When Seeking Success = Avoiding Failure (Was: As Wildfires Rage in U.S. West, Scientists Predict Worse Blazes in Future: Scientific American

I was hoping for genetically modified plants that would convert CO2 to useful by products.

I'm hoping for a genetically engineered rabbit that eats grass and lays chocolate Easter eggs.

That's the most likely scenario for carbon abatement.

Still, it doesn't hurt to dream a little either. The ultimate process would be

CO2 + sunlight =3D> carbon nanotubes + O2

Then use the nanotubes for structural and construction materials, aircraft, motor vehicles, roads, 8 mile high skyscrapers . . . .

Bret Cahill

It has been done: Trees convert CO2 to wood.

Only God can make a tree. - Joyce Kilmer

Wally misses the point of modifying plants to take out much more CO2 that grass, trees and crops currently do.

Broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, capers, corn, peas, beans, kale, spinich, bok choy, tunips, lettuce, endive, garlic, onions, leeks, ginger, celery, rhubarb, asparagus, potatoes, carrots, yams, soybeans, parnsips, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, peppers, eggplan okra, avacados, dates, strawberries, lentils, peanuts, coffee, tea, watermelon, radishes, daikon, shallots, cabbage, and wood are not useful, ass hat?

And you seem to miss the point of addressing the source of CO2 rather than attempt to remedy it's results.

What's wrong with simply removing CO2?

Do the math on nanotubes: $200/gram X gigatones/year =3D Big $.

Bret Cahill

I doubt that much will be done concerning the source, but I do think it feasible to remove some of the glut.

Not in good time anyway.

If you can get a useful product then you can always claim you aren't "geo engineering." You are merely creating and selling a product. Geo engineering has an even worse stigma than burning fossil fuels.

Bret Cahill

So you believe it more feasible to address the symptoms rather than the cause? And although warmer conditions increase the fire danger, thinning, brushing, and controlled burns have reduced it.

And you believe global warming isn't geo engineering? Why not allow more smog?

Certainly not! Intent is everything here same as in the law. The intent of burning fossil fuels is to generate heat, not CO2.

That's why it is so important to call the carbon based byproduct a "product" rather than a "byproduct." The term "byproduct" implies that you are really producing or doing something else which is more important. In this case that "more important" goal could be politically incorrect "geoengineering." But everything will be A-OK from a PR POV if you are merely creating and selling a useful "product" and ignoring the consumption of giga tons of CO2.

In that case you are about as much a geoengineer as any farmer.

Or are you one of those who thinks agriculture doesn't alter the biosphere?

Bret Cahill

Humans are interfering with the self-balancing aspects of the environment which functioned for millions of years before the human zoo institutionalized nature.

Oxygen and fire - Why did oxygen remain at 21 per cent, and not rise higher? I think the answer is fire. The correlation between oxygen abundance and flammability is steep. Below 15 per cent, nothing will burn: above 26 per cent combustion is instant and awesome fires would rage, destroying all forests. Charcoal layers in the geological record show that oxygen has long been above 15 per cent, and remains of ancient forests show that it has not exceeded 25 per cent. But how could the oxygen-fire relationship in practice act as a Gaian regulatory mechanism? An answer could lie in the fire ecology of forests: certain species, the conifers and eucalypts, do include fire in their evolutionary strategy; others do not. As with the dark and light daisies in Daisyworld, the competition for space between the trees could provide a feedback control on oxygen and fire.

Depends on your definitions of "cause" and "symptoms.".

If you define the cause as being "the existence of humans" then, my answer is "yes." Killing off 5 billion humans just isn't a political winner, especially if I'm going to be one of those you want to kill off.

On the other hand if you define the cause as "too much CO2 in the atmosphere" then we're not addressing the symptoms with such a CO2 + X

• light =3D> CX + O2 process..

We're addressing the causes.

Warmer conditions are caused by having too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

Human created PV is an order of magnitude more efficient than any plant at converting light to low entropy energy. A human created sea water irrigated plant might have similar numbers: And you don't have to manufacture it either. Just do what Monsanto does with all their GM seeds. Make it so the farmer must go back to Monsanto for more seeds every year.

This would make trials/testing safe and if the impact is too damaging to marine life they can try something else.

Bret Cahill

Obviously you have already forgotten about the burning of fossil fuels.

You could stop drinking water.

So you believe agriculture alters the biosphere while the burning of fossil fuels doesn't?

I don't see an alternative working. But that's just my opinion.