The Virgin Earth Challenge: Richard Branson and Al Gore want YOU to save the world

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Behold.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:38 (eighteen years ago)

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42553000/jpg/_42553165_branson_pa.jpg

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:38 (eighteen years ago)

it's pretty easy, or not, depending on your definition of "commercially viable".

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:49 (eighteen years ago)

How about deep burial of all of Richard Branson's wads of cash?

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)

Failing that, deep burial of coal, oil and natural gas.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)

Failing that, a rapid breeding programme for elephants and whales and then deep burial of same.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

Basically, deep burial of everything.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

One of the judges is Sir Crispin Tickell, which is clearly a made-up name.

― === temporary username === (Mark C), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:54 (eighteen years ago)

Gore's looking just about ripe for a movie-villain role these days.

― g00blar (gooblar), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

Deep burial of Branson's aeroplanes?

― Ed (dali), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, and his spacecraft too.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:01 (eighteen years ago)

I'm trying to remember how we used to remove CO2 from a mixture of gases in chemistry classes. Was it bubbling it through lime water?

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

yes, but the only way to make the slaked lime to make the lime water is to heat lots of limestone and release CO2.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:07 (eighteen years ago)

It was putting a plant seed in soil in the mixture of gases chamber and dripping some water on it once in a while, I think is how you did it

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:07 (eighteen years ago)

I've invented "legalized hashish" and "every sunday is arbor day" please hand over the money gentlemen

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

What if you got everyone to breathe backwards?

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

"Commercially viable" seems like a strange qualification to have for this contest. Usually "commercially viable" refers to a business model that can generate enough revenue to outweigh the costs. However, in this case, where would the revenue come from? Is there revenue to be made in removing CO2 from the atmosphere? This would require some sort of government-imposed cap & trade system to put the appropriate incentives in place and place a monetary value on the removal of gases. Europe has moved in this direction but the US has not. So perhaps "politically viable" would have been a more appropriate term.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:19 (eighteen years ago)

where is my money

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

also with 'commercially viable' you could say, well, this will ultimately be profitable because earning capacity will extend *into the future* whereas otherwise we iz fucked.

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

"Once you know Richard you understand why his company is called Virgin"

Um. What?

― emil.y (emil.y), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

Commercially viable could mean it's cheaper for a business to remove gas they've produced than it is for them to eliminate it from their emissions in the first place, or for some else to do it by proxy, so yeah, cap and trade. You could see Branson using the technology to remove carbon that another branch of his empire has emitted (and he's one of the few airline bosses arguing for emissions trading IIRC). But if we get to the situation with climate change that we're doomed unless we can remove CO2 as a matter of urgency, I suppose this would surely get UN funding and commercially viable might simply mean 'the cheapest option'.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

Commercially viable with cap and trade like what we have in europe. (although that is still pretty hard as the european caps were set too high.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)

Which led to a massive fall in the value of a tonne of CO2 right?

Meanwhile I read somewhere or other about a planned Live Aid style global warming event to be held this summer, so don't worry guys, Bono's on the case.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:49 (eighteen years ago)

What are we supposed to be saving the earth from exactly?

― Frogm@n Henry (Frogm@n Henry), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:34 (eighteen years ago)

You know, the bad people.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:35 (eighteen years ago)

So - does planting trees actually work?

― === temporary username === (Mark C), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:36 (eighteen years ago)

I really don't understand why they don't phrase theses things as "Save Life on Earth". That's actually accurate and impressive.

― Frogm@n Henry (Frogm@n Henry), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:38 (eighteen years ago)

This is to the point:
Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, gave a stark warning on the cost of inaction: “If we continue as we are, humanity will so pollute our atmosphere this century that we will create another world, the likes of which has not been seen for 50 million years. And we will destroy human civilisation in the process.”

― Frogm@n Henry (Frogm@n Henry), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:41 (eighteen years ago)

So anyway, well done this thing. Let's hope it stops us from killing ourselves off.

― Frogm@n Henry (Frogm@n Henry), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:43 (eighteen years ago)

So - does planting trees actually work?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 17:55 (eighteen years ago)

the solution will result in huge fuckoff centipedes, people. what do you prefer? sweltering beachfront property in west virginia, or dragonflies that eat puppies?

