Welcome Instapundit readers. For more depressing news and suppression of dissent on the global warming front I suggest this piece and the links to previous posts on the subject included.
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I was watching CBS this morning and got treated to a really constructive effort initiated by Al Gore on climate change.
Former presidential candidate Al Gore has joined forces with the British financial heavyweight Sir Richard Branson to offer up a $25 million reward to inspire innovations in the field of combating climate change.
………
Branson, chairman of the wildly successful Virgin Group, said the prize will go to whoever comes up with the most innovative way of sucking harmful greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
I think this is an effort we can all get enthusiastic about. As Instapundit noted:
Too many environmental activists are hair-shirt types (at least when the hair-shirt is for other people) and that stuff is poor salesmanship. Martin Eberhard, of Tesla Roadster fame, is right when he says that many early electric cars were “punishment cars,” predicated on the notion that driving was inherently suspect. Make electric cars fun, and useful, and people will want them. This lesson applies to lots of other things, too. Neo-puritanism, on the other hand, has a certain personal and political appeal to some people, but it doesn’t sell beyond its niche. The less scold, the more sold.
One issue I have with most approaches to climate change, assuming it is a real long term trend as opposed to one about to reverse, assuming it is primarily caused by carbon dioxide (as opposed to other aspects of mans behavior having a major effect) is that every solution currently being proposed is unlikely to make any significant difference. Finding ways to extract and/or sequester greenhouse gases however might help and allow us to transition to other energy sources over time. If carbon dioxide isn’t the main driver then we won’t have wrecked our economy for nothing as well.
Why prizes? Jonathan Adler:
Historically, governments sought to spur innovation and the development of solutions to important social problems by offering prizes (including large sums of money) to the first person to solve the problem. As noted in this Daniel Drezner post (and in more detail here and here), this is an effective way to spur innovation, but not nearly so effective at meeting political demands. Subsidies and grants are far more popular for politicians, but it’s not so clear they produce the same social benefits. Among other things, they encourage the politicization of science, require expenditures irrespective of whether a problem is solved, exclude potential sources of innovation, and fail to take advantage of dispersed knowledge. The problem, however, is that government subsidies and grants are easier to administer and in the interest of the political class.
More prosaically:
Branson said if the political will isn’t there yet, that’s just more evidence that there’s an urgent need to give the private sector new incentive to solve to the problem, and that’s the goal of the prize money.Judges of the competition, which applies the basic business theory of creating a huge incentive to get a problem solved, are looking for a method to remove at least one billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year.
The judges include a NASA scientist and several top environmental researchers from around the world.
I suggest the links in Adler’s piece highly. The article in the Times is excellent, Daniel Drezner always is and Robin Hanson is fascinating on the history of prizes as well.
I would love to see this become a trend and this is an initiative which should satisfy Glenn Reynolds, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, and Megan McCardle as well. It definitely pleases me.
Update: The Washington Post covers the story here.
Andy Rowell complains about Branson’s owning an airline:
Irony number two. He owns a global airline that pumps out millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. He also wants to introduce incredibly polluting space travel, but now Sir Richard Branson, is offering $25 million to the scientist who can extract that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
[.....]
He claimed there was no conflict between his role as owner of an airline and space exploration company, and his professed ambition to find the answer “to saving mankindâ€. “If we ground [my] airline today, British Airways will just take up the space,†he said. “So what we are doing is making sure we acquire the most carbon dioxide-friendly planes.â€
If you take that argument forward, you could argue you just had to buy that Hummer to stop your neighbour from doing it…
Uh, that doesn’t work logically, but I doubt that explaining it would help.
Alex Tabarrok points out the analogy to open source software and the rise of prizes in popularity.
Heh, I was trying to find Glenn Reynolds on prizes and he found it for me at TCS Daily.
[tags] Al Gore, climate, global warming, Richard Branson, prizes[/tags]
Ok, lets say I come up with the best idea to remove 1B tones/year from the atmosphere. Will I be penalized if I decide to dump it in the ocean or bury it under Yucca Mt?
Y’know, I was wondering that too. I suppose there may be a way to harvest the CO2 for something productive (like, say, more energy; or plant food; or lots of diet soda), but you have to wonder just how energy efficient that is. IOW, if it costs just as much energy to harvest and dispose of the CO2, then what good is the process?
Pretty tough issues, which is why I don’t want a subsidy where the government ends up pushing some technology that in reality will not work.
Of course it could be that it is the carbon which is extracted, leaving oxygen. Still the energy issue, but carbon as a waste product is fairly benign.
