One of the great joys of science has to be turning a thought that surfaced one night over a few beers into a full-blown project.

… to undertake a gargantuan task: calculate the value of all the services provided by all the ecosystems, from the forest to the floodplains to the open ocean, across the world… they came up with a number- $33 trillion a year- a headline-grabbing figure that was almost twice the global gross national product.