I had to set up a new category: Alarmist Insanity, under which to collect extreme, totally insane and often very expensive proposals or projects intended to counteract alleged injuries to climate trends, the environment (collectively, injuries to Mother Earth, a.k.a. Gaea)

The items identified under this category do not constitute a complete list.  Some of the items have already been under implementation for years, but what they all have in common is that they require extraordinary amounts of money while being futile and providing dubious, if not outright damaging returns on investment.

An example of large-scale damage over the long run for absolutely no discernible returns is the concept of carbon (CO2, that is) capture and sequestration (CCS), the only obviously discernible consequence of which will be increased taxation and vastly increased fuel and electricity prices.

The fact that CO2 generated by human activities constitutes no more than 3 percent of the CO2 contained in the atmosphere and all atmospheric CO2 is naturally sequestered in a very short time through very effective biological and geological processes is never  mentioned by the proponents of man-made CCS.  That is due to a number of factors and motivations, of whom the most important one may well be politicians’ and government bureaucrats’ visions of vastly increased tax revenues through putting taxes on the air we breathe.

Another fact, that CO2 is essential to sustain all life on Earth is also hardly ever mentioned, nor that without CO2 all life would cease to exists, or that increases in atmospheric CO2 cause the biosphere to thrive and agricultural production to experience enormous increases.

Furthermore, have the proponents of CCS ever mentioned that when they sequester CO2, they remove not only life-giving carbon from the atmosphere but also essential oxygen?  How does anyone justify that the sequestering of substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere will cause the loss of a substantial amount of oxygen?

Some of the insane aspects of alarmist insanity in relation to man-made or government-imposed CCS schemes have already been covered in articles identified on this blog.  Links to the category “Alarmist Insanity” for those articles will be installed as time progresses. New articles that fall into the “Alarmist Insanity” category will have those links assigned as they are being posted.

Today I came across a couple of items of absolute insanity that spawned various ideas for combating global warming.  For Heaven’s sake, why do we pursue such insane ideas?  Have we not left the superstitions of the dark ages a long time ago, and are we truly now leaving the age of enlightenment?

[1] Inventor paints mountains white to combat climate change
An inventor has set out to paint the peaks of the Andes white in an attempt to combat the effects of climate change. 

That little jaunt is funded by the World Bank, to the tune of £135,000 (Can$212,625), but why worry about that.  In 40 years from now it will all be over.  I know, the title of the congress.com alert at the following link states: “within 50 years,” but congress.com obviously became confused by their own hype.  Given that we are now in the year 2010, the year 2050, by which year the extinction they predict could have happened, will leave only another forty, not fifty years for Gaea to be purged of all human presence.

[2] Global Warming could make Humans EXTINCT within 50 years

The publisher of that article, congress.org, apparently a U.S. government organization (although they don’t say so directly) claims to be “a nonpartisan news and information Web site devoted to encouraging civic participation. Our mission is to provide information about public policy issues of the day and tips on effective advocacy so that citizens can make their voices heard.”

Nonpartisan?  News? Perhaps so in relation to impartiality in regard to one party of the other, but definitely not impartial on issues of objectivity and the truth versus being biased towards untruth, lies and alarmism.  There is no other way to [3] look at their climate alert, and news it definitely is not, but hysterical, alarmist propaganda it most definitely is. It is not just the title of the alert.  Consider the introductory paragraph:

Global Warming could make the human race EXTINCT. The #1 kill mechanism is famine. See “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. Shifting winds and warmer oceans have already created a weird moving checkerboard of drought and flood that has interfered with agriculture here and elsewhere.

The alert gets worse, much worse, and contains nothing but unsubstantiated opinions that transmit alarmist hype and hysteria to the mind of anyone eager, willing and dumb enough to revert to the superstitions of the dark ages.  With all of the reading I have done on the subject of climate change, I never yet found that any climate scientist ever made so many exaggerated claims. Even Al Gore has not ever made so many extreme and bizarre assertions in so few words as congress.com have made in [4] their alert.

It appears that congress.com is not intent, as they assert,

“to provide information about public policy issues of the day and tips on effective advocacy so that citizens can make their voices heard…. [with] software [that] assures that your letter will be delivered directly to the decision-makers whose opinions you hope to influence,”

but that they primarily wish to inundate as many people as possible with outrageous propaganda.

I never noticed that anyone reported that Barack Obama has a sign on his desk that states, “The buck stops here.”  Furthermore, given that [5] the congress.com climate alert is not dated, is cannot be discerned whether the alert was published during Barack Obama’s term of office.  One thing is certain, though.  Barack Obama is responsible for that article.  Sign or no sign, the buck stops with him.  He owes Americans an apology and a correction.