By Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
September 15, 2011

The science known as “geo-engineering”, or “terra-forming” sits right over on the extreme end of climate change activist agendas. Many call it dangerous, as it unnecessarily interferes with our planet’s delicate ecosystems, but climate zealots are still of the belief that it’s these sort of quacky measures that could “save the planet” from the 21^st century’s most hideous mythological enemy, man-made global warming.

Over the last 10 years, climatists have put forward some glorious, albeit shocking proposals to “fight global warming and climate change”. Among their ideas includes a giant blanket to cover Greenland’s glaciers in order to keep them from melting, giant umbrellas in space to shield us from the sun’s rays, and of course, the bizarre invention of “cap and trade” and the failed carbon market. Their latest idea is no less extraordinary, and is certainly up there with the wackiest of desperate Victorian inventions ever concocted.

Believe it or not, scientists and engineers plan to test their latest “geoengineering” idea in Norfolk, England next month by launching a helium-filled blimp, tethered by a 1 km long hosepipe which will spray mist into the air. By doing this, they are hoping to cool the climate with what they describe as a “simulated volcanic eruption”.

According to a recent report in The Independent, “The project is one of the first geoengineering field trials in the world and could result in the deployment of a fleet of up to 20 giant balloons, each the size of Wembley Stadium, injecting millions of tonnes of sulphate particles at a height of 20km into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space.” Engineer Hugh Hunt goes on to describe the invention, “This hose would be just like a garden hose, 20km long and we pump stuff up the pipe. The nice thing about it is that we can really have a knob, if you like, which we can control to adjust the rate at which we inject these particles.” To develop this particular “big green idea”, the group from Bristol University have managed to con the government out of a cool $2.5 million in research grants from the public purse.

Their research is paid for by the government’s own Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. As public funds for housing, education, and community support are currently being cut across the board, it is perhaps even more shocking that the governments in Europe and North America continue to throw their finite budgets at what amount to no more than quack-green Victorian science projects.

Members of this government-funded Stratospheric particle injection for climate engineering (Spice) project have also looked at using missiles, and giant “chimneys” in order to send thousands of tonnes of particles into the atmosphere. Amazing.

The year 2011 has without a doubt, been the worst year so far for the man-made global warming effort. Scandal after scandal, resignation after resignation, have successively shaken the climatist/warmist movements from the secure perch they enjoyed back in 2007. Still though, the movement is pushing forward in a last ditch, propaganda Tet Offensive, through Al Gore’s latest green media circus show entitled “24hrs of Reality”, desperately trying to push the old, fatally flawed, and misleading tenets like the planet is heating up, and‘the science is settled’. But above all, we are meant to believe that “every country is in agreement” that man-made CO2 is causing the earth’s temperature to rise, threatening life as we know it. Yes, he still wants you to believe that it’s a global consensus. Aside from the dodgy science and the crooked academic practices, one of its main handicaps is that it just never made any economic sense. The liberal utopian mantra of ‘green jobs for everyone’- which was also Obama’s famous campaign plank in 2008, aka the ‘green economy’, was nothing more than a political pipe dream designed to garner public support from those sympathetic to Al Gore’s sermon of global doom at the time, much in the same way that his predecessor, George W. Bush, successfully created  a similar mythology- ‘the war on terror’, in order to own public support of any and all policies related to security and military largess.

Rather sadly, Al Gore’s fabled vision, the Green City on the Hill, is rightly buckling under the weight of its own blind, state subsidies and market realities. Only last week, after managing to claw a hefty half billion dollars out of the US Federal government in the form of guaranteed stimulus handouts, Obama and Biden’s number one green pet, solar energy firm Solyndra, was put down for good, via Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

A bigger slap in the face one could not get. Still, however, mainstream media gatekeepers continue their vain attempt to keep the popular modern mythology of anthropogenic global warming and its sister, climate change, as alive as possible. There is still an industry in the alarmist movement, and as long as states and institutions are still handing out billions of dollars per annum in research grants, then I’m afraid we will still have to see some of the wacky scenarios like Bristol University’s 1km hosepipe cum-volcano… for some time to come.

Regardless, the reality curve has finally caught up to climatists. As science gradually makes its way back into line with reality and real world observation, it follows that many of the expensive, government-run climate bureaucracies erected since 2000 will also fall by the wayside as a result.

Soon, very soon, politicians will no longer be able to use scientists as scapegoats, as in “it’s not our fault, they told us CO2 was heating up the planet”.

When that time arrives, then the climate alarmist political agenda will have died a certain death. That time is nigh.