Just When You Thought There Couldn't Possibly Be Any More Global Warming News...

...here come a few new ideas from the Europeans, attempting to save us all from ourselves:

The Norwegian Government revealed plans for "a Noah's Ark for nearly every food crop of every country, to safeguard the agricultural heritage of humankind in the face of increasing global environmental changes" earlier this week. While the Noah's Ark analogy is amusing, it certainly does not appear to be apt, as it looks like they are going to be playing a game of agricultural eugenics, "Given the option of modern varieties of agricultural crops, which are often more productive, farmers often make a rational economic decision to grow those varieties, and older traditional varieties can literally just be eaten up in a bowl of porridge and go extinct". Oh, those crazy Norwegians. Can't say too much bad about them, they gave us a great Winter Olympics in 1994, with the added intrigue of Gillooly-gate.

The UN has decided industrial polluters can take their CO2 and shove it.....under the ocean. "International rules allowing burial of greenhouse gases beneath the seabed enter into force on Saturday...The new rules will permit industrialists to capture heat-trapping gases...and entomb them offshore." The rules allow only for storage of collections that are "overwhelmingly carbon dioxide with no added waste." How they plan to determine that and enforce that and define overwhelmingly is anybody's guess. Greenpeace is, as usual, concerned.

And finally this Friday evening, a little friendly competition, courtesy of one Richard F. Branson:
'British tycoon Richard Branson dangled a $25 million prize before the world's top scientists Friday seeking to spur research into devising ways to suck greenhouse gases out of the air. 'Man created the problem, therefore man should solve the problem,' Branson said. He compared the quest to a competition Britain's Parliament launched in 1714 to devise a method of estimating longitude accurately."

Of course, he's going all Paul Tagliabue on the potential payout, treating it like an NFL contract, big signing bonus with no further guaranteed money, "Organizers of the "Virgin Challenge" said the winner would receive $5 million once judges ruled a carbon-dioxide removal process succeeded. The rest of the money would be paid out over a 10-year period if the judges decided the goal of removing significant amounts of greenhouse gases had been met over the long term."