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$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."
How much carbon dioxide does a single tree consume in a year of respiration and how many trees could be planted for $25 million?
Either that or find a way to build large scale air scrubbers that simulate plant respiration (stripping the carbon atom off a CO2 molecule and releasing O2), then compress the pure carbon into bricks for use in industry. If it could be done cheaply enough it might not just be eco-friendly, but profitable as well, with the $25 million payment as a bonus.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Why, that's just ~32 tons of CO2 per second. Piece of cake.
Could do it ourselves in the US, It would take just a few easy changes:
1. 2$ a gallon gas tax in the US
2. Train/Metro in every major US city
3. Large installation of windmills
4. A miracle and revolution in the US to a systemm where our representatives do not get campaign money from industries that benefit from pumping pollution into the sky.
Carbon sequestration is relatively easy. Plant more trees, create artificial algae blooms...Anything green and growing will take in a lot of carbon. There have been studies recently dealing with certain types of pine trees that even suggest that the trees are growing faster in the higher CO2 environment we're making for them, which suggests that natural processes will step up to take advantage of the carbon rich environment.
The problem is, all these solutions are geologically short term, and they're not as space-efficient as say, coal. Forests catch fire, algae blooms sink to the bottom (which is good) but are bad bad bad for the water ecosystem in which they're created, and everything else gets used and processed.
Basically, we're screwed on a quick fix until someone bio-engineers us some quick growing trees that sequester so much carbon that they're shiny. The best solution is to reduce our output of carbon, and allow the carbon cycle to re-balance itself.
In the meantime, if you're wondering whether to take up snow skiing or water skiing, might want to go water.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Richard Branson owns an airline, if he wants he could reduce co2 by a large amount by changing his business.
Of course if he pulls out of the market then others take his place.
Dropping a nuclear bomb every once in a while on a large cosmopolitan city would definitely do the job...
iTx Technologies: Open source development in Montreal
Mother nature's solution to global warming operates on a geologic timescale and will not help us. In fact since if we leave the situation unchecked things will get worse before they get better, the earth will probably demonstrate its lack of use for us in the meantime.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But it would require energy. The whole reason hydrocarbons are a good source of energy is precisely because the C + O2 -> CO2 reaction gives off energy. So to make it go the other way, you need input energy. Plants get it from the sun, where would we get it from. Then, of course, assuming you have a source the question is why not just cut the middle man and use that source directly?
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.
That's like asking a baker to take all that unhealthy fat out of a doughnut, but not have it have any impact on the taste. It would be foolish of Branson to think that you can make a dramatic change to the chemical makeup of our atmosphere, but not have any "negative" consequences. Plants need CO2, so removing it from the atmosphere might harm plant life. Temperatures will decrease (probably), and I'm sure that there's at least some species of wildlife that's now thriving with the warmer temperatures. Wind paterns will change. Climate patterns will change. To expect absolutely no "negative impact" on the environment is foolhardy.
Running out of oil will do this quite effectively, and that will happen within not too many years.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Back in the 80's, there was a graph showing percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere vs. year starting in the 1800's and ending at some point before 1980. It was level until 1880, then suddenly shut up until the end of the graph. They never said how they deduced the CO2 quantity and the graph was scaled between 2 rediculously small percentages.
Now wouldn't it be neat if we had a graph of annual CO2 percentage up to today? Such graphs are nowhere to be seen. Google searches don't find them. The media doesn't show them. There are lots of references to CO2 levels but not a single graph of CO2 level vs. year.
This is definitely a Catch-22.
It has to do something, thereby increasing entropy, and at the same not create adverse affects. What constitutes an adverse affect? Does contributing to the heat death of the universe?
Ok, perhaps just looking at entropy is a little extreme. I'm sure that's not actually written in the rules, and apparently there actually is some sort of judging involved here (oh look, Al Gore is a judge. Big surprise. "I took the initiative in solving global warming..."), but Branson's asking for a miracle here. Any work is going to require energy. If you don't just want to suck that billion tons CO2 out and store it somewhere, but actually break it down into more containable form, like graphite or useful hydrocarbons, it will take a lot more energy. This is effectively the same energy issue we've been flogging death for years, but in the guise of removing CO2, instead of avoiding creating it or just plain getting energy in the first place.
As Slashdot has been debating since...um, forever...every energy source we can come up with has adverse affects, not the least of which is cost. I don't know how much energy it takes per ton to filter CO2 out of the air and bury it in an abandoned gas well, but I would bet we're talking several orders of magnitude above the prize level just in energy costs. Not such concerns means much compared to "saving the planet" (TM), but that effectively makes the prize only a formality.
Beyond cost, there's also environmental affects with energy generation. Be it birds struck by wind turbine blades or disposal of the composites they're made out of at end-of-life, the chemicals used in making solar cells, nuclear waste, disrupted fish runs with hydroplants, altered ocean habitats for tidal solutions, possibly altered fault activity and limited supply from geothermal, and of course that practically irrelevant but still amusing increase of entropy problem from all of the above, they are there.
I'm not sure if the story should be flagged Catch-22, vaporware, or inthishouseweobeythelawsofthermodynamics.
Won't they be embarrassed when the leaders of Al-Queda win the $25 million prize with their plan to "kill millions and millions of infidel Americans" to reduce C02 emissions?