Therefore ocean dumping might work. I know (and I have no idea what the argument against this is) some have suggested seeding the oceans with iron, creating an algal bloom which would suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, die and sink to the bottom of the ocean. So that is one example of putting it into the ocean already.
The problem is that Branson isn’t buying the most efficient planes. He is buying A346s over 773ERs, partly to curry favor in the UK where the wings and engines for the former are made.
Anyway this is bullshit. $25 million for such a monumentally difficult endeavor. It probably won’t be awarded, but Branson will get publicity anyway.
I am still unclear on Gore’s role in this. Did he propose to Branson something that Branson had never considered, or is it Branson’s idea, and Gore is now along for his “cachet”?
Regardless of Gore’s participation, I think this is a good idea. It doesn’t involve the hypocrisy of the Kyoto Protocols. If it works, we have an additional tool for CO2 management. If it doesn’t, we are no worse off.
MG
ATMX,
The idea is not that the sole return would be the prize. Obviously it would not. The prize does make it a goal with a higher expected return. It also appeals to peoples vanity.
In addition the task may be monumental, or it may turn out to be quite simple, but the idea behind it may not be that monumental at all.
Finally they are trying to increase the number of people and organizations behind it to increase the size of the prize, or prizes, as well.
MG,
My understanding is Gore proposed the idea and will use his high profile on the issue to raise more money and build awareness.
I am no Gore fan, but his willingness to look away from the typical big government response should be congratulated.
It should be clear to anyone that Kyoto-style agreements are insufficient, won’t work, and aren’t working in the places they have been officially adopted. Sequestration is really the only hope.
Lance,
If your understanding is correct, then I congratulate Gore for stepping away from the state-centered, bureaucratic approach, or the Puritanical moralizing. His _Earth in the Balance_ convinced me in the early 90s that he was sincere, but profoundly unscientific in his solution proposals.
I hope that he continues to do this approach with, say, improved batteries, or fission product reuse.
MG
Suppose an ice age is coming. Since for the last few million years Earth has spent about 80% of the time in ice ages.
This effort might make things worse.
However, if we are determined to go down this road here is an option:
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
What a great idea! There is only around 350 parts per million (3/100ths of 1%) CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. 85% of the planet’s flora will begin to die at around 70 parts per million. Then we die for lack of O2. What a bright idea.
When was the last time you saw CO2 used as an insulator? Quack science is sad and dangerous.
Iraq will be the deciding factor among the Democratic candidates in 2008, and Hillary was flat wrong on the subject. More and more it looks like it will be Al Gore’s election to lose, please see http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-al-gore-will-vanquish-hillary.html
Good to have you stopping by Matt. I was thinking (actually maybe, most thing I think I am going to post I never get to) do a post including some stuff I think you sent me to. It was from a geologist and had all kinds of pretty graphs from NASA on long term temperature and CO2 trends. At least I think it was you. I can’t find what I did with the link however (maybe it was in a comment at Climate Science?) Anyway, if you could find that and any other links you think are worthwhile I would appreciate it.
Possibly, and I thought about saying something along those lines. However, I find that a low probability. Let us consider the case against CO2 as not being the reason for warming. If that is so (because as some people keep pointing out, including I think you, historically it doesn’t correlate well with warming)then increasing CO2 won’t make much of a difference one way or another.
So while I can imagine scenarios and explanations that would make that true, most of the arguments one way or another either lead to we have an issue with CO2 or we don’t.
Either way it seems a good idea to have the ability to do this if we are going to start consciously setting the global thermostat.
Someone above wonders whether Gore proposed to Branson something that Branson had never considered?
Gore couldn’t even devote an entire sentence to carbon sequestration in his film (it’s at the very end, one item in a list). But his and Branson’s gesture, even though it’s little more than a gesture, decidedly turns a corner.
The conversation is already less stultifying if these world-famous lefties are willing to forsake the usual misanthropic, guilt-ridden and tacit commandment that by manipulating our environment we thereby sin.
With their “permission” we may finally entertain the idea of a thoughtful manipulation of the climate. This has the effect of lessening and relaxing the antagonism that arises when ideologues like Gore focus solely on what they deem to be The Cause of the warming.
The result for the public discussion is invaluable. Just look at this thread: not a word [yet] about “anthropogenic causes”!
Whether we’ll ever face a global melt or an advancing ice age, the anthropogenic question notwithstanding, I’d rather be armed with a multitude of technological options than simply carry on with these tiresome squabbles about causes.
