<satire>
(I wonder if the Babylon Bee is hiring...)
President Biden late today signed an additional executive order committing $350 billion to another developing crisis brought about by climate change caused by the world's use of fossil fuels.
"Look, I know recent polls show that only 1% of the responants...respondenauts...well, you know the deal," said the president. "They don't think climate change is the greatest emergency facing this nation. Well, they're wrong. They're wrong. It's an emergency right up there with taking people's guns away and packing the Supreme Court. And science proves it. Scientists are calling this thing the 'Canyon of Fire.' It's two million miles long and it's about to hit us."
The president was referring to the solar storm that is predicted to arrive at earth's atmosphere on July 20th or 21st bringing with it a minor G1 geomagnetic storm:
https://www.livescience.com/canyon-of-fire-solar-storm. It was spotted July 12 as a dark filament of electrified gas on the surface of the sun some 230,000 miles long. These are precursors to CMEs, or Coronal Mass Ejections.
"This thing is a massive blast of heat," continued the president. "Why do you think much of the world in under a heat wave right now? It can fry our satellites, take out the interweb, bring down the power grid. Our reliance on Big Oil is the cause and it's going to hit us."
Scientists said that the storm coming is a weak one, a classification of G1, the lowest on the scale. While it is possible it might cause minor and temporary interference with things like smart phones and GPS systems, the earth is protected by its strong magnetic field. Perhaps the most noticeable effect might be to allow the aurora borealis to be seen as far south as the Canadian border and the northern parts of Maine and Michigan.
"Look. It doesn't get any more real and immediate than this," said the president. "Our own sun is getting hotter and hotter. And it's our fault. If we don't do something, it could blow up."
Dr. Martin Nelson of Cal Tech and the Jet Propulsion Institute said, "These are common and, to a degree, predictable events. We've known since 1775 that the sun has waxing and waning activity cycles that last about 11 years. We're in the increasing activity period now and we'll see it peak in 2025. Then it will begin to decline again. It's been going on for billions of years."
When asked if climate change on earth could be adversely affecting these solar cycles, Nelson said, "We're talking about the sun here. You could fit over a million earths inside the sphere of the sun, and on average it's about 93 million miles away. In fact, the sun accounts for some 99.86% of all mass in the entire solar system. So, no. Nothing about the earth affects the sun in any way, even if the entire planet crashed into it."
In describing his new executive order, president Biden said that he is committing $350 billion to start construction on huge wind farms that will be anchored in the Gulf of Mexico in United States territorial waters. "These will not only start providing immediate power generation to help make up up for what Putin's Price Hike has done to our economy, but these giant turbines will be computer controlled so that the outflow air from them will always be pointed toward the sun. We will be doing everything within our power to cool the sun and get these monster solar flares under control."
Listening to the president's announcement, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WY) was overheard saying, "Heaven help us all." When asked just how worried he was about the increasing solar storms he said, "We have nothing to worry about from normal solar flares. In the lower 48, we won't even notice that this one happened. No. We have a much, much bigger problem in this country. And it's nowhere near as bright as a solar anything."
