Zero Waste Methane [Revised information]

Client

Ed Dodge, Life Sciences Core Laboratories Center, Cornell University
Email: <etd1@cornell.edu>

Project

Zero Waste Methane is a web based business promoting renewable natural gas from waste and biomass. The organization is taking a somewhat unconventional approach. The client is planning to set up a data library as a separate domain name called methaneproject.net, which will be an source software project as described below.

The goal of this project is to create a data bank concerning the subject of methane and explore the data using a series of hypotheses. Each hypothesis must be answerable as true or false. Users interact with the data by tagging them against various hypotheses with +,-,= (supports, negates, or neutral). Users can rate the quality of data on a 0-9 scale (0 is garbage, 9 is irrefutable fact). Users can also append 500 words of annotation to each data item. Users can generate new hypotheses, and close old ones. Each user responsible for maintaining their hypothesis or passing it to another user. No limit to the number of hypotheses. Every hypothesis must reference methane, CH4, in some way and be true/false.

Example hypotheses:

1. Methane is the most abundant fuel molecule available.
2. Methane is the most renewable fuel available.
3. Methane is a high performance fuel capable of replacing petroleum across all industries.
4. Methane in drinking water is a human health hazard.
5. Methane in drinking water is a fire hazard.
6. Drilling for methane using hydrofracturing techniques always contaminates drinking water.
7. Drilling for methane using hydrofracturing techniques sometimes contaminates drinking water.
8. Drilling for methane using hydrofracturing techniques never contaminates drinking water.

The Data Bank will contain hundreds (thousands, millions) of documents. .pdf files only to start with. Each item of data can be referenced against multiple hypotheses. And can be rated by each user on 0-9 scale. example1.pdf ­> hyp1+, hyp5-,hyp6-,hyp7+ -> 8,8,9,7

The goal is to develop technical algorithms as well as a human culture within the site that will allow hypotheses to be definitively proven or disproven. Hypotheses that are vague and result in = rather than + or ­ should be closed and replaced with more specific arguments. Each hypothesis page should contain a discussion board.

Methaneproject.net is an open source software project. Technical algorithms will be publicly available with the goal of continual improvement.

Site will be free to read but no anonymous users. Adding content to the site requires an authenticated account. Anonymity encourages trolls and uncivil behavior. We want to encourage spirited and heated debate but always with the goal of seeking TRUTH rather than ideological victory.