$25M Bounty Offered for Global Warming Fix

SaDan writes "Richard Branson is offering $25M as a bounty for a fix to global warming. The person or organization that can devise a method to remove at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere will be able to claim the bounty. There are a few catches, of course. There can't be any negative impact on the environment, and the payment will come in chunks. A 5 million dollar payout will be paid when the system is put into place with the remainder of the bounty to be paid after 10 years of continuous use."

Good News, Everyone!

[User 956]

All we need to do is drop a large ice cube in the ocean every now and then. Thereby solving the problem.

It's already been solved

[andy314159pi]

It's called an air-conditioner. Duh.


Yes, Martha, I'm fully aware that the Carnot cycle shows that air conditioners cause a net heating of the environment when the heat dump and the cold reservoir are summed. That is to say the above is a joke.

Global Warming Fix

[FreemanPatrickHenry]

Global warming? What is that, some new street drug? And $25M for one shot? Crazy...

Re:Plant Respiration

[eln]

I once knew a chick who was so tightly wound she would probably excrete diamonds if you fed her carbon. Perhaps we could get a group of that type of people together and solve the problem that way.

Re:Mother Nature

[Anonymous Coward]

It is our mission to defeat Mother Nature in her attempt to wipe us out.

Re:Mother Nature

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, I'm sure that a human can take care of the earth better than Mother Nature can.

"Mother Nature" my ass. (Or, when a beaver builds a dam, it's "nature", but when a human builds one...)

Re:Plant Respiration

[olyar]

The technology is there to do the scrubbing, the issue is more how do you do that process without using a whole lot of energy to do it? And of course, that energy has to come from a plant somewhere that is putting CO2 back into the atmosphere...

Ideally, you'd run the process on solar energy I suppose. Hmm... an air scrubber that runs on solar energy.

Sounds suspiciously like a tree!

Re:Get rid of people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the CO2 released from burning petroleum fuel matters. Period.

what, do you expect petrol to burn itself?

Re:Plant Respiration

[Randolpho]

That might solve the "I want diamonds" problem, but there are two fatal flaws:

1) Eating carbon won't reduce carbon dioxide

2) The folks at DeBeers will come for you in the dead of night.

Pah! Trivial!

[zmollusc]

Simply declare co2 to be the worlds currency and pretty soon it will all be safely locked away in swiss vaults.

Solve global Warming and more

[FinchWorld]

Eat the homeless, now we have enough housing. Eat criminals, no more over full jails, possible drop in crime rates. Eat everyone who live in a house with an odd number, halfing amount of cars on the road. And with all that eating we solve third world hunger too.

Re:Good News, Everyone!

[0100010001010011]

And while getting that degree you probably missed numerous episodes of Futurama

My method...

[shoolz]

My method doesn't actually remove 1 billion pounds, rather it prevents that 1 billion from being released. I cannot talk about all the details until the patent is filed, but let's just say it involves Rush Limbaugh and a really large cork.

Re:Good News, Everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

And since water is most dense at 4deg C, the sea level will rise!

Yes, I really have a real degree in this field.

You should give the degree back to whomever you stole it from.

Re:Negative impact on the environment?

[charlieo88]

Didn't James Bond already stop you once in Moonraker?

Re:Plant Respiration

[menkhaura]

Well, once you burn the grass for... eh... medicinal purposes, the carbon will be re-released into the atmosphere

Re:Plant Respiration

[QuickFox]

I once knew a chick

This is Slashdot you insensitive clod!

Re:What happened to CO2 percentage vs. year graphs

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be the dumbest and most worthless person on the planet. But that's just a guess.

Re:Plant Respiration

[QuickFox]

Mass genocide of all developing countries humans then use that now vacant land to plant the trees.

Your idea has merit, but it would be far, far more efficient to kill the rich, as we spew out orders of magnitude more pollution per capita than the poor.

Re:My method...

[edwardpickman]

It would also remove a substantial amount of atmospheric heat that is released with the CO2. Might I suggest adding a second cork to prevent the release of methane which is even a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question

[chris_eineke]

someone would find a way to do it quickly, safely, and cheaply

Hey, that's easy. Just dump it into the ocean. That'll give the marine biologists a couple of new monster species, too. Where is my government tax break and research grant?

</hahaonlykidding>

Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question

[Broken scope]

... if only I could smack people through my monitor.

Re:Thats simple, Plant marijuana

[RealGrouchy]

It is in the top 10 for CO2 fixation! It has over 25,000 uses of which smoking it is just 1!

We can make cloths, shoes, rope, cardboard, paper, and other goods from the fibers.
We can make bread, cooking oil, ethanol, bio diesel, and bird food from the seeds.
We can smoke the buds to relax.

Yes, but if everybody smoked them to relax, there would be nobody left to worry about global warming!

- RG>

Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question

[musmax]

O, I'll pay 25M for THAT !, I'll even be a Alpha tester...