“Bobwheelers” Aim Spotlight On Climate Change During Games…

Giggle. I spent a good part of my morning on the beach in front of my house today, looking back up at the mountains and wondering if the bears were awakening from hibernation, confused no doubt by all the birds chirping and lack of, you know, cold and snow. Fittingly, when I returned home, I found this email in my inbox:

Offsetters, the Official Carbon Offset Supplier of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, launched their tongue-in-cheek campaign today to make Bobwheeling a demonstration sport for future Winter Games that may lack snow and ice due to climate change. The Bobwheel will make appearances in Vancouver as part of the spectator engagement campaign Offsetters is implementing before and during the Games to educate visitors, spectators and locals about climate change and offsetting.

I realise climatologists are pinning the unseasonably high temperatures on El Nino (that little f@cking bastard), but I nevertheless got a kick out of the idea of 2 men careening down Taylor Way in a bobwheeler. They already do street luge, so why not? Learn more at www.Bobwheeling.com.

PS. We’ve just learned that if you hear one more person jokingly comment that this should be the Summer Olympics and not the Winter Olympics, you are free to kick them in the left knee, really hard.

How To Scare Your Kids & Make Them Think Parents Kill Bunnies

A new British advertisement poignantly stirs the climate change pot (via AdFreak).

Endangered Island Nation Holds Underwater Cabinet Meeting…

When the world’s top scientists tell you that your entire nation is in imminent danger of being flooded over because sea levels are on the rise as a consequence of global warming, and then you learn that the rest of the tardonaut world could give a shit because there’s this kid in a balloon, see, and plus that dude from Twilight has such pretty bone structure, it’s time to get creative (via Treehugger):

The president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, and his ministers yesterday held an official cabinet meeting underwater as part of an international movement organized by 350.org to bring increased global attention to climate change.

As far as stunts go, I say gold, just maybe not as hot as balloon boy. Maybe if Fox gave the country its own reality show? I dunno. Since 80% of their 1,200 islands are just 1 meter above sea level, there can’t be much future in it, maybe 3 seasons, tops. Read more on the meeting and the Maldives’ battle after the leap… Read more

Whitening Clouds With Sea Salt Might Postpone Climate Change

A few months ago I posted a few thoughts on several inventive last ditch efforts scientific solutions to the many coalescing problems currently screwing the planet. Some bordered on the humorously bizarre, while others had more than just a slight whiff of feasibility. Tonight I’m particularly digging this one, which sees mankind building 2000 robotic yachts to inject a super fine spray of sea salt from the oceans into maritime stratocumulus clouds. Read more

The Super Freaky Dangerous Politics Of Saving Mother Earth

From Eli Kintisch in Slate this morning:

Add this to your list of climate nightmare scenarios: In 2040, facing rising seas, the Qatari government starts polluting the stratosphere in order to cool the planet, precipitating an international crisis and possibly upsetting monsoon patterns.

Freelance atmospheric modification may sound far-fetched, but the potboiler concept was on the agenda last week at an invitation-only, international workshop in Lisbon, Portugal. The private event was the first global powwow designed to explore the political aspects of geoengineering, or the deliberate manipulation of the climate. About 30 scientists and bureaucrats, representing 14 nations, mulled over the implications of global climate control in a wood-paneled conference room. Read more

Icarus Shrugged: Could Risky Science Defeat Global Warming?

Is your house under water?

Let’s say for the sake of bumming you and me out that we’ve passed the point of no return with global warming. Many scientists believe we already have, that even if every nation on earth immediately curbed their greenhouse gas emissions by 100% it wouldn’t make a difference. The back door to salvation thus shut, what would we do? Aside from moving inland away from the coasts and toasting goodbye to Shanghai, LA, Cape Town, New York, Montevideo, and…gulp…quite a bit of the Lower Mainland, we’d probably fight amongst ourselves, blame everyone but ourselves, and generally embarrass ourselves like we haven’t done as a species since Read more