Richard Branson's $25 million prize to save the planet!

[coylo]

Hmmm, would a working gravity device suffice......?

$25M prize to beat greenhouse gas
POSTED: 1155 GMT (1955 HKT), February 9, 2007

LONDON, England (AP) -- British tycoon Richard Branson on Friday announced a $25 million prize for the first scientist to come up with a way to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

The Virgin Group chairman was joined by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and other leading environmentalists as he announced the challenge to find ways to significantly reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Branson compared his challenge to the competition launched in 1675 to devise a method of estimating longitude accurately. It was 60 years before English clock maker John Harrison discovered an accurate method and received his prize from King George III.

"The Earth cannot wait 60 years. We need everybody capable of discovering an answer to put their minds to it today," Branson said.

"We have only our own ingenuity and we have no hope of a meaningful solution unless we find a way to work together," Branson said. "Necessity is the mother of invention."

Gore said the planet had a "fever" that had to be taken seriously.

"Up until now, what has not been asked seriously on a systematic basis is, is there some way that some of that extra carbon dioxide may be scavenged effectively out of the atmosphere? And no one knows the answer to that," Gore said.

In September, Branson pledged to invest $3 billion to fight global warming, saying he would commit all profits from his travel firms -- including Virgin Atlantic airline and Virgin Trains -- over the next 10 years.

As part of that pledge, he launched a new Virgin Fuels business, which is to invest up to $400 million in green energy projects in the next three years.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europ ... index.html

[rlortie]

Sounds like a winner for those who fear that the invention of a gravity wheel would be suppressed. You now have an open door with a reward and plublicity already in your favor!

Note that the reward is for cleaning the air, not suppressing the current polution. Answer; connect your gravity wheel output to air scrubbers or purifiers.

Ralph

[trevie]

I guess we already have the technology here already.

Its simple we have carbon Dioxide extractors for subs and space craft alike. All we need to do is power it in a renewable energy source ie water wheel (Hydropower) Wind power and the most powerful source of all. The Sun..

Not really good to attach a diesel engine is it???

where's my $25 million....?

[Vic Hays]

CO2 is already extracted commercially from the air.

Some of it is used for shielding in welding, to saturate soft drinks with CO2, and as the raw material to produce dry ice.

Air is supercooled and the fractions are fractionally distilled off. Liquid Nitrogen, Liquid Oxygen, Argon, Helium and CO2.

Every big city has at least one of these plants.

http://www.airgas.com/browse/category_l ... WT.svl=183

All we need is bigger plants and enough energy to distill of the CO2. CO2 becomes liquid at a higher temperature than most of the other gases.

[winkle]

if every big city has one we can see that that method is of no use at all in cleaning the air

if the plant was as big as the state of Texas and ten storys tall it might do a little good

but not much

something that large might clean up the crap coming out of Dallas on a light day

trying to suck that much mess out of the air is like a flea trying to bathe a elephant

might be better to just quit making the mess then we don't have to clean it up

[Vic Hays]

The best bet is to help the plankton in the ocean deal with the CO2.

Growing plants and sequestering the carbon will enrich the soil as well as clear the air.

I also found out lately that the earth is going to get much warmer and there is nothing much we can do about it.

http://energybulletin.net/3647.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6098974

If there was a tipping point it was decades or even centuries ago. The lakes that were frozen around the arctic circle are melting and bubbling methane into the atmosphere.

Methane is 20 times as bad a greenhouse gas as CO2 and the level is already a couple of times higher than it has been ,according to geologists, in the last million years.

[coylo]

Well Ralph,

I actually think that a working device is worthy of the prize on its own.
It would end our addiction to fossil fuels, therefore easing future CO2 emissions....because thats where the problem lies - the continuous, constant emissions.
I believe the earths vegetation would take care of the current CO2 once that burden is lifted IMHO.
It could cope with it....let nature take it's course!

[KAS]

If we are to believe that the earth is one giant living organism, then there is nothing that we can do to alter its course.

I have read reports that parts of the worlds rain forests cut down 10 years ago is re-growing at an accelerated rate due to the additional Co2 in the atmosphere. So much so that the forests inhabitants cant keep up with it.
There is a school of thought that no matter what we do to our planet, nature will deal with it. After all this Co2 has always been here, it's just been locked up.

