Politico is apparently suffering from a bout with confusion. The liberal outlet is floating “sav[ing] the planet” by blocking — *checks notes* — the thing that literally gives the planet life.
Politico ran a headline promoting the mad science of solar geoengineering like it’s a legitimate solution to solve the leftist climate change boogeyman: “Block the sun, save the planet?”
Reporter Arianna Skibell immediately hedged the insane headline by admitting that “[b]locking the sun’s rays to limit global warming has long been considered too dangerous to even study,” but then pivoted to promote woke drivel: “But 60 top scientists are breaking from their colleagues and calling for research into what they call solar radiation modification.”
The method, said Skibell, involves “spraying aerosol particles into the atmosphere that would reflect sunlight away from the Earth, thereby slowing warming.”
Nowhere does Skibell mention the human cost that such an asinine idea could inflict. As Forbes magazine put it in a May 2022 article, “Major changes to the global climate [through geoengineering] could create unlivable conditions, negatively impacting densely populated regions, consequently displacing thousands.”
The Scientific American editorial board noted in 2008 that “[t]he sulfates would slow or reverse the recovery of the ozone layer; they might also reduce global rainfall, and the rain that did fall would be more acidic. And those are just the foreseeable effects.” Strange how Skibell didn’t even address the potential negative impact so-called “solar radiation modification” would have on one of the left’s favorite renewables: solar energy.
Skibell instead characterized the eco-extremist gambit as a virtuous “last ditch” effort to cool the planet:
[A]s heat waves, wildfires, floods and other climate-fueled disasters are growing more common and severe, some scientists and policymakers are exploring last-ditch efforts to cool the planet before rising temperatures trigger catastrophic, irreversible changes to ice sheets, ecosystems and vulnerable communities.
Climate Depot founder Marc Morano ripped Politico’s climate propaganda apart in comments to MRC Business. “Be afraid. Be very afraid of climate fear promoting academics seeking attention and funding in a vain attempt to control the earth's climate with untested geoengineering,” Morano said. “Our message should be simple: Leave the Sun alone. We don't need your bizarre experiments to save us from the alleged threat of 'climate change.’”
Morano even called out the sordid past of one of the geoengineering enthusiasts, former NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James Hansen, which Skibbell conveniently left out when she promoted him and other signatories to an open letter advocating for blocking the sun.
“Hansen became infamous for getting arrested multiple times for climate activism and he promoted a book suggesting ridding the world of industrial civilization,” Morano stated.
Any explicit criticism that Skibell included was buried until the ninth paragraph where she mentioned a separate group of researchers calling for an international ban on geoengineering. However, she framed the criticism as a cudgel against people who don’t adopt leftist talking points on climate, rather than pointing out the specific environmental dangers that the entire world-altering idea could pose:
The [critics] argue that the technology risks becoming a ‘powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments’ to delay cutting greenhouse gas emissions, [emphasis added.]
She also conceded later that creating an international structure to implement the technology would be a “geopolitical nightmare” but that was about as far as the criticism went. She concluded by stoking alarmism that the world needed to get its act together on climate before more drastic measures are supposedly needed:
“The disagreement within the scientific community underscores the high-stakes nature of the climate crisis: The world needs to stop producing planet-warming pollution. And that’s just not happening fast enough.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Politico at 703-647-7999 and demand it stop being an echo-chamber for eco extremist ideas.
