 In February of 2009, ETC Group introduced its international Pie-in-the-Sky Competition to spotlight the wackiest proposals for intentionally manipulating the earth, oceans and/or atmosphere. [More information can be found here: ETC Group Launches First-ever “PIE-IN-THE-SKY” Contest for Budding Geoengineers, or Click here to download the full-color poster by Stig, which includes contest details and an illustration of a “pie-in-the-sky” launch, ETC's own geoengineering bright idea.] Submissions are no longer being accepted. Please note, the following submissions have not been edited and are posted as they were received. We received entries from 13 different countries. • Build sea-crete walls around sensitive coastlines by running a low-level electrical current through conductive mesh forms. Using electrolytic accretion, naturally occurring minerals can be attracted and new structures can be created. • Green the deserts as shown by the permaculture guys making swales in the dead sea are as shown on YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZ . • Everyone carries paper bags and people re-breathe our exhaled CO2 a few times before re-oxygenating anew. • Wind-driven spray vessels will sail back and forth perpendicular to the local prevailing wind and release micron-sized drops of seawater into the turbulent boundary layer beneath marine stratocumulus clouds. The combination of wind and vessel movements will treat a large area of sky. When residues that are left drop their evaporation they will provide many new cloud condensation nuclei giving more smaller droplets. This will increase the cloud albedo to reflect solar energy back out to space. The method is not intended to make new clouds. It will just make existing clouds whiter. • Breed or engineer plants with a glossy surface so that they can reflect more sunlight, thereby using agriculture to reduce global warming. • Convert trees into bank notes (quantitative easing it is called) and distribute them to people to store in boxes under their beds thus creating a global carbon store which no one will dare destroy. This could be done every year for the next hundred years and mop up carbon whilst making people feel more and more wealthy. Once space under the bed is full, the boxes of money could be used as insulation. Felled forests would be replaced as they are felled, thus creating millions of jobs and providing future sources of pulp for bank notes. People would be reluctant to go out for fear of break-ins so car travel would be slashed. • Add tiny “shock absorbers” to each carbon-oxygen bond in CO2 molecules. This would serve to keep the molecular bonds from vibrating and rotating freely, thus preventing properly retro-fitted CO2 molecules from acting as strong infrared absorbers and emitters, or in lay terms, stop them from behaving like greenhouse gases. Imagine the boost to industry and “American competitiveness” in developing high-tech and “green collar jobs” to manufacture and install more than 1026 such sub-molecular devices worldwide! • String a cable between one location on earth, and a satellite in stationary orbit directly above it. String a parallel cable between a second location 1,000 miles away from the first, and a satellite in stationary orbit directly above it. Spread a rather large sunshade between the two cables, to keep solar rays from striking earth. • A carbon sequestering cigarette: this brand, called CLIMAL filters) (not to be confused with CAMEL filters), has a “biochar” filter. When you smoke it, the cigarette filter sequesters carbon from the inhalation of air, in the biochar filter. When you are done smoking it, you must drop the butt on the ground, or even bury it in the ground, where the carbon is sequestered in soils. These are not just “carbon negative” (because of the sequestering of the carbon in the filter) but carbon “double negative” because some of the carbon is deposited in the smokers' lungs. When a CLIMAL smoker passes away (dead that is), the carbon in their lungs is sequestered “permanently” (if properly disposed of), which is clearly “additional” to what would have been achieved had their lifetime been “business as usual”. CDM (clean development mechanism) credits may even be feasible, given that two-pack-a-day smokers may actually reduce the demand for synthetic fertilizers, given the known benefits of adding biochar and enhancing soil carbon. • Use tooth whiteners and smile at the sun (to reflect light back out into space) and to be used as a carbon offset of course. • Given that a human puts out <mumble> litres of CO2 with every breath and currently exhales 6-12 times per minute, with the world population at umpteen billion that works out to <mumble mumble cough> tons of human-generated CO2 every day. So, if everybody would hold their breath for 15-45 seconds at least once an hour, we would prevent a minimum of <mumble mumble> cubic feet of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. • Feeding all the male cows of the world with nickel-fortified foods, in order to reflect the sunlight with the magic power of bullshit. IN BULL WE TRUST! – • Adjust the orbit of the earth so that it is just a bit further from the sun. The sun's rays would be less intense, and our birthdays would be just that much further apart. • All roof-tops of all households in all countries should be covered with reflective roofing to make the sunlight reflect back into space. A special type of reflective tile or roofing material should be made using nanotechnology and funds for this should be