Branson offers $25 million for CO2-sucking invention
Need I point out that trees and other plant life are effective at sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere? Okay, I’m sure that’s not what Sir Richard Branson was talking about when he offered yesterday to pay $25 million to any researcher who can come up with a way to extract large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere. At first read it’s an interesting challenge, sure to get the world’s creative juices flowing. But when you think about it, shouldn’t we be more focused on keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere?
Also, I’m not so sure $25 million is such a big deal. Fact is, if somebody did develop a feasible way of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere venture capitalists and goverments and companies would be throwing money at them… Makes me wonder if this $25 million “prize” is just a promise of a venture capital investment dressed up as an award — i.e. Will Sir Billionaire have rights to this invention should it ever emerge?
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
February 9th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
My major problem with this is that its woefully impractical. I was talking to someone I know that works with the California Air Resources Board and I asked him about the practicality of carbon capture in this manner. He told me it just wouldn’t work. The way that carbon dissipates in the air just doesn’t allow for a good way to get it all concentrated again. Even if you ran thousands of fans and siphoned the air through some magical device it would still take a ton of time and more importantly huge amounts of energy. There is something to be said if you could use carbon capture at source points. For instance one company I noticed is going to attempt to grow algea on C02 from coal plants. I don’t know. It’s a nice pipe dream but to me that’s all it is.
February 9th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress
February 9th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
CO2 should not viewed as a problem, but as a resource used in photo Synthesis and potentially for the production of hydrocarbons. We should rather concentrate on the reduction of other pollutants,
February 10th, 2007 at 11:40 am
This line of thinking displays a deep state of denial. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study announced on Friday, February 2nd determined with 90% certainty that man made CO
February 10th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Yep, try to imagine life without CO2. If you can’t, it is because there would be NO LIFE without CO2. The believe that CO2 is a problem will rank one day as equal to the believe in flat earth.
February 10th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
People don’t go much to churches any more. But since the need to believe in something is hard wired into us, some people switched their alliance to the God of Green and his prophets of doom.
I wish CO2 would be a cause for “global warming”, even though previous warming in recorded history had no connection to this gas. Anyway, before escaping the freezing cold of Toronto for a vacation in Florida, I will let my car idle a couple of extra minutes, just in case it does warm up the weather. Cheers.
February 10th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
The problem is not the presence of CO
February 10th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Me I don’t believe in the science behind Global Warming either, even in light of what the world’s scientific community is telling us, but unlike yourself, I also don’t believe in the science behind heavier-than-air flight, the science of volatile gas ignition and combustion in enclosed spaces, nor the science of how temperature effects biological organisms. So I don’t own a vehicle, or vacation in Florida, and pretend real hard to imagine I don’t feel the Toronto cold. What’s up with you anyway? How could you have been so misled by these other scientific consensus-based decisions, yet you see right through the one that might mean you have to give up your toys? Heck I don’t even believe computers actually work, let alone (crash)
See, I was right!
Come join us, we don’t believe in science -at all! Our church formed around the creed of The Almighty Individual; Alone Among Idiots. Our principle canon being; The world is my ashtray.
February 11th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Very cute. However all of the other items you mention actually work not because of a “concensus”, but because you can see that they work. The “consensus” is very similar to what Constantine did, and there is no second coming as yet, two thousand years after the consensus. Go and worship your green god and stop all of the cuteness.
February 11th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Please excuse my long-winded reply!
You are correct in holding that there is a certain amount of belief involved, especially since we don’t have another Earth to experiment on. We might then look to our closest neighbours, being Mars to our left, and Venus on the right, and wonder what happened to the surface waters both are believed to have enjoyed.
Cherry-picking which science to believe in indicates a certain amount of predetermination, likely based on values. The issue of climate change forces us to consider changing our lifestyles from one of cushy luxury -at the expense of future generations, including those at our feet today, for lives led more simply, and in greater community with others immediately around us. You and me working together on ensuring our grandchildren survive what E.O. Wilson termed ‘the coming bottleneck’. The alternative is to continue the petroleum-lubri-intoxi-cated party, trying not to think about how we are creating the barbeque pyre upon which our offspring and their infants will be roasted alive.
Our immediate ancestors struggled, suffered and sacrificed through the First World War, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and the Second World War, so that we their offspring might benefit. Are we now to simply turn our backs on them, and say that the continuation of, even just human life as we know it on this planet, just isn’t worth the insult of giving up my seasonal flights, etc? Not even if everyone around me decides to? Ethics will always be a part of such decisions. Not caring about future generations is certainly understandable given the trade-off scenarios we are or may be asked to accept.
Maybe arguing against mitigation, adaptation and or sequestration could be more effective from a position of relative narcissism; for instance, are we not going to attend our brother’s funeral in Stony Plain, Alberta, simply because we are scattered all over the globe? We love each other as family -we don’t love unborn generations, even if they are ours!
These are where the debates now live; not in whether to act on the climate information delivered us over the last 30 years, but how to make humane sense of what together we need now do.
February 11th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Try this link.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece
February 12th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
How do you know how warm it was and how much ice was melted Wasn’t the climate in Greenland warm enough to atract Vikings (even if it was only at the coast)
February 19th, 2007 at 11:51 am
I know this is a democracy but when are there going to be laws against stupid people breeding, (and having social input)? It used to be funny and oddly comforting that 90% of the American public actually required a government to think for them. Now the world is flirting with incompatability with life and our “instant gratification at all cost” culture is responsible. I am always amazed that it only took us 250 years to fuck the whole world up and it just keeps getting better. Please take a science class,(and many others I suspect), before you comment further. Unless that was an attempt at levity, then I am sorry.
February 19th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
jp You are on the nose except to follow up on that basic, sad psychology of the selfish individual. These losers don’t understand the science so it is sour grapes. They may have jobs that they are lucky to have even though it relys on destructive forms of energy (or IS a destructive form of energy). They may work for the Gov. which is the same thing. Some just comment to be contrary and feel a part of something like the disruptive 3rd grader. Someone who equates a religeous portend to scientific fact sends up the red flags as this type of mo-ron.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Yes $25million isn’t a big deal. Naturally I too thought of sending him a photo of a tree!
Has anyone seen the specifics of the contest for the receiving the winning prize? For example, at what cost per tonne must the CO2 be absorb? In what form (e.g. pumping underground in tanks means it is held but then it poses the danger of release)? Do the capital costs have to met in the cost to store a tonne amount? Who owns the rights? What is the maximum amount of energy expended in per tonne capture must it meet?
What if your idea meets all the criteria for winning – whatever they are can they just say sorry we don’t like it take an the idea? etc.
Stopping the slashing and burning the rainforest for cattle land and flaring natural gas in Siberia and Nigeria should be up for a prize as well.
Robert
soysins@yahoo.com