http://www.judicialwatch.org/foiablog/2009/jun/few-obamas-favorite-things-climate-geoengineering
More from the protectors of liberty at Judicial Watch. I'm behind the times. Larry Klayman left as head man a few years ago and in true litigator fashion is suing the organization he founded. My unvarnished assessment of Holdren's understanding of geoengineering apparently impressed the investigator enough she included it in the introduction. You may want to know, how did I find this information in the first place? I searched for my own name on Google and when Judicial Watch came up, I knew something was going on. Memo to self. If you want to know what you've been up to, look it up on Google. The remainder of the paper on turning the Sahara into the Garden of Eden is found in this link: http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2009/OSTP_climate_response2_5_2009.pdf A few pages of it appeared in the one I sent with the original message. My take? Not enough rain, wrong kind of soil. The question then is asked, how did e-mails from this group wind up in the WH e-mail to the Science Advisor and ultimately in the FOIA reply to Judicial Watch? From reading the e-mails, many of which are just the same text repeated over and over again, it appears that Mike MacCracken sent them along with a report on geoengineering technologies that looks like the one he wrote for the World Bank. If Holdren reads that report, he will become much more conversant with geo. So Mike did him and the president an enormous favor. Of course, with all the evaluation studies of geo being produced, Holdren will have no shortage of reading material going forward. The problem then will be to avoid becoming confused over the competing interests and contradictory claims. I would recommend against seeking counsel from his old friend Michael Schlesinger who tries in one e-mail to convince him that geo would never be an acceptable option due to the "unknown unknowns." Like when we reduce sulfur in bunker fuels. Uncertainty is part of the price we pay for progress. Also linked on the Judicial Watch page this came from is a FOX "News" story about the urban whitening initiative. Only Steven Milloy would worry about this causing a decrease in solar irradiance. The sun heats the Earth, not the other way around. And he runs a website called...junk science! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522411,00.html Energy Secretary's White-Paint Proposal Puzzles Climate-Change Experts Thursday , May 28, 2009 By Paul Wagenseil Energy Secretary Steven Chu stunned the audience at a London scientific conference Tuesday with a radical but simple proposal to combat global warming: Paint all the roofs of all the buildings in the world white. If we did so, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist said, and if we also made sure the world's roads and sidewalks were light-colored, it would have the same effect on global warming as taking all the cars in the world off the world's roads for 11 years. The idea is to harness the "albedo effect" -- the theory that a reflective planet warms up less as heat from the sun is bounced back into space. . Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center. (see Adam and Eve playing with dinosaurs) Chu, speaking at the St. James' Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, said the calculations are based on work done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he used to work and where three researchers concluded last year that changing surface colors in the world's 100 largest cities would offset 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. But at least one science expert thinks Chu is nuts. "It's past simplistic -- it's ridiculous," says Steven Milloy, publisher of junkscience.com and an avowed climate-change skeptic. "Imagine the glare on roads, in urban areas, imagine the UV radiation bouncing around. Snow blindness would be replaced by road blindness." But Dr. Gordon Bonan, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., says there's a kernel of truth in the science behind Chu's idea. "That's been a pretty standard idea many for many years now," says Bonan. "It's related to the idea of an urban heat island -- that a big city will generate a large amount of heat. In urban planning and urban design, the idea is that painting roofs white will absorb less solar radiation and keep the city cooler." "In terms of roads, that does work," he continued. "You can test it yourself by walking barefoot on a hot summer day. The asphalt is going to be much hotter than the concrete and the white lines painted on top of the asphalt." Still, it's not clear how well the practice would work on the world as a whole. "You could try to extend this idea to the entire planet, but I've never seen any numbers on how much impact this would have on the Earth's surface temperature," says Bonan. "The urban [surface] area of the world is pretty small." Milloy says he's certain that it would be a huge waste of time and money. "How would this accomplish anything? What's the expense?" he asks. "This shows you how even Nobel winners get lost when they step outside their fields of expertise." Bonan says that there wouldn't be any "unintended consequences," but Milloy disagrees. "What if we do this, and solar activity decreases?" he wonders. "We need sunlight to make vitamin D. Plants need it to make photosynthesis." It's