back to article Hold your breath, save the planet

Somebody call Al Gore and tell him he can leave the lights on in his house for as long as he likes: some academics in Bristol have solved the climate change crisis. Oh yes, and they want their $25m prize money from Richard Branson, thankyewverymuch. Crazy boffins doing their boffin thang Branson and Gore joined forces at the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Adrian Jones

    What a wonderful excuse!

    I'm not overweight, I'm environmentally friendly!

  2. andy rock

    i think i've got it!!

    am i being completely off-the-wall stupid in suggesting that a massive (and i mean bloody HUGE) tree-planting bender that lasts decades is about the only thing that can remove the excess CO2?

    Simply find the highest consuming species and plant them like it's going out of style. considering no-one wants to cut down energy consumption, it seems crazy that loads of money is being spent in research for wonerous ideas like pumping sulphur into the sky when we already have the tools to hand. madness!

    do i win my $25m now? :-)

  3. Geoff Gale

    I think I see some synergy here...

    Fact 1: Strenuous exercise adds additional CO2 burden to the atmosphere.

    Fact 2: Exercise is associated with longer life.

    Hypothesis: If an individual does not exercise (s)he will benefit the planet immediately by not contributing excess CO2, but will also provide a delayed benefit by dying earlier and thereby taking fewer total breaths than they would had they lived longer

    Sounds like a win-win to me.

    Geoff

  4. Steve Roper

    The best solution is not to breed...

    Actually, the best way to remove the direct human contribution of CO2 is not to have children. Think of it: working from the figures quoted in this article, each human respires 0.3 tons of CO2 per year. Multiply that by the traditional threescore and ten (70) years and you have 20.4 tons of CO2 per human being per lifetime. So if you would have had two kids, but decide not to, that's 40.8 tons of CO2 you've saved. Mutliply that by just one-sixth of the world population (1.2 billion people), that's 49 BILLION tonnes of CO2 not dumped into our atmosphere in the next seven decades, or 700 million tonnes per year. And that's if only one person in six decides not to have children.

    Not only that, but by refusing to have children, you deprive the burgeoning police state of its source of future slaves. And you are helping to save the planet by not contributing to overpopulation, which not only saves on CO2, but on food, water and resource consumption as well.

    I've refused to have children myself for these and many other reasons, so I've just saved the planet MANY tonnes of CO2, when you consider that my non-children will never have children of their own, etc, etc. So where's my $25 million, please? ;)

    BTW: For more information on why not to breed, check out www.vhemt.org. They can explain this a lot better than I can!

  5. Paul Murray

    Planting Plants

    "Simply find the highest consuming species and plant them like it's going out of style."

    Yet another excuse for the "hemp is wonderfulr" crowd.

  6. Ian Damage

    Harpoon the fatso's

    Given that fat bastards tend to huff and puff uncontrollably whenever they take more than 10 steps, I say we kill em all.

    This will lead to less CO2 being generated by them, less cows will be required to feed their cheeseburger lust, which will result in less CO2 and methane being produced by animals, and an increase in woodlands as less farmland is required to feed the excessive appetites of the chunky chunksters.

    While we are at it, lets kill the unwashed hippies who cause people to run outside and hyperventilate in order to clear their lungs of the foul stench of peace, love, mung beans, and lack of soap.

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