Fight Climate Change

How would you like to win $25million? You’d also have the kudos as being known as the man/woman or group who helped save the earth as well! Sir Richard Branson and Al Gore have announced the launch of a competition to help fight climate change and details can be found at Virgin Earth and you can view a CBS news broadcast over at Youtube.

According to the official press release:

The Virgin Earth Challenge will award $25 million to the individual or group who are able to demonstrate a commercially viable design which will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects. This removal must have long term effects and contribute materially to the stability of the Earth’s climate.

As with all competitions, it’s important to read the terms and conditions, and in the press release this was found:

The Virgin Earth Challenge will initially be open for five years; the judges will meet annually to determine whether a design has been submitted during the previous year that in their view should win the prize and, if so, they may award the prize without waiting for the five year period to elapse. If no winner has been selected at the end of five years, the judges may decide to roll the prize forward for a further period on the same.

Richard Branson compares the competition as being along the same lines as that was offered in 1714 for developing a device capable of measuring longitude. The prize was eventually won in 1773 by John Harrison, however judging by The IPCC’s report on climate change, which doesn’t give us that much time, one would hope that it doesn’t take nearly 60 years to find a winner for Branson’s competition.

The question is – can someone really come up with a solution? Or is this merely a clever way for Branson and Gore to continue hammering the Fight Climate Change message, which is now rarely out of the news. If you consider that any winner would need to understand atmospheric chemistry on a large scale, conduct extensive research and pilot testing – and do it within initially 5 years, the prize money may not come to close to the amount required to undertake such experimentation, especially as it will be at least 10 years, after implementation, before the prize is awarded.

Of course, going down as the person to save the planet might be worth more than $25million, whilst actually reversing the affects of CO2 emissions and saving the planet would be invaluable to everyone.

Who knows if a winner will be found. In the meantime, it’s still down to individuals, companies and governments to do all they can to help fight climate change – and that would result in everyone being a winner.

The World Development Movement have created a calendar to promote climate change. It’s a CO2 calendar that shows “when during 2007 the average UK citizen will have emitted as much as a citizen from another country will during the whole year”. So by today (5th February) UK citizens will have emitted as much CO2 as an El Salvador citizen does in a year!

The closest countries to the UK in terms of CO2 emissions per citizen, according to the calendar, are Turkmenistan and New Zealand! Other dates of interest are China (18th May), Brazil (10th March), Iran (14th August) and India (9th February). The United States and Australia are both not on the calendar!

As was largely expected The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have announced that man is to blame for climate change. According to Reuters “The scientists said it was ‘very likely’ – or a probability of more than 90% – that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years”. Apparently, there were discussions amongst the group of scientists whether the published probability should have been 99%.

Scientists have estimated that there will be a 1.8 to 4.0 degree celsius rise in temperatures (presumably earth temperature) during the 21st century along with a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimetres! Of course, this is a prediction and does not take into account any man-made change or natural events that may occur in the future.

The media have jumped on these findings, and aside from Tony Blair’s cash for honours, climate change should be the big news story of the week. One thing that has come out of the reports though is that apparently David Bellamy doesn’t agree with the idea that man is to blame for climate change.

According to an interview in The Times, Bellamy “has dismissed the imminent demise of the planet under a tidal wave of melted polar ice caps as ‘poppycock’.” The interview is well worth a read, however today’s report from The IPCC may well push opinions from those who disbelieve that climate change is man made to the fringes of scientific debate.

Firebox and I Want One Of Those have come up with a novel way to demonstrate how the earth would look if the polar ice caps melted… and it’s in the form of a “Global Warming Mug”. Apparently, when you add hot water to the mug you will see the world’s coastlines slowly disappear under a hundred metres of water!

The Global Warming Mug!

It’s currently priced at £6.95 and as I Want One of Those suggest “Global warming may not be a laughing matter, but there’s nothing wrong with smiling in the face of adversity”.

Celebrity revolves around everything these days, so it’s perhaps no suprise that a group of celebs have been drafted in to promote a brand new climate change website – Global Cool. According to the site “Global Cool is backed by the biggest names in popular entertainment and the biggest brains in environmental science”. As well as having news and information about global warming, how individuals can reduce their carbon footprint and a bit of science too, there’s also exclusive videos from KT Tunstall and Scissor Sisters and messages of support from a number of other bands and celebrities.

Having looked at a few of the videos they all start off with a “We Have 10 Years To Save The Planet” warning, followed by messages that occasionally tell us of apocalyptic and extreme disaster scenarios if we don’t start taking climate change seriously. There is a good idea behind this, and it may help attract people to at least logon and take a look. Although, personally, Sir David Attenborough talking about climate change and the planet is going to hold more weight than Sonic Youth, Feeder or Dirty Pretty Things.

That aside, the owners of Global Cool are serious about their aims. They have the backing of industry (although they still ask for donations) and according to an article in The Sun “Global Cool founders will meet the Prime Minister at Downing Street and 50 of the world’s top business leaders to push their cause”.

It’ll be interesting to see how this site develops.