16 April 2008

Planet Green


On April 16, Discovery Channel will launch Planet Green in Asia. Planet Green will feature 50 hours of programming in 2008 which viewers will be able to catch every Wednesday at 2200 hrs (10:00 pm SIN/HK) – from Asian relevant stories produced out of the region, to global specials drawing from Discovery Communications’ unprecedented US$50 million investment in original content that celebrates, preserves and protects the environment.

The block kicks off with FIVE WAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD, which takes a look at five radical – but perhaps necessary – ideas which attempt to address some very real environmental issues that we are facing today.

Climate change is being felt the world over and if global warming continues to increase the effects could be catastrophic. Some scientists and engineers are proposing radical, large-scale ideas that could save us from disaster. On FIVE WAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD, three of the proposed ideas look at reducing the power of the sun thereby cooling the planet, while the other two ideas attempt to tackle the problem of excess carbon dioxide – the cause of global warming.

Professor Roger Angel from Arizona – the designer of the world’s largest telescope – has proposed a solution that he hopes will help cool the planet. He plans to put a giant glass sunshade in space which will deflect a small percentage of the sun’s rays back into space. Dutch Professor Paul Crutzen – who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry when he discovered the causes of the hole in the ozone layer – wants to fire hundreds of rockets loaded with tons of sulphur into the stratosphere, effectively creating a vast but very thin sunscreen around the earth. British atmospheric physicist Professor John Latham and engineer Stephen Salter, have designed a fleet of remote-controlled yachts which will pump fine particles of sea water into the clouds, increasing their thickness and reflecting the suns rays.

To combat global warming, Sydney engineer Professor Ian Jones proposes to feed plankton with gallons of fertilizer to boost plankton growth and absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Meanwhile, New York-based Professor Klaus Lackner has designed a carbon dioxide capturing machine and his plan is to deploy more of them across the globe to suck in carbon dioxide, turn it into a powder and then dispose of it by bury it deep under the ocean in disused oil or gas fields.

Many scientists are reluctant advocates of these ideas, and believe that we should instead be cutting down on our use of fossil fuels as a more realistic solution. But is time running out for planet? The FIVE WAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD proposed by these five men might have unknown side effects, but some scientists believe we may soon have no choice but to put these radical and controversial plans into action. How realistic are these plans? Hear about the scientific theories and reasoning behind them, and tune in to Planet Green to find out if they could really work.

sumber http://www.discoverychannelasia.com/ontvindex/planet_green/index.shtml

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