it's all that hot air

E.P.A. Limit on Gases to Pose Risk to Obama and Congress

This will all turn out badly:

...President Obama vowed as a candidate that he would put the United States on a path to addressing climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollutants. He offered Congress wide latitude to pass climate change legislation, but held in reserve the threat of E.P.A. regulation if it failed to act. The deeply polarized Senate’s refusal to enact climate change legislation essentially called his bluff.

With Mr. Obama’s hand forced by the mandates of the Clean Air Act and a 2007 Supreme Court decision, his E.P.A. will impose the first regulation of major stationary sources of greenhouse gases starting Jan. 2.

For now, administration officials are treading lightly, fearful of inflaming an already charged atmosphere on the issue and mindful that its stated priorities are job creation and economic recovery. Officials are not seeking a major confrontation over carbon regulation, which offers formidable challenges even in a less stressed economic and political climate...

It was a campaign promise. You might as well forget about it. We'll be lucky if the feds don't build factories to spew out sulfate and sulfide aerosols to try to offset carbon emissions' effect on global warming.

A lot of the literature now downplays the role of sulfuric acid in the runaway greenhouse on Venus, despite the fact all the clouds are sulfuric acid in a CO₂ atmosphere. No free oxygen or water to speak of: it's all bound up as CO₂ and sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄).

So the Serious people (you know, the same people who gave us the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act and Endless War on Terra) really are considering trying to geoengineer away global warming in the face of increasing CO₂ emissions by pumping enough sulfur in the atmosphere to dim the sun? The Serious people really ought to do a little reading in basic college chemistry on what happens when you mix sulfur, oxygen, and water under oxidizing conditions with ultraviolet light...