Hydro never lived up to the hype. Dams silt up, dams ruin rivers, and, aside from a few really good spots, dams don't generate enough power.
If we went to fission with waste reprocessing, we could be in good shape...It'll provide more power and vastly reduce the amount of waste produced. We could even reprocess the waste we have now. The paranoia over radiation is so overblown, and has been hyped for so long that people just sort of accept that all nuclear power is going to lead to three eyed fish and crap like that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
After the recent request to fund the Iraq war to the tune of $245 billion, it really puts our priorities in perspective.
Currently the outlook for nuclear power is not good - but with a bit of effort on accelerated thorium and other upcoming methods it may be more than just an expensive way to make steam and North Korean and Iranian nuclear bombs.
4) Eat the environmentalists; less SUV use, less air travel, less hot air, less sewage. Yuck!
By SUV, I assume you are implying that they get poor gas mileage, and therefore produce more greenhouse gases. Not all do, of course. That said, someone who drives a Yukon is a hypocrite if they claim to be an environmentalist.
6) End Socialism. Economic prosperity will allow people to adjust to the changing climate better. More socialism is more death and misery.
The US, one of the least socialist countries in the world (I saw a picture of a cardboard shanty town in Florida earlier this week that definitely made me think of death and misery) produces a huge amount of greenhouse gas (per person).
Developing communist countries do as well, but compare the CO2 production per person from the US to China shows that capitalism generates more (using your logic). Canada is more socialist than the US, and Canadians generate more greenhouse gas than Americans do. Is it because of socialism? No, it's because it's colder and not as densely populated.
The western industrial democracies are quite capitalist, and we generate per-person more greenhouse gases than many of the poorer, "socialist" countries. Making more like us will make solve the problem? If we are relatively so much wealthier, then why aren't we willing to clean up our act, seeing as you claim the willingness to fix the problem seems to be related to wealth?
7) "repeal" Kyoto protocols. They don't work, they are counter productive, they will cause more global warming.
The US did not sign Kyoto. George Bush did not believe in global warming, so he reneged on the agreement made by Clinton to sign the protocol.
Eco-Nazi talking about spending money
It's his money. You are a big fan of capitalism, and he's a capitalist (that's how he made his money). Who are you to criticize how he spends it? That sounds very socialist to me.
You know... if there was a large industry for getting rid of nuclear waste... someone would find a way to do it quickly, safely, and cheaply just so they can be a rich bastard off of it.
You mad
Nuclear power is statistically safer than conventional. I guarantee there were more accidents last year per kilowatt for conventional power than nuclear. (Airplanes are also statistically safer than cars.) The big problem is that terrorists have successfully terrorized people on the subjects.
Chernobyl was using a design US engineers had rejected as unsafe, and the Three Mile Island disaster wasn't. It was a successful test of nuclear safety measures.
As for nuclear waste, why not recycle it? R-r-recycle it! *gasp* But that produces weapons-grade material! Right, so put it in a missile! The best defense is a good offense (think Reagen's Cold-War successes). And then there is hardly anything left over! (And is nuclear waste worse than huge strip mines?)
The only real obstacle to nuclear power is public terror.
The government can't save you.
Going to nuclear is only a transformation of waste. Simply this is a shift in waste not a solution. Then suddenly its no longer CO2 but it is some radioactive stuff that needs to be buried for thousends of years underground. One might store CO2 in the first place underground and skip the expensive uranium in between. Remember uranium isn't an endless power solution either, thats why we try to research fusion. Uranium is a limited feul on earth. The best things here would be a natural energy source.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
Don't pin it all on the long-hairs - people are also a bit worried about nuclear reactors/plants blowing the fuck up on their doorstop, or the effects from such an explosion raining down on their homes. Those folks are not greenist nutters - they have legitimate worries.
And don't confuse the US with the rest of the world. The rest of the world hasn't "politicized" nuclear power to the extent you claim the US has. Maybe the US will take the lead from other countries, once it's realised it's beneficial.
It would consume some of the waste we produce, but it would not prevent that waste from being produced in the first place. (In fact, if successful, it would require more waste to be produced!)
How does the amount of energy derived from $PROCESSing waste compare to the amount that went into producing it?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
... with solar panels, and still not have enough capacity to power Chicago. Much of the world does not live in Southern California! We have strange weather phenomena, like clouds! And this isn't a once in a while problem, its EVERY FREAKING DAY! In the spring, at least. In the winter, we have clouds and snow and ABSCENCE OF SUN for weeks at a time. Perhaps we could put Lake Michigan on stilts and use it as a battery. (Seriously, most pumped water storage is like hydroelectric power, heavily constrained by having local geography which is conducive to it. If you don't happen to have two bodies of water at vastly different elevations nearby then you get to build one or both of them yourself, and it AIN'T CHEAP -- per MW capital investment is similar to building a nuclear plant, and that is on top of the cost of the solar/whatever you need to actually fill the battery. It also isn't ecologically neutral -- ask the million folks China displaced to get their Three Gorges facility working. You need an awful lot of water falling from a relatively high place to a relatively low place, and that does not just spontaneously happen frequently in nature.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- greens need to get over their dogmatic, irrational reluctance to use nukes.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.