Silly me, I’ve suggested on more than one occasion that the Bush administration doesn’t take global warming seriously and has no feasible plan to address the crisis. How wrong I was.

The US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday.

This does not appear to be a joke, though it probably should be.