Thursday, November 20, 2014

Shoot the CO2 out of the sky with Fricken' Lasers!

              Incoming!  Incoming!  CO2 spotted at 12 O'clock High!   ZZZZZAAPPP!   Got it!!!!



There is no problem so large that someone won't think the way to solve the problem is to shoot at it or blow it up.  CO2 build-up in the atmosphere and Greenhouse Warming is no different.  If there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere, this line of thought goes, then the way to fix the CO2 problem is to shoot the #%$@& CO2 right out of the sky!

Of course shooting CO2 is a little bit trickier then shooting down the Red Baron.  CO2 molecules are very small and make up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere, so its hard to even find it, much less shoot at it.  The obvious solution?  Get a laser----or as Dr. Evil famously said "a fricken' laser."  

Conveniently enough, the same kind of space-based lasers that were once proposed as "Star Wars" weapons to shoot down ICBMs are now being repurposed as space-based lasers that could shoot down CO2.  However, even the developers of this ingenious idea admit that they might have a hard time shooting lasers at the CO2 in the atmosphere because the CO2 atoms are so small.  

If I could make a small suggestion, it would be to keep the laser idea, but shift the weapons platform from a space based satellite system to something located here on earth.  Since CO2 is so small, its going to be very difficult to hit it from a satellite system located in outer space, even if the satellite is put in low earth orbit.  However, borrowing again from Dr. Evil, if you put the "fricken' lasers" on a shark, then the shark will be able to get much closer to the CO2 in the atmosphere than a satellite can, adding to the ability of the shark to shoot down the CO2 and increasing the likelihood of this particular geoengineering concept being successful.

       Sharks with fricken' lasers on their heads could get much closer to the CO2 in the atmosphere than a laser system located on an orbiting earth satellite.


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