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The economy may not be on the upswing in my hometown of New York City but Moscow is another story. The city that’s home to the largest number of Billionaires will soon be home to the world’s most impressive private ship. Yes, at 550 feet this private Yacht is the size of a ship and significantly more impressive than the owner’s current vessel Pelorus and the current world record holder, the state owned vessel Dubai.  Gizmodo tells us;

Russian billionaire and Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich is building a $400 million mega-yacht. Yawn, you say? You have two? OK, well, this yacht has its own submarine. And armor plating with bulletproof glass. And little boats that fit inside the bigger boat. And a frickin’ missile defense system that will alert he and his crew of 70 former SAS soldiers that there be pirates in those waters. It should be noted that Abramovich’s other yachts—the 377 ft. Pelorus, 282ft Ecstasea and 160ft Sussurro—all pale in comparison to the 550 ft. Eclipse, and do not include missile detection systems. You can never be too safe, right? Read more…

Read more at Gizomodo and stay tuned to our new MegaYachts category for more details soon.

Obviously, greatly reducing CO2 emissions from the burning fossil fuels is the ideal solution for fighting global warming.  However, what if there is more we can do?  Well, researchers John Latham of the University of Manchester and Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh have proposed a radical idea that could actually counter the warming effect caused by increased CO2 emissions and induce cooling.

The idea: developing a fleet of wind powered cloud seeding yachts.  These yachts would pump salty sea water particles into the air, thus increasing the reflectivity of clouds covering 25% of the worlds water mass.  By increasing the the amount of solar energy reflected back into space, this form of cloud seeding would have a cooling effect on the earth’s atmosphere.

The yachts would be unmanned and operated via GPS positioning and the ideal location for these vessels is in the southern oceans, where most of this type of low-level cloud cover is.  Also, Flettner rotors would be used to power the yacht and turbines attached to the hull would generate the operational power, including the power needed for the spraying, making sea water the only raw material required.

They claim that a mere 3% increase in cloud reflectivity would fully counter the global warming affect caused by increased CO2 emissions and that this could be met with an estimated 1000 vessels, and as little as 50 vessels could produce a significant impact.

Of course, talk of cloud-seeding and essentially manipulating our atmosphere does not come without strong opposing arguments.  Many argue the costs or unintended consequences to our fragile ecosystem cannot be justified.  To this Latham and Salter claim various tests still need to be done, including implementation of the system on a small scale and that if an emergency did arise, the system can be turned off and conditions would return to normal within a couple of days.