The large coal deposits of the Carboniferous primarily owe their existence to two factors. The first of these is the appearance of bark-bearing trees (and in particular the evolution of the bark fiber lignin). The second is the lower sea levels that occurred during the Carboniferous as compared to the Devonian period. This allowed for the development of extensive lowland swamps and forests in North America and Europe. Some hypothesize that large quantities of wood were buried during this period because animals and decomposing bacteria had not yet evolved that could effectively digest the new lignin. The extensive burial of biologically-produced carbon led to a buildup of surplus oxygen in the atmosphere; estimates place the peak oxygen content as high as 35%, compared to 21% today. This oxygen level probably increased wildfire activity, as well as resulted in insect and amphibian gigantism--creatures whose size is constrained by respiratory systems that are limited in their ability to diffuse oxygen.

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:07 (eighteen years ago)

So - does planting trees actually work?

Each tree is only a temporary store of carbon. When it decomposes the carbon's released back into the atmosphere.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:19 (eighteen years ago)

Hey why not create a race of superobese but immortal humans as a permanent store of carbon?

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:20 (eighteen years ago)

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:21 (eighteen years ago)

Each tree is only a temporary store of carbon. When it decomposes the carbon's released back into the atmosphere.

I've got it! Plant lots of trees. Then, when they're full grown, launch them into space.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:23 (eighteen years ago)

we got the best minds on this one

― Frogm@n Henry (Frogm@n Henry), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:25 (eighteen years ago)

i really do not understand how nickb is missing the other part of the cycle after what I just posted about where coal comes from

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)

I think that the coal comes from vegetation in swamps (ie., underwater) where there is not enough oxygen present to allow bacterial decomposition to proceed fully.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:42 (eighteen years ago)

yeah but the point is that we are participating in a time-delay of the cycle wherein the carbon stored over the course of the paleozoic is now being released more or less all at once - the other end of the cycle cannot keep up, and we have less and less oxygen and more and more greenhouse.

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, that's a good point. However, I don't think it's feasible to plant new vegetation at a rate that could compete with the rate that we are burning carbon deposits that formed over millions of years.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:48 (eighteen years ago)

I've got it! Plant lots of trees. Then, when they're full grown, launch them into space.

http://www.preisvergleich.org/pimages/Def-Leppard-On-Through-The-Night_280__80010042282253323_20.jpg

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 9 February 2007 18:54 (eighteen years ago)

Link to carbon sequestration projects:

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/fred/feprograms.jsp?prog=Carbon+Sequestration

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 19:02 (eighteen years ago)

It looks like from this that the DOE is spending at least several million dollars a year to fund carbon sequestration research.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 19:09 (eighteen years ago)

i really do not understand how nickb is missing the other part of the cycle after what I just posted about where coal comes from

What, the oxygen bit? Are you saying that by sequestering biologically-fixed carbon, we run the risk of having a dangerous rise in oxygen levels cos not as much oxygen would be used by aerobic bacteria in rotting wood etc? Thus the pup-sucking flies?

Otherwise o.nate is right - fossil fuel deposits happened over several million years. We'd want to put a substantial chunk of that carbon back over just a few decades.

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 20:13 (eighteen years ago)

Huge fan > Box of Carbon-Eating Fairies
                       /\
                      /  \
                     /    \
                    /      \
                   /        \
                  O2         Carbon-Eating Fairy Holocaust + mass grave = carbon sequestration

― Fleischhutliebe! like a warm, furry meatloaf (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Friday, 9 February 2007 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

There was a story in the Independent last week about the sorts of scenarios we'd encounter if global warming occurred by the amount predicted in the IPCC report (the prediction was between 1 degree over the next 100 years if population plateaus and clean technology is introduced, and up to 6 degrees or so if global population keeps rising and technical innovations happen only slowly - guess which end of the range we're looking at right now?). Bearing in mind that the report was recognised by the scientists involved as being on the conservative side (it had to be acceptable to the politicians), the Independent's story absolutely scared the bloody pants off me.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2211566.ece

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 9 February 2007 20:22 (eighteen years ago)

It looks like the DOE's carbon sequestration research budget for FY2006 is about $67 million.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/carbon_seq/project%20portfolio/project_portfolio2/Gen_FY%202006%20Budget%20Pie%20Charts.pdf

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 February 2007 20:24 (eighteen years ago)

sorry but i'm not sure exactly how deflowering as many virgins as possible over one crazy weekend is going to "save the world"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 9 February 2007 20:55 (eighteen years ago)

four months pass...

Great adventures in algore!

― gabbneb, Monday, 2 July 2007 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

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