Hitler also had a few good ideas

Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history – after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest.

The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study.

The deaths of 40million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

And, although his methods may be difficult for environmentalists to accept, ecologists believe it may be the first ever case of successful manmade global cooling.

via

Weather control is not just for Reichians and warlocks any more

Last June Metro Systems built five ionising sites each with 20 emitters which can send trillions of cloud-forming ions into the atmosphere.

Over four summer months the emitters were switched on when the required atmospheric level of humidity reached 30 per cent or more.

While the country's weather experts predicted no clouds or rain in the Al Ain region, rain fell on FIFTY-TWO occasions.

The project was monitored by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world's major centres for atmospheric physics.

Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, said: There are many applications. One is getting water into a dry area.

'Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.' 

I wonder if this causes droughts downwind. BEGUN THIS WEATHER WAR HAS!

via img

Buy a hybrid, change your light bubs, fail to save the world

Not to be a downer about things, but...

Did you know that just 16 large sea going cargo ships can produce as much pollution as all the world’s cars. Think about that! There are 100,000 of these ships on the sea! And none are restricted from burning dirty sulphur laden fuel oil that is not allowed as fuel by others. And that means they produce 6,250 times as much pollution as ALL the cars in the world!

The shipping industry makes a valid point: If you want those jeans from china for 19 bucks, you better not be messing with the shipping industry.

I have no idea whether carbon output from shipping is covered in current cap-and-trade proposals. But speaking of other kinds of polution, it seems like the EPA could enforce some new regs. on ships coming in and out of U.S. ports. Right?

-

img credit

In a perfect world, taxing carbon would make more sense than Cap and Trade

Unfortunately, we live in a world that features such institutions as the United States Senate. I have to agree with Kevin Drum on this:

And at the risk of pissing off some decent people, I'll add one other thing. In the near term, no serious carbon tax will ever pass the U.S. Senate. Period. If you believe otherwise, you're just not paying attention to things. A big part of the surge in interest in a carbon tax is purely cynical, coming from special interests who are afraid a carbon cap might actually pass and want to muddy the waters with pseudo-liberal arguments in order to build an anti-C&T alliance and keep anything at all from passing. There are plenty of carbon tax advocates who are perfectly sincere, but I gotta tell them: you're being played by people who are the farthest thing imaginable from sincere. If you win, we're not going to get a carbon tax. We're going to get nothing.

Barring a sea change in the political situations (possibly brought on by a literal sea change?) cap-and-trade is our best bet to get some legislation passed that could have a positive impact.

It's worth checking out Drum's primer on cap and trade from April. I'm not swayed by all points, but it's definitely more realistic than the carbon tax.