[extropy-chat] Bill Moyers' Comments - GlobalEnvironmentCitizenAward

[spike]

Having the world's economy and ability to feed itself largely fall 
apart plus destruction of a lot of very valuable people, resources and 
goods would be extremely un-extropic...  - samantha



Certainly, however the models of global warming causing
ocean currents being disrupted bringing an ice age to
Northern Europe always seemed contradictory to me.

Be that as it may, let us assume for the sake of argument
that there are real risks, ones I am willing to grant,
such as that Antarctic ice shelf collapse, raising the
sea level 5 meters.  With that in mind, let us ask why
the U.S. and Australia refused to ratify the Kyoto
agreement.  I can think of a couple reasons.  One of
the biggies is that the U.S. government hasn't the
authority to reduce CO2 emissions.  No one in Washington
can dictate that, altho I see that Taxifornia politicians
are attempting it.  Let us see how that works out.

The larger issue I see is that the Kyoto agreement deals
only with reducing emissions of CO2, not with ways of
drawing existing CO2 out of the atmosphere.  Both the U.S.
and Australia have vast stretches of land with little
growing on it.  We could divert rivers inland and grow
forests where now there are grassy plains.  

Consider eucalyptus globulus.  It can grow in a variety
of soils, even rocky, poor soils, given sufficent
water.  They grow really fast, producing a soft but
dense wood.  We could grow eucalytus forests in the
American southwest, cut them when perhaps a meter in
diameter at the base, cut off the branches and tie 
them together in enormous bundles of perhaps a thousand
logs bound with steel cable.  The bundles could
then be floated in the Pacific Ocean and allowed to drift
until they become sufficiently waterlogged to sink to 
the bottom.  Eucalyptus globulus is native to Australia
already, so the same could be done there.

If the wood does not get waterlogged enough to sink,
then we could allow it to drift in the Pacific 
current until it gets into the Southern hemisphere,
at which time the bundles could perhaps be towed
to Antarctica, where they would be pulled from
the water and hauled inland, where it would take
centuries to decay, for the organisms which are
adapted for such tasks would surely be unable to
survive in that bitterly cold climate.

My question is this: if the Kyoto accord authors
are *really* primarily concerned with reducing
CO2, why not look at other possibilities besides
just reducing emissions?  There are better answers.

spike