Which Would You Rather Have: The Planet, Or A Patent?
from the decisions,-decisions dept
One of the more controversial approaches to the already controversial field of climate change is geoengineering, which Wikipedia defines as "deliberate large-scale engineering and manipulation of the planetary environment to combat or counteract anthropogenic changes in atmospheric chemistry."
Some people are concerned that such large-scale interventions might produce large-scale disasters. That makes small-scale experiments exploring the underlying technologies an important first step before taking this route. Unfortunately, it seems that one geoengineering experiment has been called off because of patents:
A field trial for a novel UK geoengineering experiment has been cancelled amid questions about a pre-existing patent application for some of the technology involved.
As the article quoted above goes on to explain, the main issue here is a potential conflict of interests:
The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project is a collaboration among several UK universities and Cambridge-based Marshall Aerospace to investigate the possibility of spraying particles into the stratosphere to mitigate global warming. Such particles could mimic the cooling produced by large volcanic eruptions, by reflecting sunlight before it reaches Earth’s surface.a patent application that was submitted by Peter Davidson, who runs the UK consulting firm Davidson Technology on the Isle of Man and was an adviser at the workshop that gave rise to the SPICE project, and Hugh Hunt, an engineer at the University of Cambridge, UK, who is one of the SPICE project investigators. The patent is for an "apparatus for transporting and dispersing solid particles into the Earth’s stratosphere" by "balloon, dirigible or airship" technology related to the SPICE field trial.
UK funding bodies require possible conflicts of interest to be declared when applying for grants, whereas here the patent application apparently only came to light a year into the experiment. Part of the project is continuing -- things like climate modelling and analysis -- but the most innovative element, the field trial, has been cancelled.
This episode shows one of the problems with trying to marry "pure" science with commerce, and the tensions that can arise between sharing knowledge freely and trying to make money by restricting access through licensing. It would be regrettable, to say the least, if the exploration of ideas that might play a role in addressing climate change were blocked because of patents.
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Filed Under: cambridge, climate change, geoengineering, hugh hunt, peter davidson, spice, uk
Companies: davidson technology, marshall aerospace
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Spice
Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE)
global warming
Just so they don't turn the whole planet into a desert, I'm all for this.
'cause ya know, the SPICE must flow.
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Re: Spice
Damnit, you beat me to it.
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Climate Engineering
These are the same guys who cannot tell you reliably if it is going to rain today or not. Yet these guys want to go and start altering things?
In order to responsibly alter a system you first must understand the system you are playing with. Our planets eco system is a VERY complex system that we do not fully understand. What these scientists are trying to do could have untold side effects.
It kind of makes me think of a high school kid who just got a Honda Civic from his parents so he sets out and is going to "sup' it up". He doesn't know a thing about cars but hey, he can drive one so how hard could it be to add a NOS system right?
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Second, it's just an experiment not a product for export or consumption. Go out into international waters where patent laws don't apply. Get the data. If this does somehow prove valuable in the long term and merits of roll out before the patent expires is approved, then worry about the patent issues.
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I wanna be like Slartibartfast and just own the copyright on a planet.. or even it's fjords ;)
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and who thinks anyone is going to give a toss about any of this when there is money involved? please, wake up and smell the coffee!!!
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If you think we have problems now, just wait...
Last thing I want to do is breathe in a bunch of fine particulate matter that we spray into the atmosphere. Can you say lung problems? I can.
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Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
"Hello citizens of the world. As you all know we have been fighting this terrible "global warming" and we have some great news! We have totally stopped global warming!
Now as a somewhat related note we want to tell everyone to start stocking up on cold weather gear. Seems we did so well with our goal that it is going to be a long and cold winter!
The only bad news is that the winter is expected to last the next couple hundred years."
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Re:
That last sentence was supposed to read "If this does somehow prove valuable in the long term and merits a roll out before the patent expires, then worry about the licensing issues."
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Re: Climate Engineering
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Second, even if there was human-induced global warming (which there isn't according to the latest science) the "solution" by geo-engineering would be 10x the disaster than the original problem - start spraying heavy metals and such into the atmosphere and you have an ecological disaster of epic proportions on your hands, how could anyone even slightly concerned about environment even consider this option is beyond me, it rather seems like there are powerful interests behind this instead - maybe that's why the field test isn't going forward? Someone concerned about what it may show? I wouldn't rule that out ...
