The Energy Absurdity of the Week: A Solution to Global Warming Billy Blazejowski Would Love

I’m afraid you have to be either a Baby Boomer or a Gen Xer to get the reference to a film character named Billy Blazejowski, or Billy Blaze for short. Either that, or be big fan of early 1980s movies. The rest of you should go find a movie starring Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler from 1982 called “Night Shift” and give it a watch. It’s pretty funny and stands up fairly well over time. You can find it at Amazon Prime.

In the movie, Billy Blaze styles himself to be an “idea man,” and carries a small tape recorder (the analog kind that you Gen-Zers have never seen) and periodically stops whatever he’s doing to record one of the hare-brained ideas that pop into his mind at random times. Stuff like, “Idea: What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or... hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED 'em mayonnaise! Oh this is great...” Brilliant stuff like that.

When Tammy Nemeth sent the subject of today’s Energy Absurdity over in an email this morning, the first thing I thought of was Billy Blaze stopping in mid-sentence, pulling out his recorder, and saying, “Idea: Use big balloons to stop global warming.”

Here is where Billy Blaze stops himself and says, “I'm an idea man, Chuck. I get ideas all day long. I can't control ‘em. I can't even fight 'em if I want to. You know, 'AAAAH!' So I say 'em in here, and that way I never forget 'em. You see what I'm sayin'?"

Really and truly, I swear neither Tammy nor I are making this up, there’s a pair of climate alarm researchers named Tom Hafer and Henry Miller (that’s sort of close to Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler, am I right?) who have come up with what is sure to be the NEXT BIG THING in our global warming fighting arsenal. They lay it all out there in a paper that very predictably and somewhat hilariously starts with the following doomsday language right out of the gate:

“It’s going to get hotter for the rest of your life. A lot hotter. This will happen irrespective of how many electric vehicles we buy or how many wind farms we install. The warming will likely be accompanied by increased rainfall, flooding, and violent storms.”

Speaking of early ‘80s movies, I can hear Bill Murray right now finishing that passage with, “Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!!!”