The Ventus Project needs climate change crusaders!

Can the lure of online competition turn the geekosphere into an army of citizen scientists? Dr. Kevin Robert Gurney at Arizona State University is hoping so.

Gurney is the leader of The Ventus Project, a new initiative that seeks to build a database of carbon dioxide emissions from the world's power plants. While you might think that kind of thing is already pretty well-documented, there's actually fairly little information the location and emissions of plants around the world. The Ventus Project seeks to correctly locate, and measure the emissions for, as many power plants around the world as possible, and then to fold that data into future modeling of the global carbon cycle.

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The 'game' Gurney and his team have designed is admirably simple: people register with the site and fill in a form with information like the location of the plant and emission totals, if you know them. If not, there are also fields that can help estimate totals based on other information. There's also the option to provide information without registering, if you don't want to be part of the competition.

As the project website states, "for each piece of information you provide (new or confirming), you receive a point. Climb the ranks in the Citizen Scientist league tables."

So, what do get if you win? The highest scorer come 2014 will be dubbed "Supreme Power Plant Emissions GURU", and receive a trophy indicating that you are, in fact, the best emission data-supplier going. Hopefully, you'll also get the rosy glow of knowing you helped 'Do Something Good and Useful'.

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On first pass, it sounds a little far-fetched that people would compete for a (kind of silly) title and trophy, but there's certainly Internet precedent for it; look at Fitocracy or any one of those Facebook games where you have to kill zombie mobsters before you have harvest your crops. People are competitive by nature, so tapping into that and using it for good seems like a very clever idea.

But, ideally, people will help because they're concerned about their environment. In an article on The Verge Gurney explains that he thinks "that there are a surprising number of people who are both passionate and really interested in helping out in various ways. Not just in science, but particularly with the climate change problem. We're hoping to leverage that passion and that interest."

(Images courtesy: Phil Noble/Reuters, C. Floyd-used with permission)

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