I recently learned that underground coal fires—as depicted in the film “Silent Hill”—release as much carbon into the atmosphere world-wide as do all the cars and light trucks in the United States.  Since we know that all the cars and light trucks (SUVs) in the United States release DANGEROUS amounts into the atmosphere, threatening catastrophe like the one depicted in the film “The Day After Tomorrow,”  this is clearly a bad thing.

Firefighters in China recently put out one such coal fire (that had been burning for more than 50 years) at great expense and risk to the men involved, and several new ones have sprung up here in the States.  This brings up an important issue:  how much money, energy and manpower are we willing to commit to these efforts?  Sure, we need to do whatever we can to stop Global Climate Change, but at what cost?

Like usual, I’ve come up with a solution to this problem.  My plan will cost nothing, require no man-power, and will require literally no change in policy, behavior, or freedoms on the part of individuals.  The plan is simple:  we use water to put out the fires.  The beauty of my plan is that as Earth’s temperature increases the icecaps melt, raising sea levels, and thus bringing nearly endless supplies of saltwater to the coal fires where they’ll be put out naturally.  Then, because the fires are no longer emitting CO2, the water level will slowly raise back down, leaving us with mines containing both coal AND salt ripe for the taking.

Defined tags for this entry: climate change, global warming, I solved it

A new process to harvest the carbon dioxide from smokestacks and convert it into baking soda is exciting the scientific world.  By equipping industrial plants with this technology, we can prevent these large amounts of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.  It probably won’t solve our climate change problems, but it’s sure a step in the right direction.

This got me thinking, though.  If it’s possible to convert the CO2 emissions from industrial plants into baking soda, what’s to stop the same process from converting the exhaust from the millions of vehicles on America’s roads as well?

Remember when I suggested that we should be paving our roads white instead of black, so as to reflect more of the suns rays back out of the atmosphere?  Well, having every car on the road leaving a fine dusting of white baking soda everywhere it goes seems like a pretty simple solution for the short term.  This does cause a few problems, however:  1) the frequent overturned-vinegar-tanker incidents we have will suddenly be a lot more catastrophic, and 2) the amassing white powder might reflect TOO MUCH of the suns rays, putting us into a permanent winter.  Hopefully these two problems will simply cancel each other out;  when too much baking powder piles up, it will increase the frequency of vinegar tanker crashes, turning the baking powder back into CO2 where it can enter the atmosphere and encourage global warming.  It’s win/win, really.

This sudden abundance of baking soda could also provide one major missing piece of another plan I’ve been trying to get off the ground for some time: controlling the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

We truly are living in an amazing technological time.

Defined tags for this entry: climate change, global warming, I solved it, research, science

I was thinking about global warming the other day, when I came up with what I believe to be an easy (but expensive) solution to our problems.

First, some background:

It is believed that ice ages are more likely to start as a result of cool summers than overly-cold winters. The theory being that snow falls in winter, then melts in summer/spring. If summer and spring are both cooler than normal, then the snow takes longer to melt, meaning more of the sun’s rays are reflected off of it rather than helping to warm the ground. This results in continued cooler temperatures, which in turn encourages more snow fall. This sort of thing can snowball rather quickly resulting in year-round snow, meaning you’ll have to bundle up.

If you take a peek at satellite photos of inhabited areas, you’ll quickly notice that a very large percentage of the land-mass is covered by black heat-absorbing asphalt. I’m not going to claim that rampant asphalt use is responsible for our climate warming, but it certainly isn’t helping. I was thinking that if we were to paint all the asphalt white it would reflect more sunlight away from the earth, thus lowering temperatures and fixing global warming once and for all. The only problem with this, though, is that if the ‘snowball’ theory actually works, this could result in another ice age pretty quickly.

So, my refined solution is to pave all our roads not with inexpensive asphalt, but with some sort of heat-responsive color change substance, meaning that while it is warm, the color will lighten, and when it’s cold the color will darken. Perhaps something like this hyper-color shower tile?

Defined tags for this entry: climate change, global warming, I solved it, science

I’m really upset at the state of our government, our society, and our citizens in general. People just can’t seem to get along, meaning we get more stupid laws, which in turn cause more stupid problems.

After much thought on the subject, I’ve decided to take a page out of Alan Moore’s playbook and do something about it. What would Alan Moore do? He’d create a supervillain who causes enough senseless loss of life to restore us to that “Sept. 12th” level of empathy, and then push us further, making us truly understand how our actions affect one another. Everyone won’t be able to not love one another and treat eachother fairly, thus creating the perfect utopian dream we should all strive for.

With that in mind, I’ve formulated a plan to amass the country’s honey bees and make them do my bidding. Soon the “epi pen” manufacturers will no longer be able to keep up with demand, meaning millions (billions??) will die at the sudden onslaught of bee attacks by this nefarious genius. (That’s me.)

America (the world??) will once again unite under the banner of “we can’t afford to fight amongst ourselves… let’s join forces,” working together to systematically eradicate the bees. They’ll then realize that once all the bees are dead, we won’t be able to grow much food. This will cause everyone to have to work together creating new innovative ways of pollinating crops (genetically-modified dragonflies??) in order to survive. This will of course come with its own set of problems (no “epi pen” for dragonfly venom??), requiring yet more cooperation, making the world even better.

As you can see, my plan is very well thought-out—and, might I say, flawless. I’ll finally be able to make a difference once and for all.

I’m off to go get some bees. Wish me luck.

Defined tags for this entry: bees, i solved it, revolution, utopia

The latest problem to grace the Bush administration’s war plans is that no one is willing to take the job of “War Czar.”

This is quite the unexpected blow, but I submit that Americans have a long-standing tradition of being unwilling to take certain jobs, and that this should have been expected. One might say that this country is founded on the idea that all men should be free to choose the jobs they don’t want to do.

Unlike everyone else that’s complaining about this issue, though, I have a solution. Instead of a single “War Czar,” we just need to create a “Bureau of War” and staff it with the one group of people who have a long-standing tradition of accepting the jobs the rest of us Americans don’t want to do: illegal Mexican immigrants.

This solves both the Czar problem and the immigration/amnesty problem, because all so-called “illegal” Mexican immigrants will now be government employees, entitling them to benefits like healthcare, taxation, and the always popular “not getting kicked out of the country.” Having seven million “War Czars” ought to get things in Iraq nailed down at least seven million times faster than the single “War Czar” that we’re currently unable to find, so this proposition wins all around.

Also: taking into account the popular sterotypes of both Mexicans and government workers, this pairing seems like a pretty good match to me.

Defined tags for this entry: bush, I solved it, immigration, politics, war, War Czar

Phil points out a problem with the plan to launch Star Trek star “Scotty’s” ashes into space—namely that he won’t get high enough to avoid earth’s gravity¹.

Cant get high enough, eh? I say let Keith Richards snort him with some blow. That ought to do it.

Defined tags for this entry: drugs, happenings, I solved it, inventions, keith richards, space, star trek