This may be so but I still belive that we are changing our own ecosystem faster than evolution can prepare us for it.

We need a radical approach to the problem, and Al Gore and Richard Branson has recognised this.

Kas

[Wheeler]

Is the winner to receive the prize for stopping CO2?

If I have the answer, and it was not used, do I still get the prize?

The answer to stoping the pollution may be simple,but I suspect it will not be implemented.

[Fletcher]

If you seed the ocean with tonnes of iron filings the plankton uses the Fe & locks up CO2 in the form of Carbon life forms. When they die they sink to the ocean floor. I believe this has been tried.

[ovyyus]

http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?na ... &sid=10660

The winner must devise a way of removing 1 billion tonnes of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years — with $US5 million ($AS6.4m) of the prize being paid at the start and the rest at the end.

The organisers of the Virgin Challenge said the winner would receive $US5 million ($A6.4 million) once judges rule they have succeeded. The rest of the money will be paid out over 10 years if the judges decide the goal of removing significant amounts of greenhouses gases has been met over the long term.

The fine print ;)

[Wheeler]

Seems like the iron is another pollutant.

From my own experience, I know two things have motivated me.
1. Fear
2. money

This is at the very least a motivation for people who want to work on this.
It should invite many who have ideas including everyone who works on the principal of Bessler's working wheel.

[Vic Hays]

If you seed the ocean with tonnes of iron filings the plankton uses the Fe & locks up CO2 in the form of Carbon life forms. When they die they sink to the ocean floor. I believe this has been tried.

Yes, it has been tried on a test basis. Iron must be in dust form and not filings as they sink too fast. Not as much CO2 was absorbed as expected. It works, but we do not know what the side effects may be. By metabolizing all of the nutrients in one area of the ocean we don't know what will happen when that water flows to other areas. It might trigger a large die off in the other areas. It may deoxygenate the water. It may cause toxic plankton to bloom.

http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-94/d ... sreven391/

[MrTim]

I also found out lately that the earth is going to get much warmer and there is nothing much we can do about it.

http://energybulletin.net/3647.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6098974

If there was a tipping point it was decades or even centuries ago. The lakes that were frozen around the arctic circle are melting and bubbling methane into the atmosphere.

And according to this, we're headed for an ice age:

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

Now if we average out both sides' claims, we're not going to be too hot, we're not going to be too cold, and everything will be just right.... ;)

Methane is 20 times as bad a greenhouse gas as CO2 and the level is already a couple of times higher than it has been ,according to geologists, in the last million years.

Eat lots of steak and save the planet!

Doing your part by eating a cow will reduce Bovine Methane Emissions, which is a far greater threat than "human-produced" CO2. Studies have shown that livestock are responsible for producing yearly up to 14% of the atmospheric CO2 contributing to "global warming".
It's a good thing that the billions of buffalo were slaughtered on the American Plains 120 years ago, otherwise the huge accumulated amounts of methane they would have produced would have ignited the atmosphere when the first atomic bombs were tested.

If it wasn't for us meat eaters, the vegetarians would have killed us all.... ;)

Quote:
The organisers of the Virgin Challenge said the winner would receive $US5 million ($A6.4 million) once judges rule they have succeeded. The rest of the money will be paid out over 10 years if the judges decide the goal of removing significant amounts of greenhouses gases has been met over the long term.


The fine print ;)

I figured the offer was too good to be true. Their miserly payouts wouldn't even cover a fraction of the costs required to operate "dry ice" manufacturing plants located at the poles.... ;)

edit: And thanks to "global warming", people in the NE USA only have to deal with 12 feet of snow instead of 13 feet.... ;)

[ovyyus]

http://www.iceagenow.com/Press_Release.htm

Robert W. Felix, author of NOT BY FIRE BUT BY ICE

discover what killed the dinosaurs...

and why it could soon kill us...

the next ice age could begin any day...

when it begins, it will begin with a bang...

the next ice age may have already begun. . . and we don't even know it. [what about the 'bang'? - Ov]

Sensational headlines! Hope the movie adaption is half-decent :D