$25M Bounty Offered for Global Warming Fix 766
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."
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:2, Interesting)
That is something I have always thought since I was a little kid. Humans do this kind of thing *every* day. Every "invention" we have is a revised,accelerated, optimized and controlled process that the nature already did. I have always wondered why isnt it possible to isolate the parts of the plants that do the C and O2 separation and do it artificially. That way we could *unpollute* the planet.
Plant a forest(s), among other things... (Score:2, Interesting)
Trees....lots of trees.
Solar powered. Self-sustaining, self-propagating...pretty much self-everything.
It's pretty obvious to do any carbon dioxide scrubbing on a large scale, it's going to require a process that requires as little artificially-induced energy input as possible.
How about large saltwater algae beds in arid regions adjacent to the ocean? Harvest the algae, press out the plant oil, and make biodiesel. Algae is probably the most efficient crop for something like this.
Thats simple, Plant marijuana (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Problem solved! We just plant it everywhere! Along the roads, in the unused fields, around the government buildings, just everywhere. No more global warming!
Interesting how the CO2 levels started to rise just after the government banned growing it!
We can also reduce the "War on Drugs" budget and redirect it to research on global warming. There is an instant $6,000,000,000 per year to find alternate energy sources.
Problem solved, now take that $25,000,000 prize and give it to the Marc Emery defiance fund. [cannabisculture.com]
Find a way to block all volcanoes - problem solved (Score:1, Interesting)
Many other sources have similar figures.
Re:Thats simple, Plant marijuana (Score:2, Interesting)
But, people watched "Scarface" in the 80s, and said "WOW thats how drug dealers live? ferrari's and mansions? fuck that!", so here we are.
There's too much money involved there. You could tax marijuana to high hell, and still not generate the same amount of income. This is what the "war on drugs" is.
Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question (Score:3, Interesting)
My point isn't that there aren't energy alternatives, it's that there's not a real reason to do the CO2 -> C + O2 thing.
The Tree Answer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Solve global Warming and more (Score:5, Interesting)
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html [art-bin.com]
(Read it through. It's worth it)
Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:3, Interesting)
I repeat: cut down trees and build houses out of them. Letting trees decay in the forest is bad for the environment.
Re:Thats simple, Plant marijuana (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting how the CO2 levels started to rise just after the government banned growing it!
I thought it was due to a decrease in the number of pirates [wikipedia.org].
Seriously, dude. Arguments about global warming and scratchy hemp shirts aren't nearly as good as the argument that it's just none of anyone's damn business what you smoke.
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Tree Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
THE SOLUTION! Giant 30' Air Filters/Purifiers/Nets (Score:2, Interesting)
2) Or, have a huge turbines, like those used to generate electricity. Then, take these turbines and attach air purifiers to them. All the air which moves through is then removed of particulates. This large sucking action would particularly work in smoggy areas like L.A.
3) Or, have huge green nets. Just like the nets you use to clean out an aquarium. But, with very fine netting that removes particulates. Use these nets to "scoop out" the bad air.
Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question (Score:3, Interesting)
Ridiculous PR Stunt (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't pay anyone already producing lots of oxygen with their undeveloped lands, why would anyone buy the earth-saving properties of the as-yet unmade device?
Not only is the bounty $6.2 million, but the innovator doesn't appear to have any kind of way to sustain the earth-saving properities of this device.
This is an example of why we are in what most indicators suggest is a global warming scenario of our own making.
Despite what the popular political opinion attempts to have us believe, So-called "Free-markets" do not accomodate the health and general well-being of humans or their environment.
Discuss amongst yourselves
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:2, Interesting)
Or perhaps the money could be donated to Arun Ghandi's foundation, since it was his grandfather who said that India's future could be assured if every individual planted a single tree and cared for it to maturity. This would cost nothing. Trees grow on trees. I don't know how things are handled now, but back in the 50's and 60's planting a tree from seed was a part of every child's education, perhaps all we need do is take that process seriously. Back then the American Dustbowl was still fresh in the mind of many Americans, caused largely by the overharvesting of trees on the already arid great plains.
Remember Arbor Day? We actually used to observe that. An early settler in Nebraska relized that the way to transform the desert of the great plains (yes, the great plains are a desert, that's why basically only grass grows there and even Native Americans considered it an unlivable wasteland suitlable only for the summer buffalo hunt) into something permanantly settleable was simply to plant trees to break the scope of the wind, preventing the blowing away of tilled soil.
Later generations cut them down again. Ta Da! Instant Dustbowl the second there was as bit of a drought. So we planted more trees again. This story was taught and the trees planted at about the third grade.
Now we've cut them all down again for the benefit of the large farming conglomerates (it wastes time driving harvesters around trees). We never learn. If the irrigation ever fails, for any reason, it will happen again and people will die by the millions.
