Researchers have discovered that good old-style leaded gasoline protected us from global warming in the 20th century.
You may already know that particles in the air help create ice crystals in the atmosphere, which can reflect some solar radiation back into space. This helps keep the Earth from sweating its ass off.
Lead, as it turns out, is a super-ice-crystal forming substance. This forming of ice crystals is called “nucleation”. (Don’t get ahead of me here.) According to the New Scientist: “Dan Cziczo and colleagues of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, created artificial clouds in the laboratory to explore the ice nucleation efficiency of various particles.” Lead is highly effective at “nucleation”.
But you know what else is a boffo “nucleation” particle? Radioactive material. Yep, it’s true. Nothing reflects solar radiation back into space better than radiation suspended in dust and the upper atmosphere (except the rare chemical element known as IRONY-42).
So there you have it, the solution for global warming. Light up a few nukes in uninhabited regions — not enough to bring a full-on nuclear winter, but enough to turn down the thermostat a few degrees. To be extra “nucleated”, we could deposit all the Chinese-made children’s toys at ground zero, thus doubling our effectiveness. (Radioactive particles + lead = nucleation 🙂 )
Either that, or Dr. Tundra could finish his work on his ultimate weapon, the IRONY bomb. Personally, I’m afraid of the projected sarcasm fallout from this device.
Alltop and humor-blogs.com are deadly isotopes of COMEDY-12. More details about the lead at the New Scientist.