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Re: Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
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National security exception
So Mike, please do not fall for the false dichotomy of planet vs. patents, AGW is not a threat according to any credible science. Or maybe you're right - when it's the patents that are skewing the science and leading the way to extremely dangerous "solutions" to a non-problem then they surely are a threat to the planet, just in a different way than you originally implied ...
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Re: National security exception
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GLOBAL WARNING
Now, a company is thinking of spraying some manufactured chemical into the air to help protect us. The pattern is obvious, the biggest swindlers work for the Federal gov't & are not out to protect us. As soon as they find a viable solution the FEDS will take over the project & patents will be irrelevant. Who's to say some of the funding isn't secretly being diverted to the project from the FEDS already.
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"What the hell was this guy on, there is no way anyone could come up with that..."
"You'll get your name in a college text book for this"
Instead it's, "If someone hasn't done it yet" regardless if a 10 year old could come up with the general idea.
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Kind of reminds me of this:
Apr 10, 2008
Attempts to salvage a wayward GEO comsat have come unstuck in the face of institutional disinterest and an aging patent of questionable validity.
The AMC-14 commercial geostationary satellite was launched in March by a Proton launch vehicle into space just short of its minimum geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).
SES Americom, the world's largest commercial satellite firm, owns the satellite and was to lease capacity on AMC-14 to the Echostar group.
Following the failed launch, SES Americom looked into how they might salvage the satellite in a manner similar to the Asiasat-3 salvage in 1998.
However, SpaceDaily has now learned that a plan to salvage AMC-14 was abandoned a week ago when SES gave up in the face of patent issues relating to the lunar flyby process used to bring wayward GEO birds back to GEO Earth orbit.
...
Industry sources have told SpaceDaily that the patent is regarded as legal "trite", as basic physics has been rebranded as a "process", and that the patent wouldn't stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny and was only registered at the time as "the patent office was incompetent when it came to space matters".
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Better to let something die on the vine than to try and deal with almost anything involving IP (and yes, Patent Offices are "still" incompetent).
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Re: Climate Engineering
No I am don't think the world will end tomorrow or at the end of this year(2012), no I don't believe in UFO's, no I don't believe in the lizard people either, no I was never abducted, I just think that no matter what people do it will always be the natural course, Cyano bacteria oxygenated the world for us and died making their environment deadly to oxygen intolerant organisms. Like yeast humans are using up all their resources and we may die in our own waste and change the planet to other organisms to flourish, something will happen, either we learn to create our own self contained environments and stop depending on what mother nature gives us or we will die eventually, they messing with the natural system is just a natural occurrence that may or may not speed up the process along, but eventually this environment will become toxic to us in some form or another.
That is why I don't see a big problem with it, because we learn to manipulate it or we will die, at least you die trying and if it gets messed up before people can create their own little safety bubbles to live in, well that is just bad luck.
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Re: Re: Climate Engineering
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Re:
You either learn to manipulate the system, create a self contained environment or die, which one do you prefer?
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Re: Spice
Muad Dib !!!
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Re: Re: Re: Climate Engineering
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria
The Cyanobacteria probably said the same thing about oxygen, before they killed almost every hating oxygen living thing that lived before LoL
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Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
You've been doing that every day of your life already.
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Re: Spice
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Consensus Is Not Real
There is NO consensus at all of climate change being a deadly threat to the planet and if there was, there would be millions, not dozens of climate change protesters. Scientists have kids too and YES, science did give us the pesticides that made environmentalism necessary in the first place.
REAL planet lovers are happy a crisis wasn't real.
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Why are we condemning the voter's children to a CO2 death? Why?
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when you can get mad at the regulatory capture?
Note how 70% is "overhead" and how for every Euro spent on the actual Carbon reduction a Euro went to 'investment banks'.
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Re: Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
Yes, so lets just add more.
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Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
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Re: Re: Re: Climate Engineering
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Re: Re: Spice
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Patenting the Sun
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Re: Patenting the Sun
Many, and I would like to believe the majority, of scientist and engineers would be glad to be done with patents. But I remember a story of a scientist working on children's brain cancer who published his work which he did not patent because he wanted to maximize the usefullness of his work. Well, A genetics company, puts patents on the works he did and released, which led to a 3 year court battle he could not do research and depleted all his funding. So, if you don't play the patent game, you still lose.
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As the temperatures dropped below freezing and the snow started to fall, Earl's boss was celebrating at the thought of how much money his company would make selling cold weather gear.
After all, what good is saving the planet if you can't make money at it?
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Re: Climate Engineering
Key word, investigate...
This would be more like that high school kid you mention running crash tests, performance evaluations and learning how cars work first...
