WASHINGTON, DC—In a nationally televised address reminiscent of President Kennedy's historic 1961 speech pledging to put a man on the moon, President Bush responded to the global warming crisis Monday by calling for the construction of a giant national air conditioner by the year 2015.

Concept art shows how the 800-mile-wide device would function on a "high cool" setting.

"Climate change is real and it demands a real solution," Bush said. "Therefore, I am committed to dedicating all of the technology, all of the brainpower, and all of the resources we need in order to keep America cool and comfortable well into the 21st century." 

The National Air Conditioner Initiative is expected to be the largest public works project in the nation's history. Because technology capable of creating an air conditioner that can fulfill the cooling needs of a continental land mass does not presently exist, the president estimated that research and development alone will require at least $100 trillion in both federal and private sector funds.

"The challenge of building an air conditioner for all Americans will be the greatest we have ever faced," Bush said. "But we must face it. We must act now to ensure that our children and our children's children can live in a world where they don't get sweaty and have to change their shirts all the time."

From The Onion

Actually, there are some outside-the-box ideas for cooling the Earth.

From the Chicago Sun-Times: (h/t to Romenesko)

A liar is a liar -- and Black didn't know?

Yeah, Radler's a liar -- a sneak and a rat, too -- just ask my colleagues

June 20, 2007

BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist

Conrad Black's lawyers say David Radler is a liar. If they said it once Tuesday, they said it a hundred times. I couldn't keep count.

Sometimes they would just interrupt whatever else they were talking about to say it again.

"He's a liar. He's a liar. He's a liar," repeated Edward Genson, the venerable Chicago defense attorney who doubled up with Black's powerhouse Canadian counsel Edward Greenspan to deliver the closing argument Tuesday at Black's fraud trial -- just in case the jury got tired of hearing only one person calling Radler a liar.

Yes, he's a liar all right. Even the prosecutors have admitted Radler is a liar, while granting him a plea deal to provide testimony against Black and three co-defendants for allegedly ripping off Hollinger International, the Sun-Times' former parent company.

Besides being a liar, Radler is also a sneak and a rat, and if I were to survey the people on the 9th and 10th floors at 350 N. Orleans -- the home of the Sun-Times since Black and Radler sold our old building on Wabash to Donald Trump -- I'm sure I could elicit enough pejoratives to fill the rest of this column.

It hardly comes as news to the people in this company that someone would think that Radler, our former CEO and publisher, is a liar.

Which begs the question: how is it that this comes as news to Conrad Black?

Ouimet, the anonymous CBC insider, had these thoughts on the looming departure of CBC editorial honcho Tony Burman:

Tony is going and many people found his style somewhat irritating, but he was in many ways, from what I heard in several meetings, at least in the first year after the end of the lockout, the defensive line against Richard Stursberg, one man, not the front four in football.

Note: Ouimet must not work in sports. The offensive line protects against the other side's defensive line, who are on the attack. There are five people on an offensive line and between three and four on the defensive line. Anyway, Ouimet could have chosen a better metaphor. Onward we go ...

I don't know exactly what happened in the fall of 2006, but it appears that something changed across the top levels of CBC at that time, not only with Burman, but with Sue Gardner and other managers who have left or are about to leave (there are more coming) but that is when a lot of senior people decided "it's not fun any more." ...

How often have we heard "time for change" in the past few months as manager after manager who are not on Stursberg's "team" has left? I know other managers and the boomers across the Corpse are counting the days until early retirement. With the current turmoil among the private broadcasters, all the rest can do is knuckle their foreheads to Mr. Scrooge/Stursberg--at least for now.

Actually, the private sector (where I work) looks like an oasis of tranquility compared to the upper reaches of the Corpse these days.

The usual statistic has been that China is building a coal-fired power plant every week to 10 days to meet surging demand. New findings indicate that China is tossing up two per week, and has probably already passed the United States as the world's biggest total GHG emitter.

From the BBC:

Thousands of BBC staff around the world will observe a vigil on Wednesday marking 100 days since the kidnapping of Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston.

Colleagues at the Glastonbury festival, on drama sets and in newsrooms in the UK and beyond will pause at 1315 GMT.

Mr Johnston's parents will release 100 balloons marking the days passed since a group calling itself The Army of Islam abducted the reporter.

On Monday a deadline for his release, set by Hamas, passed without progress.

Johnston was the only Western reporter permanently based in Gaza, and his abduction has triggered appeals for his release from lawmakers and rights groups around the world.

Several foreigners have been seized in Gaza in recent years and all have been released unharmed, but none has been held as long as the BBC reporter.

Here's Johnston on the art of journalism.