allocated from canceling all conferences, workshops, side events etc held by climate-change groups, NGOs, governments, INGOs, World Bank, ADB etc. This way most of the air travel could be minimized. • Make compulsory that every person; women, children and men, wear reflective hats to make the sunlight reflect back into space. These reflective hats should be worn by everyone in all the countries. • All auto makers should be instructed to paint a reflective nano-paint that reflects the sunlight into space. Only those who make such vehicles roofs should be given permission to make autos. A convention should be adopted at the UN making these three actions compulsory and all governments in the world should be notified that ratification and adoption is a necessary prerequisite to receive any loans or grants from the International Monetary Institutions, such as the World Bank, ADB etc. • Energy used for heating air and water, running appliances etc… accounts for a large portion of most people's carbon footprint (depending on how their energy provider produces energy of course). For those people living in apartments or rental homes, the cost of that energy is included in rental fees. In this system net energy costs per month are the same regardless of the amount of energy used. Thus there is little incentive to use less. If new buildings were designed (and old ones were retrofitted) with unit-based energy meters and people were responsible for paying for the energy they actually used, they may use less. • This may be particularly relevant if future hybrid and battery operated vehicles are designed to be 'plugged-in' to recharge spent batteries. In this case and with the current infrastructure, people who don’t drive would be indirectly subsidizing the energy costs of people who do making driving artificially cheap. While driving hybrids and battery operated vehicles will produce less GHGs, doing so is not carbon neutral and as such should not be subsidized. • We should genetically modify human beings to introduce clorophyl into their cells so they can make photosyntesis. This way: we would not need agriculture anymore, we would just need to put our feet on the ground on a rainy day to absorve soil nutrients to replenish ourselves; imagine the savings in land, energy and water!!! we would not clear any more forests for expanding crops and we would become ourselves walking forests; we would capture and store CO2 in our bodies; the more you store, the more you contribute to save the world, so skinny girls would no longer be in fashion! even those who don't care for environment couldn't help being green! • We should build huge chimneys in factories, going beyond our atmosphere, reaching the outerspace, to pump all our GHG out of the planet; we should also collect all GHG from cars and drop them into gigantic reservoirs also connected to outerspace via these huge chimneys. What a relief to get rid of all this GHG nuisance. To put on a hypocaloric diet every person unable to buy carbon credits. This would lower the emissions due to: • less fertilizers demanded to produce food • less emissions per person, since the metabolism of a "big chunk" of the population would be slowed down. This scheme has one problem, though: there are at least 1000 million people already undergoing on a hypocaloric diet, so their efficiency would be a bit diminished already. • A way to stop using chemicals that kill Mother Earth would be to gather all the sheet that Bush, Calderon, Fox, Aznar, Blair, Uribe, war lords from Africa and some government officials, presidents, trasnational CEOs etc., have in their heads and with that huge mass make the mountain that may cover the sunlight for a bit and lower some degrees of the temperature that so much affects us. Besides, this material, once decomposed, could be used as fertilizer or at least we could use it again as oil derivate after some million years. • Idea: C.A.C.T.U (Carbon Active Trap Utility) Artificially create through genetic manipulation and robotic nanotechnology a new life form called CACTU, a revolutionary composition whose main characteristic is its ability to sequester C02 from the atmosphere in the form of hydrocarbon, so that they could be saved and eventually used as fuel. The energy for the combustion could be supplied by the sun, available everywhere in abundance, as well as water which is just as readily available, and it could even expel dioxygen. Possibilities include the creation of such hybrid nanotechnology and genetically modified life forms and sizes, so they adapt to the climatic conditions of the planet. Their main quality is their simplicity and robustness: the cactus could be located anywhere in the natural environment, for example, where deforestation has left open spaces , but also in the city, in parks, on balconies .. . Contemporary artists could contribute the ensure that the shapes of the CACTUS are enjoyable. We could even create forms of cacti in water, which could be located in the world's oceans. • Require that all garbage bags be manufactured from white plastic. When full of garbage, the bags will be collected, and shipped to locations on the planet where global warming has melted ice and snow, like the Arctic and glaciers. The white bags will be spread across the ground. This will increase these areas libido, or whatever it's called, reflecting sunlight back out of the atmosphere. In Arctic regions around the world, the work of dispersing the garbage bags can be done by underemployed indigenous populations, who can no longer