Learning from Nature

In a recent article from New Scientist, scientists try to emulate the processes in plants that breakdown CO2, and synthesize it into more useful chemicals.

This made me think again about the Virgin Earth Challenge, and how if scaled up, this idea could be a worthy entry.

Except of course that it does not address the issues of Global Dimming, which are potentially catastrophic if they were not balanced out by Global Warming from greenhouse gases like CO2.

Actually the whole issue of scaling up any laboratory process for addressing the current climatic crisis is a bit of a concern: what works small scale in the lab, with well-defined, well-controlled and well-understood starting conditions, may well have unforseeable consequences when scaled up and applied to the less well-controlled or understood climate of the Earth.

The issue being that there can be no scaled-up trial of the winner of the Virgin Earth Challenge to prove its effectiveness, and investigate any side-effects when applied to Earth as a whole: if and when a winner is found, and implemented, it will actually be the final stage of a huge experiment, rather than a well-understood and "safe" solution.

Essentially it will be a big lottery as to whether or not any so-called solution will make things better, or simply change the problem into a different, and potentially more difficult one to fix.

And that is slightly bizarre, as my first posting about the Virgin Earth Challenge also mentioned a lottery, albeit a different one.