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UN Mounts Asteroid Defense Plan Following Chelyabinsk Meteor
Philip Ross writes "Astronomers have warned that our planet is long overdue for a defense plan against catastrophic asteroid collisions. When it comes to deflecting Earth-obliterating celestial bodies, short of a superhero capable of punching the approaching rock back into outer space, there is no single force dedicated to stopping cosmic bullies from striking our little blue planet straight in the eye. That's why the United Nations said it will establish an International Asteroid Warning Group to intercept and divert dangerous asteroids."
The main issue we've got is the lack of warning we have. Even a year is too late if you want to divert large lumps of rock.
Once you're going to divert something then you have to work out where its going to end up - no point diverting it from the earth this year, to have it end up crashing into something else which ends up sending 100 rocks at us.
And here's the same tired old argument that we see when a third world country plans a satellite launch. Oh noes ... they don't have enough toilets ... and while they are sorting that, they should just sit around for the next couple of hundred years doing nothing else!
The UN does have specific hunger and poverty eradication goals and organizations that look into those issues. See these:
http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml
That doesn't mean the UN shouldn't have unrelated committees/arms investigating other issues and see if something can be done to address those.
It doesn't work. I know because I tried that in Kerbal.