hunt on the sea ice, because it's gone. Full garbage bags can also be gathered into giant rafts to replace the reflective quality of the disappearing Antarctic ice shelves. This solution will also solve the problem of over-full landfill sites and will reduce the pressure on large urban populations to reuse and recycle, thus saving money on recycling campaigns and bins. • Make compulsory the use of hats that serve as vegetable pots, which by the way could improve our nutrition; this way we could have at least 4 billon (not counting on those who protest everything) of new CO2 sequestring plants. • All of us should wear reflective coating umbrellas, specially the "Reflecta 300" model, in several colors; of course the silver one is the most powerful, but we can't rule out the golden one, of big acceptance through all periods and civilizations. We suggest the new colors: Brilliant-Red, Eco-Green and Metal-Blue, with double reflective coat and UV filter... • Drop Brussels sprouts off the Golden Gate Bridge. Every Christmas, there are mountains of Brussels sprouts leftover. But Brussels sprouts are high in iron... They could be used to seed plankton in the Pacific Ocean! Every year, on New Year's day, we'll gather up our soggy Brussels sprouts and take them to the tallest nearby bridge. Then we play Pooh Sticks with them. The winner gets a badge. Do you loathe the taste of Brussels sprouts? Then why not use them to save the world! And keep your Mum happy. • Turn the carbon into sugar. Sugar tastes yummy. Could we invent a machine that sucks the carbon dioxide out of the air and turns it into sugar? Just imagine how clever that machine would need to be... It could take carbon from the air, and water from the ground, and make them into sugar. Then we could eat the sugar, or make things with it. No, wait, that's just... CRAZY! • A “Survival kit” should be distributed to all the inhabitants of the planet. This kit would contain synthetic meals, organic fruit and vegetable seeds, and a manual for the ‘novice farmer’. The synthetic meals should keep him alive while harvest time approaches, and if anyone survives hopefully they can re-plant the seeds saved from the harvest. Whoever that is should dwell in a location far enough from the poles so he won’t freeze but close enough to avoid burning. Maybe Canada? • Artificial coral reefs to counter global warming The extinction of the coral reefs: humankind suicide. Planet’s atmosphere once kept it’s balance with the help of the coral reefs, maybe longer than 600 million years, thanks to the accretion of carbonate: at the bottom of the oceans you find limestone (CaCO3) at a rate of 1.6 gr/cm2/thousand years; this rate increases 25 fold when it occurs on the coral reefs. The limestone captures 4 giga tones per year of CO2. If we want to survive, lets “grow” massively coral reefs in the oceanic “deserts”. We can adapt wide ocean areas with floating structures thus imitating the conditions that prevail in coastal zones, in tropical seas. So we can improve the coastal potential by installing fixed structures. The bottom line is to make utopia come true and change of paradigms, only then can we strengthen our mother nature, returning her what she has taught us, giving her back a bit of what we have stolen during 30 thousand years, as hunters, as farmers, as industrial workers, as cyber addicts and so on. It’s a matter of life or death. Natural process, slow recovery of the natural systems is the only option to beat the anthropogenic impact of our development. • Only using the moon as shadow can we get away from the sun… (This is a dream). There is no technical solution to fix the global warming without making a revolution and destroying the capitalism, changing the system for something centered in self government, independence, democracy, justice and freedom. • Create pants with copper threads, and have magnets inserted into shoes. As the person walks, the "Human Dynamo" will then create energy which is then saved into battery backpacks. At the end of the day, upload this energy into your home, saving many gallons of oil or tons of coal used in electrical generation plants. • Bore out the inners of the tree trunks to make more space for carbon sinks in trees • Everyone knows the Babushka (note: Ukrainian word for kerchief worn on the head!) has saved many a precious Granny. Now’s the time to think of the same concept to save our precious Earth! If you call in the next 15 minutes YOU could save this planet! This space-age Babushka folds right up to fit in any handbag. Mylar? So-lar! This reflecting technology will cool our Earth. Just WRAP & TIE! BUT WAIT! Call now and we’ll include the Moon Babushka Free! Just pay shipping and handling! Astronauts standing by! CALL NOW! 1-800-HELP-US-ALL • Using the principle of the 'tortoise' (roman military formation), everybody in the world carries a reflective white parasol open at all times. In crowded shopping streets they combine to create huge reflecting mirrors; an additional benefit that one hand is always busy, reducing the amount of useless products that can be carried. And when mass movements of people take to the streets to start dismantling capitalism and the states that support it, they will already be making a start on tackling global warming. • Detonate nuclear electromagnetic bombs at high altitudes above the poles of the earth to reduce orbital forcing and its associated non-anthropogenic sources of climate change. • Hello, my name is Dr. A. Whole and I have a way to stop global warming. All we have