So how many trees could we plant for $25 mil? All of them. It doesn't take money, something we actually have a lot of, it takes caring about it, something which we're a bit short of.
Ok, let us, however, take the availability of Branson's money at face value and look at the question from a slightly different perspective. How many trees could you plant if you had an income of a couple mil a year to plant trees? Rather a lot I think. You might even spend some of your time inspiring other people to plant trees and multiply the effect.
A couple mil a year is what you would have as unearned income on 25 mil. You could carry eveything you needed on a bicycle, although you would have enough money to drive an Aston-Martin and spend every night in a four star hotel if you wished. That might be a bit bad for the PR though.
So, Branson, here's what you do, put the money in a trust and hire someone with the unearned income to become a modern Johnny Appleseed. I'm available. I'd be damned good at it. Although four star hotels actually give me the creeps (at least the American variety) I wouldn't mind the Aston-Martin.
Although I'd be perfectly willing to settle for a Bob Jackson or a Cinelli.
KFG
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily. You can't make money by solving global warming because there is no one who will pay you for your technology. The benefits from reducing CO2 are spread out among everyone on earth and are too diffuse for conventional market rewards.
Only if we create a global system for carbon credit trading, or apply mandates to force people to reduce their carbon output, would such an invention become profitable. In the current situation you could come up with a brilliant idea but have no way to profit from it. Branson's offer could help to jump-start innovation that would otherwise not be profitable.
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason this process works so well in plants is that frankly, that's not how it works in plants at all. While photosynthesis involves the net breakdown of carbon dioxide and water to form oxygen and glucose, it's a complex set of separate, but connected reactions, rather than just using sunlight to blast oxygen atoms off carbon dioxide. For instance, the oxygen produced doesn't come from carbon dioxide- it comes from water split by sunlight, with the help of an enzyme. The carbon dioxide that enters plants is never actually split apart- it's simply fixed into an organic molecule, and used to generate a glucose precursor. Breaking down carbon dioxide to its component elements is simply too energy intensive.
I suppose that's an idea though- if there were a catalyst that could fix carbon dioxide into an organic molecule, and do so at reasonable conditions of temperature and pressure, it might provide a useful way of recycling carbon. For example, if you could react carbon dioxide with methane to produce acetic acid, you could pull two greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and use them to make an industrial product (and one which could be conceivably then be used as a feedstock for plastics and fuels). Currently, this process uses carbon monoxide and methanol (made from steam reforming of methane, actually), in the presence of a metal catalyst- it seems like it could be done with CO2 and methane instead. Even if the economics might not be as favorable, the benefit in sequestering greenhouse gases might be worth it.
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm sure we could (Score:5, Interesting)
Install wind generators up and down the coast, and similarly replace coal.
Use some of this energy to create hydrogen from coal, and use that to power automotive fuel cells.
Mandate (and pay for) bicycle lanes on every thoroughfare in every city. Offer health insurance discounts to people who bike to work most of the time. Make biking a safe, cheap, and convenient way to travel and people will use it.
Implement modern, safer nuclear technology. Rocket the waste into the Sun, or maybe dump it on the Moon or a passing asteroid.
Create solar powered ozone production plants with 5-mile-high smokestacks to replenish the earth's O3 layer.
How do we pay for all this? Halt the war in Iraq, and use the hundreds of billions we save from that. Also, exploit space; send robot mining ships to obtain 10000-ton platinum and gold asteroids and the like; one or two of these will pay for everything.
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't think we haven't thought of this....
signed,
The Developing World
Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Plant Respiration (Score:3, Interesting)
-> increased sea levels
-> increased sea surface area
-> increased algae (maybe)
->
-> profit!!!
I suppose if all the planet's covered in water
Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily. You can get by with minimal regulations as long as the penalties for failure to abide by the regulations are sky high.
Take everybody's favorite whipping boy Microsoft. They regularly steal other people's shit...ok, violate their copyrights.. gotta keep it on the level
Similarly with just about anything else. It isn't the laws that stop a sociopath (all corporations are) from doing something it's the penalties if they get caught.
Re:I'm sure we could (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem with a massive decrease would be exactly what people bitch about these days. When you finally DID end up mobilizing your military, you'd have to recruit like mad and re-instate the draft. This would lead to a decrease in level of training and professionalism, which would result in an increase in crimes and human rights abuses as well as a major increase in US casualties. Lower budget also means less equipment and less R&D, so your new draftees would be going to war without all the fancy weapons and armour that we're used to these days, and their technology would at best be on-par with your enemies, if not a couple generations behind them.
Decreasing the military only seems like a good idea until you actually have to go to war. Then everyone's pointing fingers trying to blame someone else for endangering the nation.