well known that people in hot regions, such as Greece or the American Southwest, make sure their houses are light-colored to keep out the heat. But what about residents of colder climes, who might appreciate the extra solar boost from a dark roof during winter months? "For a house, the heat loss would be pretty small," said Bonan. "It would depend on how well the attic was insulated." As for the assertion that painting everything white would offset the greenhouse-gas emissions of hundreds of millions of cars for more than a decade, Bonan demurred that he wasn't qualified to judge. Milloy was more critical: "It sounds like some dubious global-warming calculation that someone made on the back of an envelope." A Few of Obama's Favorite Things: Climate Geoengineering a.. View b.. Discussion Last Updated: Thu, 06/04/2009 - 1:13pm Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Tall plastic nettles and light bouncing smidgens Daft climate practices dark in the wings These are a few of Chief's favorite things. Obama's Assistant for Science and Technology, John Holdren, offers geo-engineering as a potential solution to the highly feared global warming crisis. After an interview with the Associated Press, John Holdren recoiled and claimed the Associated Press "hideously misrepresented" him and "[the] AP story focused on this minor point in the interview." The story bristled Holdren to the point that he "may never talk to the press again." Such a threat merely reaffirms his reputation for snubbing public discourse on science. The crime against the sacrosanct Obamaite was a press article conveying Holdren's comments on geo-engineering. Back at the White House, Holdren attempted to separate his comments from Administration policy. He noted that while he made it clear that his comments were his personal view, he had mentioned geo-engineering in White House discussions. Given that the interview was in his professional capacity, that his self-proclaimed expertise is climate change, and that he admits to discussing geo-engineering with the White House, there is little room to equivocate. The White House urged Holdren to withhold a letter to the editor "because [the White House Press Office] believe[s] that just keeps the story alive." Keeping the story out of the news allows the Obama administration to avoid transparency. While the President may have floated lofty rhetoric on government transparency, his actions have all but matched his rhetoric (think about his FOIA memo and compare that to the White House Office of Administration claiming that the law does not govern them and Obama's "Open" government). Geo-engineering may not be a topic President Obama wants to publicly discuss. Notions of shooting particles in the atmosphere or creating artificial trees carry a range of implications; some that are not yet fully understood. Experts call this dilemma "don't know squared." In fact, geo-engineering may cause worse problems than it is supposed to solve. For this reason, the scientific community has engaged several studies (NASA and EPA's will be covered in future blogs). Many actual experts have criticized Holdren because "he has a crude and possibly inaccurate understanding of aerosol formation and effectiveness. I don't expect all people at the senior policy level to be conversant with all aspects of these technologies, but his mixing up and confusion of these ideas concerns me..." Geo-engineering may be a fantastic idea, but it could be catastrophic especially if Obama continues to place agenda before facts. - Jenny Small Documents Uncovered OSTP Climate Documents Part 1 OSTP Climate Documents Part 2 Related Reading: Energy Secretary's White-Paint Proposal Puzzles Climate Change Experts Tweak the Planet To Curb Warming? Not Yet Fiddling with the Earth's Thermostat ----- Original Message ----- From: David Schnare To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 9:35 AM Subject: [geo] Re: Secret E-Mails from the Big White House For those who didn't get the memo, absolutely nothing you send to a government employee (except confidentidal business information) is beyond reach of public scrutiny. Even the majority of internal governmental memos and emails are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. It isn't being "nosy" to ask what is going on inside government. Indeed, that is the reason for FOIA. It has been the working tool for NRDC, EDF, the Sierra Club and many others who sue the United States as a means of keeping their lawyers employed. Same goes for the right side of the ledger. If you don't want your communication to a government employee made public - - call them on the phone. dschnare On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Alvia Gaskill <[email protected]> wrote: http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2009/OSTP_climate_response1_5_2009.pdf Larry Klayman's nosy lawyers have done it again. Posting secret White House e-mails about geoengineering to the Internets. I guess we can add loss of privacy to civility and drinking water. The file is too large to attach and too compelling not to read! See if your name shows up! My favorite was the proposal to grow trees in the Sahara. Hey, we could use the plastic cover as mulch! -- David W. Schnare Center for Environmental Stewardship --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
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