Reading the New York Times on Friday was like picking up one of those tabloids in the supermarket checkout line. You know, the ones with articles entitled TAYLOR AND TRAVIS CANOODLE IN THE CARIBBEAN and HOW TO LOSE SIXTY POUNDS WHILE EATING ONLY CHEESECAKE AND ICE CREAM, along with crazy stuff, such as SCIENTISTS PLAN TO LAUNCH GIANT UMBRELLA TO BLOT OUT THE SUN. But this was, after all, the New York Times, and there was the article, all dressed up in Gray Lady language but still just as tarty a tabloid story as you could imagine: “Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis?”
Yes, it’s real. The author, Cara Buckley (or “Buckely,” as the scrupulously careful and accurate Paper of Record refers to her in one mention), is identified as a “reporter on the climate team at The Times who focuses on people working toward climate solutions.” That’s enough in itself to know she’s crazy, and she proves it with the opening paragraph of her article about the latest on the crisis that could destroy the world as we know it (no, Taylor and Travis aren’t breaking up; I’m referring to global warming).
“It’s come to this,” Buckley writes breathlessly. “With Earth at its hottest point in recorded history, and humans doing far from enough to stop its overheating, a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists are proposing a potential fix that could have leaped from the pages of science fiction: The equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer space.”
Which astronomers and physicists? Dr. Jekyll? Dr. Strangelove? Dr. Frankenstein? Dr. Yakub, the evil scientist who, according to Nation of Islam lore, created white people on the island of Patmos, and thereby introduced evil into the world? The New York Times, which is supposed to be a serious paper, is actually taking seriously a scheme to launch a gigantic umbrella into space to shield us from the sun’s rays?
And I do mean gigantic: “To block the necessary amount of solar radiation,” Buckley informs us, with no indication that she has ingested any hallucinogenics, “the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina.”
Oh. Okay. So “scientists” are plotting to launch an umbrella the size of Argentina into space to protect us from global warming, and this is the Paper of Record, and we should trust the science, eh? Dr. Roy Spencer, who is an actual scientist and a leading skeptic regarding the left’s climate change mythology, disputes the central premise of Buckley’s article and the giant umbrella plot: the idea that the earth is hotter now than it has ever been, and that it’s the fault of human activity. Spencer explains:
Since there is so much year-to-year (and even decade-to-decade) variability in global average temperatures, whether it has warmed or cooled depends upon how far back you look in time. For instance, over the last 100 years, there was an overall warming which was stronger toward the end of the 20th Century. This is why some say “warming is accelerating.” But if we look at a shorter, more recent period of time, say since the record warm year of 1998, one could say that it has cooled in the last 10-12 years. But, as I mentioned above, neither of these can tell us anything about whether warming is happening “now,” or will happen in the future.
There is, however, one thing that we can be sure of about the future: the New York Times and the rest of the left’s propaganda apparatus will continue to push the climate change mythology upon the nation, demanding that Americans acquiesce to third-world status for the sake of the planet, while China, which is a massive polluter but remains unchallenged by the climate hysterics, gains global economic hegemony.
Related: How the Establishment Media Tries to Manipulate You: A Case Study
Ultimately, it’s all a shakedown for those who hatch schemes such as blocking out the sun with an umbrella the size of a South American nation. Buckley reports that one Yoram Rozen, “a physics professor and the director of the Asher Space Research Institute at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology,” is “ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration.” Oh, is that all! Watch for Old Joe and his henchmen to pony up readily: after all, the kleptocrat-in-chief is a fair-skinned old fellow, and he’d probably be grateful for an interplanetary sunscreen paid for by the American taxpayers he so loves to soak.
One other thing is certain as well. I’m no scientist, but I’m nevertheless unhesitant about making this prediction: if these mad scientists ever really do shoot their Argentina-sized umbrella into space, it will have unforeseen effects that will be catastrophic for the people of the earth, and cause much more harm than the phony crisis they’re claiming to solve. Luckily, however, all that is likely to come of this plot is a few millionaire “scientists,” and another hit to the credibility of the paper that Donald Trump indelibly dubbed “the failing New York Times.”
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