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Re: GLOBAL WARNING
the gov't already sprays all our food w/ stuff to protect us.
No, they don't, companies do. The sprays they use to protect their profit margins from pest are NOT for our health. But I guess you would prefer that the government didn't ban the harmful sprays that risked the health of an entire nation just so the companies could save a few bucks on a bushel?
Most Americans are taking pills to better our health & protect us.
Again, has nothing to do with the government. But I guess you would prefer that the government didn't ban harmful drugs just so that drug companies could rake in millions while risking the health of an entire nation?
TSA gets to 'cop-a-feel' to protect our flights.
Sadly, the people got what they asked for. At the time, they demanded protection without any concern about cost or how it was done, as long as the government did something. Now we're stuck with this authoritarian monstrosity. Anyone who tries to rein it in is attacked by politicians that are paid off with money funneled from our tax dollars by government contractors.
Police can track you w/o a warrant to help protect us.
(see above)
Seat belts are mandatory in vehicles to help protect us.
I guess you would prefer millions maimed and killed in accidents, driving up auto and health insurance prices for everyone to cover the cost? You really don't think these though, do you?
Health insurance could soon be mandatory to help protect us.
I guess you would prefer to pay higher hospital expenses, health insurance rates, and taxes? Because that's exactly what you're doing now, paying to cover ER cost for other people's preventable health issues that could have been resolved beforehand for a fraction of the cost if they had insurance.
Now, a company is thinking of spraying some manufactured chemical into the air to help protect us.
And yet you aren't wary of all the chemicals sprayed into the air that have nothing to do with "protecting us"?
The pattern is obvious, the biggest swindlers work for the Federal gov't & are not out to protect us.
Most of your reasons are nonsense, and I'm not sure that they're the "biggest" swindlers, but there are really big swindlers in government and third party contractors none the less. And you're right, those guy are only interested in protecting their interest, not ours.
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Re:
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Re: Climate Engineering
Anyway, our ability to predict the weather has nothing to do with our ability to predict climate and climate effects. Weather and Climate are two totally separate topics. We understand the effects of sulfate aerosols on the stratosphere from the changes in the climate system after large volcanic eruptions such as Mt. Pinatubo
I am not a supporter of this SPICE project, since the we would have to inject millions of tons of SO2 into the stratosphere (10 km or higher) constantly, since they're removed within 2 years of injection.
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Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
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Re: Climate Engineering
Look up cloud seeding. We have done a LOT more damage than we care to admit.
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Re: Re: Patenting the Sun
I'm only saying this because I would love to see many companies (large and small) and their trolls, killed off by suing each other to the death in court, over trying to prove who automatically patented something first.
We just need to make sure the automatic patent law doesn't allow settling out-of-court once the lawsuit is filed, so precedents can be set into law (if you are going to pull a gun, you're going to have to use it, and sometimes it's going to blow up in your face).
I'd call it the Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome provision: "Two men enter...one man leaves, with a judgment and a whole lot of the other guys money."
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Re: Climate Engineering
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Patent
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Re: Re: Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
It is not so much the adding stuff to the air that is a problem is the cycle of the added particulates that is a real problem, you can add anything if you filter it out.
Every single house, car or other source of particulates, gases and other things should also take care of their part of the environment, grand schemes are not a solution but a bandaid for the bad choices we make every day.
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As Jesus Said ...
This is why even saving the planet is not worth sacrificing the sanctity of the concept of Intellectual Property, as so memorably codified in the Tenth Commandment. After all, what does it matter if the planet survives, if we won’t be able to look ourselves in the mirror afterwards?
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Re: Re: Re: Climate Engineering
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Re: Re: If you think we have problems now, just wait...
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Re: Why are we condemning the voter's children to a CO2 death? Why?
And that's only if AGM doesn't happen, or is miniscule. What if it isn't? Where do we bring the precautionary principle in? Certainly in Europe, that's why GM crops are so unpopular - many people feel that it has been proven to their satisfaction that these are 'safe'.
Wasn't the same Tory/Republican denialism seen about financial deregulation "nonsense, nothing bad can come from deregulating banks"? These are the same people who love their favourite banks/maga-corps/politicians to make billions screwing over people, then whine when some scientists might want to make some money to help the world.
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Re: Re: Climate Engineering
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. There may be no reason to assume that humans are meant to continue on this planet. Life as we know it maybe temporary in the greater scheme of things. Something will continue to grow on Earth, but it may not be our species.
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Re: Spice
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