In the vein of Dr. Doofenschmirtz – “I give you the great Carbon Dioxide Suckinator!”
It’s come to this. From NPR:
“Every year, people add 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That’s contributing to climate change. A few scientists have been dreaming about ways to pull some of that CO2 out of the air, but face stiff skepticism and major hurdles. This is the story of one scientist who’s pressing ahead.”
Notice the 2nd sentence where NPR connects the dots from rising CO2 to ‘climate change’ (which used to be global warming). As I’ve shown before, making this claim that CO2 is contributing to global temperatures requires a great deal of imagination. CO2 is a greenhouse gas but it is by far not the magical molecule that the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) cult claims.
But those inconvenient facts won’t get in the way of a great NPR story. Here are more of the details of the magical atmospheric CO2 scrubber.
“Peter Eisenberger is a distinguished professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. “
“He started looking for a way to pull carbon dioxide right out of the air. “And it turned out the best device already exists,” he says. “It’s called a monolith. That is the same type of instrument that’s in the catalytic converter in your car. It cleans up your exhaust.”
“Eisenberger’s monoliths grab carbon dioxide from the air and release it again when you heat them up.”
Well that’s just great. If we can devise a machine to pull the CO2 molecules out of the atmosphere (don’t worry about where we’ll store it, we’ll work that out later) then we can finally mute the AGW cult and their high priests (i.e Al Gore) and go back to living our normal lives guilt free.
What does the rest of the AGW cult have to say about this? Surely they are excited about this, right? Not so much! From the NPR story (emphasis mine):
“Robert Socolow at Princeton University started hearing a buzz about this technology a few years back.”
“It’s catchy,” Socolow admits. “It’s attractive conceptually that one could basically pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the next several decades and pull it out later and everything would be fine.” But the appeal of the idea also worried him — people might use the mere prospect of this technology as an excuse not to act.”
“Socolow’s panel concluded that the technology would be hopelessly expensive, costing $600 for every ton of carbon dioxide it drew out of the air. And the scale would also be huge. In order to capture the emissions would waft into the air from a single coal-fired power plant, you’d need to build a structure 20 miles long and 30 feet high. “It’s like the Great Wall of China,” Socolow says.”
“The committee concluded that it would make a lot more sense to cut down on emissions first — make our cars, homes and factories more efficient. Panel members also said it makes much more sense to capture carbon dioxide directly from smokestacks, where it’s concentrated, instead of from the air.”
Did you catch Mr. Socolow’s bias? He went into his study “worried” that the idea of a magic CO2 eraser would allow civilization to continue driving cars, operating power plants and going about their lives business as usual. The AGW cult can’t have that! There must be punishment for the economic advances of the United States. The solutions must be painful!
Coincidentally, the other AGW cult members concluded that it is way too expensive to create these CO2 eaters so back to punishing the masses. Of course, imposing draconian restrictions on power plants, increasing operating costs for businesses and raising home energy costs isn’t very expensive. Or is it?
You really can’t make up what the AGW cult is doing right now. They are getting desperate since global temperatures have been flat for 15 years and the North Pole is experiencing record cold temperatures for the summer season. They have to do something and since they have the POTUS as a cheerleader they think the momentum is behind them.
Exit thought – I’m just glad the AGW cult didn’t blame Earth’s climate on Oxygen. Can you imagine the news story of a machine designed to suck Oxygen out of the atmosphere? In reality, water vapor is a stronger green house gas than CO2 but thankfully they haven’t suggested pumping the water vapor out of the atmosphere. Yet!
cosmoscon 
You have to admire (in a sick way) their chutzpah….I’m watching Debbie Wasserman Schultz on TV this morning, and the woman is just one unsubstantiated, made up, cliché after another. It makes you wonder how the United Mine Workers now feels about backing this administration.
Oh yes, you have to admire their ability to stay on-message even when facts should compel them to do the opposite.
And the Left claims to be the intellectually superior political breed!
“An excuse not to act.” Where does the sense of moral hazard come from? Grant for the moment that CO2 is a problem. What is wrong with artificially managing the environment? We already manipulate the environment in many ways. Are we supposed to junk civilization and go back to living in caves?