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UN May Ban Blotting Out the Sun
Supervillains and Mr. Burns are among those to be most affected by the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity decision on space sunshades. Even though organizations like NASA have been looking into them as a possible way to slow climate change, the UN is expected to limit research into the technology or ban it outright. From the article: "The Convention may consider banning or limiting research into space sunshades. Some question their wisdom. A space sunshade would have a rapid effect on global warming and provide time to develop more permanent measures, they say. The technique has already received serious attention from NASA and other organizations. But others, such as the ETC group, an environmental and social advocacy group, fear simply blocking the sun is a bandage, meant to cover up the problem, and allow humans to continue using fossils fuels. Another fear is that geo-engineering, as techniques like this are called, could have unforeseen consequences on the weather, ecosystem and agriculture."
Reflective rooftops have some conceptual similarities, but are somewhat less drastic.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
By "not on the same order of magnitude," you actually mean "one makes lies that slant toward my ideology and the other slants against it."
Do a scientific study and you'll find that those others are just as bad as, if not worse than Fox News.
the burning of fossil fuels has other issues, and blotting out the sun would only address one of them.
Let's break it down:
CO2 is toxic. Above a certain concentration, CO2 becomes a toxic agent.
Sunlight is needed to safely remove CO2 from the atmosphere (via photosynthesis. Yes, the oceans can absorb a good deal without the sun, but this results in ocean acidification, which leads to biosphere collaspe, which leads to a spiral of death and destruction in the ocean-- resulting in a massive release of CO2 as all those organisms die from toxic water.)
Continuing to release geologically sequestered CO2 reduces the earth's ability to eliminate waste heat into space as infra-red radiation-- EG, it causes global warming.
Attempting to blot out sunlight (energy in) to compensate for the obstruction on energy out of our planet to regulate global temperature would make the current energy crisis look tame; Plants and animals would be dieing left and right from the reduced energy reaching the earth. this would slow the earth;s ability to re-sequester that carbon, and make a bad problem into an even worse one.
The whole "We need to stop burning fossil fuels!" cry from the scientific community (and from your much derided 'greenie weenies') is non-trivial. It's like saying we need to stop dumping toxic waste in landfills, or stop producing biological weapons of mass destruction; the CO2 itself is dangerous. We need to stop INCREASING it's free levels in our atmosphere, if we intend to continue living on this planet.
It has nothing to do with money, or some insane desire for everyone to live in mud huts; It's a desire for everyone to CONTINUE living.
CO2 is toxic at about 100 times the current concentration in the atmosphere. I don't think we could reach that atmospheric concentration if we burnt up every bit of fossil fuel on the planet.
No, MSNBC and most of the 'liberal' media have shown time and time again that Fox News is clearly in the tank for the GOP/Tea Party/Conservative/Big Business groups.
Are MSNBC unabashedly liberal? sure, that's not the point. The point is that Fox tailors their coverage and flat out LIES to their audience. My favorite example was when Fox was covering/sponsoring one of the early Tea Parties using Hannity. He is clearly heard off the air asking how many people are in the crowd and is told about 5 thousand. He then goes on air and inflates it straight to almost 25 thousand.
Or the clear misuse of the Glenn Beck rally footage to bolster the Michelle Bachmann 'press conference'/rally. That was *not* just a video editing mistake. It happened again within a couple weeks.
Shall we talk political contributions? When was the last time a 'liberal' mainstream media outlet contributed directly to one side of the political spectrum? Kinda hard to be 'objective' if your owner is personally funding one side.
Shall we talk hyposcrisy? Remember the 'show us the funding' cries about the NYC Muslim Center? Who was that from? Fox and the GOP. Now, they say that asking for funding disclosures is unamerican when related to the Citizens United created groups playing a direct role in our political process.
Sorry, Fox News is *not* a media organization anymore than K Street lobbyists are.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Besides, we did find WMD in Iraq. They were only a few hundred old leftover ones and weren't the massive stockpiles that were were told were endangering everyone, but it is literally true that we found some WMDs. This makes the poll question like those poll questions that ask if witches exist--answering what they said and answering what they meant are very different.