Hi All The most immediately expensive effect of global warming (at least to rich people) is rising sea levels so the Buttram proposal for moving sea water to sub-sea deserts would help.
However if you check the depth of the water table in the centre of the Sahara, look at the likely porosity of the rock above it and the ratio of areas of desert and sea you find that we could drain off at least one and maybe two metres of sea level rise deep below the desert. The deep water below the Sahara is already too saline for most uses and if you are going to the trouble of installing solar powered desalination equipment the extra salinity just means slightly more energy consumption. People living in low-lying coastal cities could well afford to give a personal desalination plant to every man, woman, child, camel and goat in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad. The water could flow on its own if we could reduce the flow resistance of the path between the sea bed and the deep rock below the desert. There is a very wide range of flow resistivity in rocks. Because of the large flow area we should be able to get sufficiently low resistance for many rock types. I believe that resistance is dominated by ooze on the sea bed which has clogged the entry passages into more porous material. All we need to do is to scrape away the right amount of ooze above the porous rock to regulate the flow and so keep sea levels where we want them. A low carbon way to do remove ooze is to use wave energy to drag objects which would look like a cross between a plough and an anchor through the ooze. The ooze will be rich in nutrients and getting some of it into suspension should help fish stocks. We can do some further un-clogging with a vacuum mat laid on the sea bed. The first research step would be to assemble data on rock porosity and ooze depth in likely desert and sea areas. There may even be natural passageways formed by rock faults. Oil companies will have lots of rock core data and might be willing to release it. Is there one with a sufficient level of social responsibility? Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design School of Engineering and Electronics University of Edinburgh Mayfield Road Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland tel +44 131 650 5704 fax +44 131 650 5702 Mobile 07795 203 195 [email protected] http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs Ken Caldeira wrote: > Folks, > > I ran across this pdf recommending the benefits of flooding sub > sea-level desert areas. > > I believe the author of this document (cc'd) would enjoy your comments. > > Best, > > Ken > > > ___________________________________________________ > Ken Caldeira > > Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology > 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA > > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>; [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab > +1 650 704 7212; fax: +1 650 462 5968 > > > > > -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
