the math.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The International Society of Geo-Engineering Solutions to the Intractable Problem of Global Climate Change (ISGESIPGCC) announced today that it has abandoned plans to deploy giant mirrors in space, one of the profession’s most promising answers to global warming.
An ISGESIPGCC spokesperson said two factors led to the decision.
The first is the recent announcement by NASA that 50 years of space exploration has left 28,000 “space objects” hovering above the Earth, ranging from active and inactive satellites to rocket parts and astronaut gloves. A collision of two satellites above Sibera last February created thousands more pieces of debris capable of damaging other satellites.
“Mirrors are breakable,” the spokesperson noted. “It’s doubtful any would survive constant collisions with space junk. Besides, every broken mirror would bring us seven more years of bad luck.”
The second factor is that space mirrors are no longer necessary. “The atmospheric effluvium is becoming dense enough that we may have found a geo-engineering solution by default,” the spokesperson said. “Some of this junk – especially the shiny metal stuff — already is reflecting sunlight back into space. The rest of it will soon create a cloud so thick that little sunlight will reach the surface of the Earth anyway.”
LAS VEGAS – The owners of the Mirage Hotel have announced that in honor of Earth Day and in recognition of the urgency of global warming, they will begin emitting actual sulphur from their popular volcano on the Las Vegas Strip.
The ISGESIPGCC praised the decision as an “an excellent example of anthropogenic aerosol loading” and said it would seek federal funding for nationwide deployment of similar man-made volcanoes, since real volcanoes are “so damned unpredictable”.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Despite intense pressure from the powerful coal lobby, Congressional leaders today announced they are withdrawing all federal funding for research on carbon capture and sequestration from coal-fired power plants.
CCS is the still unperfected process of trapping carbon dioxide emissions from coal and burying them deep underground, where they would stay trapped safely for all time.
The unexpected decision follows a report from the National Academy of Sciences that CCS could result in “anthropogenic terrestrial flatulence” – the danger that despite our best efforts to hold them back, toxic gases would become so pressurized that they would escape from their deep-Earth storage sites, causing unpleasant if not fatal consequences for nearby communities.
“I don’t know what Mother Earth would feel like, but I think I’ve experienced something like this personally,” said one member of Congress. “I wouldn’t wish it on my best friend.”
Oh well. There’s always next year.
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Previous in TP Climate Progress
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Hahaha! Great story on carbon capture and storage, and I can name at least a couple of congressmen who I could picture saying that!
DALLAS – The development of compressed CO2 bullets has yielded the surprising union of global warming activists and the NRA. The new bullets use a compressed CO2 core that is so hard, it’s “diamond like”, surrounded by a plastic casing. The casing, made from recycled water bottles, “prevents the release of the encased CO2 until the end of days”, touts the manufacturer.
The amount of bullets produced in America alone should lower global CO2 concentration levels by 4ppm per year. The NRA even has a new slogan: “Guns don’t kill people, CO2 kills people.”
Some scientists are worried that the new product could lead to global cooling resulting in a new ice age. Republicans quickly labeled it anti-business junk science.
(last night on Sixty Minutes)
CBS: Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, knows that to help stop global warming he’ll have to do something about the 100 million tons of carbon dioxide that his coal-fired power plants emit each year. That’s why we weren’t surprised by his comprehensive plan to reduce energy usage in Duke Energy’s service territory’s millions of homes.
Rogers: “Sure, we could just build more coal plants, more power lines, more railroad cars, and remove some more mountain tops. Been there, done that. But after seeing how succesful California’s long term commitment to efficiency has been in creating profits for utilities, we decided to take their approach one step further. Duke Energy will be investing in range of manufacturing endeavors which will produce the most energy efficient appliances possible with today’s technology, and then provide financing to deploy these new super efficient appliances throughout our service territory. We can make more money selling efficiency.”
“You know, there are a lot of people many of them in your industry may who you probably know who say that global warming is not a big problem,” Pelley said.
“It’s my judgment it is a problem,” Rogers said. “We need to go to work on it now. And it’s critical that we start to act in this country.” He adds, “This household energy efficiency initiative improves our bottom line as well as the climate’s. Every Amercian needs to understand what the economists have been telling us for decades, that this efficiency thing is the best business strategy out there. Just ask the experts at McKinsey.”
“Are you saying we can’t build any new coal fired power plants in this country?” Pelley asked Dr. James Hansen later in the episode.
“Absolutely, not only in this country, but in the world. This is not yet understood by most Americans. We are going to have to have a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants within the next few years and phase out the existing ones over the next 20 years or so if we have to preserve the climate like the one that has existed the last several thousand years,” Hansen said.
“You know, Jim Rogers will hasten to tell you he share your sense of urgency,” Pelley remarked.
“Well, his plan matches that,” Hansen replied, adding, “but I am really interested in some of his other plans. One million plug ins by 2020 for load shaping? Giving every new appliance an IP address in his super smart grid concept?”
Happy Earth Day
Bullwinkle, that is truly funny!
QATAR – A tsunami completely wiped out Dubai, UAE, ending a lifestyle with a carbon footprint twice that even Americans.
(see http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html )
Departments of Ecological Economics are now being established at every major university in the US. It is being reported that freshman classes teaching classical economics are being canceled across the country because of near zero enrollment. Can the demise of the departments teaching how to externalize corporate costs and other such anti social behaviors be far behind?
All the world’s Davids are building Goliath-sized slingshots for propelling dry ice into space. The winner of the contest is the one who hits the most space junk.
California- Directly after the completion of the Starthistle Century bike ride a fender bender blocking the exit to the event’s parking lot resulted in the spontaneous abandonment of 1,500 SUVs, pickups and minivans.
The participants rode home on their bikes. Said one rider seen removing the plates to a mountain of black metal labeled as an Avalanche, “I only bought this monster to go skiing in Tahoe, but with climate change there hasn’t been any snow anyway. If the bank wants it back they can find it parked next to all the others.”
Fairgrounds owners complained that it would cost money to get the abandoned vehicles towed as they couldn’t even be given away anymore. The homeless people only want the white ones because they’re not so hot in the summer.