Do Mitt Romney and Rick Perry Believe in Geo-engineering?

by David Stephen
November 3, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1919/do-mitt-romney-and-rick-perry-believe-in-geo

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney are contenders for Republican Party ticket for 2012 US presidential elections. They have their campaign going but swerved attention from climate science after letting their opinion about climate change phenomenon out.

"The issue of global warming has been politicized" according to Gov. Perry who further stated that "I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects". Former Gov. Mitt Romney stated recently that ""we don't know what's causing climate change," and "the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO₂ emissions is not the right course for us.""

These are probably their opinion and anything friends can bluntly share on a sit talk without fears. Letting this out via the mass media was shocking to many who believe that further doubts to the climate change phenomenon may harm efforts to cut and cap emissions in time.

Everyone is entitled to h/her own opinion and opinion is sometimes based on inference on a particular subject. These politicians are not necessarily skeptics after some of their statements on record. Their attachment of a level of doubt to climate change response made the media and certain pundit paint them as skeptics.

Climate change is happening and economic hardship is also happening, climate change can cause devastating problems after a number of years, but economic hardship can end lives and prevent personal and national progress immediately. Given these issues and how much climate change may gulp in response, many prefer to stay as skeptics to billions of dollars response to combat climate change.

Producing economies are top emitters around the world, both total and per capita. Most of these economies that should take the steering about mitigation efforts for the benefit of the world are themselves sunk into economic issues that may take a few years to go down.

Climate change skepticism surely has sections and one can be a skeptic in one or two but a few may ideally show skepticism in all aspects. For example, there is skepticism that is global warming exactly happening now? There is skepticism about the authenticity of climate change data because the measurements are not witnessed by all.

There is skepticism that carbon cuts and going green are businesses that political powers and their cohorts have investments in; there is skepticism that weather deviation occurring now is usual in the life cycle of the earth occurring after many years similar to Earth Magnetic Field reversal; there are all kinds of skepticism.

Saying that global warming will not occur because of anthropogenic emissions and that continuous emission to the troposphere is not harmful to the earth climate system is possibly a form of delusional and out-of-knowledge skepticism. Global warming now or not, continuous emissions are threats to balance of the average temperature of the earth because more heat trapping gases will trap more heat and may affect the balance.

Economic problems, security, health care, safe transport, food prices, immigration, imports and manufacturing, income and more are priorities for most governments these days and are action points for political debate than climate change that requires global coordinated response than national.

Geoengineering is not new in the world and leapt to the headlines after announcement of Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) by UK Scientist and a review by US Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) on Climate Remediation Research. Geoengineering is seen as an escape route for the world from global warming effects if emission curbs in place leave us and the environment in a realm of danger from average temperature increase.

Geoengineering has issues which can be listed and possibly developed into a book, but these are issues if we believe they are because climate change 'if' it effects come will be more and there may be 'nowhere to run' for many. Geoengineering is hotly considered but may need to go on a low to keep the attention on hopeful international agreement for emission curbs by the UN in sight.

People with doubts on geoengineering or (say) geoengineering skeptics because of consequences the procedure may have should remember that for experimentation, much care will go for each step because of the knowledge of how delicate earth climate system is.

In pharmacology, some drugs are good targets for a peculiar condition while it may have effect on other conditions, so a balance is usually reached in preparation and study of components of these drugs for the human body that is fragile and complicated even to present science.

Geoengineering may have effects but care to a reachable maximum will be taken as scientists try experiments that may sustain life forms and the environment. Most climate change skeptics will not likely be geoengineering skeptics giving the latter an advantage for broad talks and acceptance on the wide. In coming debates and campaigns, people and the media may ask Gov. Rick Perry and former Gov. Mitt Romney their stance on geoengineering? I doubt if they will have issues with it.

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