The announcement alone of Branson’s prize is a welcome new chapter. All of the usual, unrelated and hidden agendas just took a back seat.
Exactly!
I urge everyone to watch the video presentation linked below. If you accept the human cause hypothesis, the scale of the problem is way beyond anything under discussion here. By all means, let’s drive smaller cars and so on, but we open a Pandora’s box if we allow intellectual dishonesty to drive policy. Economically harmful but environmentally useless initiatives will be commonplace and the military-industrial complex will look tame by comparison to the pet industries that will spring up around this issue.
http://nsl.caltech.edu/energy.html
I’m sorry Lance, I can’t agree. Behind it all is just another iteration of the insinuation that of course mankind is cooking off the Earth with CO2 and everyone knows it. Gore hasn’t changed his stance one iota. Watching a know-nothing politician standing there with a know-nothing playboy billionaire tossing around around a globe like a volleyball and talking about how “the Earth has a fever” was too much for me to bear. You’re being way too gracious to both of them.
I understand Peter, but regardless of their opinion this is a good thing to do, and one that I am surprised Gore is endorsing. Typically the environmental movement has had to be drug kicking and screaming to approach something in a way that makes sense.
When they do it pays to be gracious. It harms us not (as opposed to many of Gore’s other policy prescriptions) and if he is right gives us a potentially great benefit.
That benefit by the way may have other environmental (and other) applications that go well beyond extracting carbon from the atmosphere. Other plainly harmful airborne pollutants might be extracted using the same technology or approach.
CO2 may be a problem and it makes sense if it does to encourage technologies and approaches that are the least disruptive economically. If that is true prizes are the most praiseworthy method of encouraging those technologies and approaches. I think a little graciousness is justified.
An interesting look at CO2 Science, not political science.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/Index.jsp
I couldn’t agree more Lance.
I’ve been maaking these arguments for YEARS, to deaf ears all around.
I don’t for a minute believe that Gore has changed his internal stance one iota, but he has changed strategies and the new direction is politically quite promising.
If “behind it all is just another iteration of the insinuation that of course mankind is cooking the Earth”, that conviction is now beside the point for the first time. That creed is now sidelined to make way for a focus on solutions that nearly everyone can get behind.
(And I would direct anyone to learn about climatologist and geophysicist Wallace Broecker’s long-held opinion that deep-sea pumping of CO2 is the way to go.)
But so many people have come to enjoy arguing the anthropogenic point that it will be some time before the “MSM level” of discussion will relinquish it.
While watching the launch of the “US Climate Action Partnership” on C-Span a couple weeks back I couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of tree-huggers “drug kicking and screaming” forwards by the market.
On one dais the CEO’s of Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar Inc., Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, PG&E Corporation, PNM Resources, General Electric, and Lehman Brothers sat with Environmental Defense, the NRDC, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and the World Resources Institute.
Even if this was only a bit of window-dressing for these industries, I like it. Things are moving along now, people’s inner convictions be damned.
http://www.us-cap.org/
After congratulating both the ex VP and Sir Richard for their very welcome initiative, I would like to apply for the prize.
We have a product that can cut Greenhouse Gas emissions by upto 30% on all Internal Combustion Engines and fossil fuel burning Boiler Installations.
We have been marketing this product for the last three years locally and have installed it successfully on 12,000 cars, trucks, buses, ships and airplanes so far. Dynamometric results are available.
We are mow beginning an Intrnational Marketing campaign, to show to the world this unique fuel treatment product, that is based on electronic hypersonic frequency irradiation that inonizes and modifies the fuel molecules from an external source through an Antenna wound extrnally around the fuel inlet line. This way less fuel is exhausted unburnt (or more of the fuel is burnt), raising combustion efficiencies above 65% with all ordinary fuels.
I hope that this will allow us to qualify for the prize, because if the BENS (Better Energy Natural System) were to be adopted universally, it would reduce CO2 production by one third and almost totally eliminate all noxious gas emissions.
I hope to hear from you and that you will kindly let me know how and where to apply for the prize.
Best regards,
Ion Livas
Sorry,
A great idea, but it would not qualify for this prize. It needs to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
However, there may be other prizes or agencies.
Hello Sirs, My friend Jack has Fantastic idea ,he explained it to me yesterday its fairly simple I never thought It could be done but I gotto hand it to him im amazed at his idea please let me know how to submit his idea thank you -Peter Winter
I have no idea. I assume that you can go to Al Gore’s website and get some information.
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