Sunday, December 9, 2012

Ruining the World on the Cheap - Part 1

Hey evil billionaires, this series is for you!  It will be a how to on destroying the world, with less than 5 Billion dollars.

Part 1 - Greenhouse Gasses!

     Lets go with Sulfur Hexafluoride.  On Alibaba you can purchase SF6 for about 10$ per kilogram from china.  With a molecular weight of 146 grams/mole this would work out to 6.85 moles, which is about 153 liters.  Let's see what our money can buy, at 10$ per kilo thats 100,000,000 kilos of SF6.   Now SF6 has global warming potential of about 16300 times carbon dioxide, so let's call it equivalent to 2.12 X 10^14 kilos of CO2.
     Now this seems like large amount, but it is actually not as significant as you could hope.  This would only increase the amount of carbon dioxide (equivalent minus other gasses) in the atmosphere to 3.37 X 10^15 from 3.16 X 10^15.  It is significant, but would only accelerate global warming by about 40 years.  We need to get more efficient, obviously just buying this from some no name supplier in china is not effective.  So we need sulfur and fluorine.  Sulfur is easy,  just get it from Fort McMurray, AB.  They have way too much already from the refining of heavy oils.
Aerial photo of Tar Sand Sulfur, Athabasca Tar Sands, Alberta, AB  Canada  This pile alone is way more than we need, and could be obtained for
pennies per kg.  Now the fluorine is more expensive and harder to find, but there are many mines and  it can be obtained for about 0.20 $ per kilo commercially, probably about 0.10$ per kilo (or less) once we own the mine.  So let's estimate our costs for materials at about 0.08$ per kilo.  Production will cost much less than other producers, since we don't need to bottle the gas or ship it anywhere.  On a massive scale let's call production costs 0.42$ per kilo (because round numbers are nice).  This brings the total cost per kilo to 0.50$.  This is an increase of efficiency in the order of 2000%.  It will do. 
     New CO2 equivalent  4.24 X 10^15 kg.  This brings up the total CO2 equivalency in the atmosphere to 7.4 X 10^15 kg, Very Significant!  
Hooray!  The world is ruined! 

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Youthful Clone Blood - Cures Everything!

       I read a NewScientist article today, about MS damage being reversed by youthful blood in older mice (here).  Now the interesting thing is not that the young blood helped with the damage, but the way they used the blood.  They actually mechanically attached the circulatory systems of the mice together!  I am sure this would be extremely horrible to be those mice.   

How to Live Forever in  Three Easy Steps:
1. Grow a clone of yourself (you don't want your body to reject the stem cells).
2. Attach the umbilical cord of the baby directly to your circulatory system (This way you don't have to feed it directly or ever change a diaper. Probably best to make it brain dead first, and give it some anti-growth hormones...).
3. Party on!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Bitmining? What in the 9 Hells is This?!?

      So, I am building a computer.  Just because I want to use something that isn't as old and slow as my laptop.  Then I started reading about graphics cards.  It turns out that there are a whole bunch of people using their computers, or more importantly their graphics cards, to make fake money.  They are "mining" for bitcoins.  Bitcoins are a virtual encryption based currency which was created by the labs at MIT.  Even though they are not real and have no real value people have been flocking to them.  And since they flock they drive the price up...  They are currently worth around 5 dollars each, but started at nearly nothing and have been up to around 30 dollars.  The distribution of new coins proceeds at a slow pace, but is governed by bitmining.
      I figure if I start with my graphics card I will make about 3 dollars per day.  Now if I had to pay for my own electricity this would probably bring profits down to about 1 dollar per day,  but I don't.  I am moving in to a place where the electricity is included in the rent.  Hopefully my graphics card will pay for itself in about 6 months, and I can get another one.  Hooray for 3-way Crossfire!

Monday, January 2, 2012

New Years sucks for News

Does anyone else get extremely bored looking reading all of those "best list of junk you already know about that happened in 2011".  I already know what happened.  The year is over.  Move on people....  We should be back in business shortly, but the lists dominate the news for several weeks.