Crush Liberalism

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are an irrational believer of that junk science fad known during the warm months as “global warming” and the cold months as “climate change”…come on, just for a moment.  Work with me, people!

Anywho, picture this: You have your autographed Al Gore “Earth in the Balance” book that you keep beside your biodegradable beanbag chair in your studio apartment.  You’re relaxing in the beanbag, kicking off your Birkenstocks, donning your Che t-shirt, lighting your zero-carbon incense, and debating with yourself as to whether or not to get your weekly shower tonight or put it off until tomorrow.  You turn on CNN or Al Jazeera to see that a device has been created that would allegedly remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere.  Details:

It has long been the holy grail for those who believe that technology can save us from catastrophic climate change: a device that can “suck” carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, reducing the warming effect of the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas produced each year.

Now a group of US scientists say they have made a breakthrough towards creating such a machine. Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, they plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.

The prototype so-called scrubber will be small enough to fit inside a shipping container. Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build, but the carbon cost of making each device would be “small potatoes” compared with the amount each would capture, he said.

Sweet Mother Gaia, the “climate crisis” has been solved!  If you were an environmentalist, you’d be happier than Barney Frank at a “Boston Firemen 2009 Calendar” photo shoot…right?  I mean, environmentalists really care about the planet and aren’t just a bunch of anti-capitalists who get off on restricting Americans’ way of life, right?  Yeah, right:

Scientists at Columbia University are developing a carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubber device that removes one ton of CO2 from the air every day, says the Heartland Institute.

While some see the scrubber as an efficient and economical way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, many environmentalists oppose the technology because it allows people to use fossil fuels and emit carbon in the first place.

According to Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner, who is leading the research team:

• Producing a large number of CO2 scrubbers can keep to a minimum any rise in atmospheric CO2 without the economically painful elimination of inexpensive energy sources.
• This technology would allow people to use fossil fuels, which they will be using anyway, without destroying the planet.

Environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace have consistently opposed similar technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration, because they do not address what they see as the root of the problem, says the Heartland Institute.

“This is just one more piece of evidence that environmentalists aren’t concerned about solving a problem,” said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. “Every problem, as they see it, is one way to restrict people’s lifestyles, and if you come up with a technological fix that can solve a problem but doesn’t require sacrifice and lets us go about our business the way we were before, they’re not happy about it, even if it solves the problem.”

The science is settled: the environMENTALists don’t give a wet fart on a dry January Monday about the environment, as much as they do about preventing the perceived evils of capitalism and the American way of life.