Robert, I agree, lots of great and sometimes profitable things flow from government programs that are policy not profit driven. The same must happen with carbon/climate management. While there may be a few niches where profit from CO2/climate mitigation might have current profit incentives, asking the required global mitigation effort to pay it's way in the current market is like asking Neil Armstrong to go to the moon and back and show a profit - it won't (didn't) happen. As with moon travel and all of the tech and market benefits that accrued, we need government policies that truly launch CO2/climate mitigation. How do we make that happen?
Fear is a powerful motivator of government action, e.g.,Manahattan, Apollo programs, as some veterans of these programs well know and who have worked actively to diffuse/dilute climate concerns (read Merchants of Doubt, and the recent astronaut letter: http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4 This is a battle for hearts and minds and the future of the planet. Let's hope that reason prevails (in time). Greg ________________________________ From: Robert Tulip <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> To: "gh...@sbcglobal.net" <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups.com> Cc: "j...@metatronics.net" <j...@metatronics.net> Sent: Mon, October 1, 2012 1:01:27 AM Subject: Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN Greg Rau said: "I'm with you on the CO2 mining and ocean angles ... obviously more R&D needed for all of the above and this won't happen for free. This leads me to your puzzling comment on the need for commercialization: "My own view on a repeat of the big American successes in public investment such as the Manhattan and Apollo Projects is that research could enable large scale mining of carbon from the air as a commercial enterprise. " Since when were the Manhattan and Apollo Projects "commercial enterprises"?" Michaelson speaks of a "Climate Change Manhattan Project... to reevaluate our assumptions about what environmentalism should look like." That was the context. You are right the A bomb was not profit driven, although of course there were big economic drivers for America's entry into WW2, and the links between military research and the private sector subsequently became prominent. The WW2 comparison to climate change is more about required urgency and scale of a technological response to a security emergency. The work of the United States Geological Survey in making geotechnical data available for free via http://minerals.usgs.gov/ is a good example of public research aimed at commercial objectives. Similar with government research on hydraulic fracturing. In terms of ocean based algae biofuel, government would need to assess and regulate possible sites and methods against a comprehensive analysis of risk and potential. NASA's Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae program http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/index.html is an example of public research that could be massively scaled up to support climate management, with resulting technology made available to the private sector so that innovation and replication could flourish. Robert -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