to do is put a giant rocket on the moon to push it in an orbit that will make it in perpetual partial solar eclipse... that is for the northern hemisphere, good thing non of my investors are from there or even care about it, much like myself. oh and if you are wondering "what about the effect on the tides?" well more good news I've calculated that only the southern hemisphere should be effected so there is nothing to worry about. • Politicians should be set CO2 emission limits in order to reduce the amount of hot air they generate. • 6 Billion people wearing sombreros with a reflective outer lining, at 0.25 mt2 per sombrero would equal 1500 km2 of reflective surface. If left outside the door when wearer went inside the sombreros would continue to be effective. People living in snow covered areas would be exempt. • Shoe soles containing a compressible filter, drawing in air as you raise your foot, air passes through filter, removing CO2. Air minus CO2 is expelled as you compress the sole again, and so on. Soles could be recycled in compost heaps or buried to provide biochar. We could all walk, run or dance for the environment. • Just like kids or partygoers sometimes do to public fountains, we could add washing up liquid (eco friendly of course) to the sea, creating a more reflective layer of suds and foam across the entire surface of the ocean. We could also wash ourselves and clothes in it saving on electricity for washing machines and hot water for showers • Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals.... If one quarter of the world's forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years. In the NY Times Magazine, Dr. Dyson said that to remove all of the carbon from the atmosphere would take merely a trillion such trees, which he noted was “in principle quite feasible.” Some links to sources: NY Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/1385/203/ http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/06/01/freeman-dyson-solves-global-warming-and-all-other-problems.aspx • Dearest friends of ETC Group, here is my idea for Pie in the Sky: In order to reflect sunlight… why don’t we paint white the entire planet? Somewhere I listened a physician say that there are so much amebae that if they were fluorescent, they could light up the planet. So, let’s paint them white! Then we won’t have need to cover nothing with white plastics that kill crops and animals in the deserts, neither use shadows over the clouds. But of course the paint should be ecological. • If there’s a tendency to think that the world can be energized with new bio diesel derived from soy or oil palm, or with bio ethanol from corn or sugar cane, why can’t we think in massive production of fuels derived from animal fat? The main problem then would be the price of the raw matter, but… Eureka! There’s a source of fat that wouldn’t cost that much: fat obtained from the liposuction of obese people, that already pay to obtain a new body. That fat would go to the heater and then, to the cars. • End with all the electric power distributed through metal wires that create electromagnetic fields that destroy the environment, dams, nuclear facilities, fossil fuel factories, etc. Instead we could bring electromagnetic waves from outer space using higher frequencies through the satelites today used to transmit communications and TV. A filter would take the luminic energy through optic fiber, and through fotovoltaic panels the fotons would be converted in low voltage regular currents. We could use the same parabolic antennas already installed or bigger ones. • The holistic potato And we had it so close! We shall ask everybody to work planting potato, corn and wheat. With the starch obtained, we can craft an espheric bag to wrap up the planet. Through a starch-duct we can connect this wrap with the moon. We’ll install a gigantic extractor at the end of the starch duct, feed with solar power, so it can capture all the CO2 from Earths atmosphere. Back in the moon, we can bury it deeply or fill up huge balloons and we can let them wander around the moon. Advantages of this system: While we grow potatoes, corn and wheat, we’ll stop consuming fossil fuels, and we’ll obtain food at the same time. Once this process is finished, and with a clean atmosphere, we can go back to our old lifestyles until the change is again needed. And we can continue like that. When the moon is no longer an option, we can take the process to Mars. During the cleaning periods, we solve unemployment, because this system requires all the labor force of the planet. During cleaning periods, we also solve the hunger issue. Who could enter: Anyone anywhere with a macabre sense of the ridiculous and a concern for the future was invited to enter the contest. The winning submission will be original, ludicrous and contain at least a nano-shred of perverse logic. Since the truth of geoengineering is stranger than fiction, contestants will not be penalized for hatching a nutty idea that scientists have already proposed. Submissions were sent to geoengineer@etcgroup.org (in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese) and accepted until April 1 2009. The winner will be announced on Earth Day, April 22 2009, at www.etcgroup.org. HELP US SPREAD THE WORD! Video submissions are also welcome! We have posted requests for entries on YouTube in English, Spanish, and French. You can also join the Facebook group for "Pie-in-the-Sky" at <http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=724890612&k=52LZ346SSXXMXC11S156P> THANKS!  |