Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise
Wow I did the math and -- it's a heck of a task for each centimeter. I'd just like to add a few thoughts . The cost shouldn't be a problem - given the crazy amounts our glorious leaders spend on weaponry and defense - they just need to divert a reasonable fraction to the problem. The cost would NOT have to be borne by a single nation, but by ALL the major powers - since they/we are ALL threatened by the sea-level rise (as well as the all the poorer nations). On Friday, 30 May 2014 17:16:10 UTC+1, Mick West wrote: The world's largest pump does 150,000 gallons a second, and costs around $500 Million, and is only pumping a few feet. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/saving-new-orleans-worlds-largest-water-pump To offset 1 cm of sea level rise, this pump would have to run for 200 years. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28360+million+km2+*+1+cm%29+%2F+%2815+gallons%29+seconds+in+years Or you could have 200 pumps do 1cm per year, at a baseline cost of $100 Billion. But if you factor in distance and evaporation you'd probably need a lot more. Combined with the likely saturation of the area with only a small fraction of the 1cm worth of water, the destruction of the local ecosystem, and the need for continued pumping - I'd say this idea is a non-starter. Mick On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Celsus cels...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: I posted the following a few years ago . I'm putting it out again to see if there's further reaction The following is so simple and obvious, perhaps it's not so obvious ! It's low-tech and uses a large hammer to help crack a very large nut. It will not solve the problem of sea-level rise, but might mitigate it somewhat. Major negative side affects are envisaged - more about that later. The idea is to use brute force to bury the problem in the sand ! Where ? - in the deserts ! -- some parts of Earth's surface (which cannot be named for diplomatic reasons) are not as pretty as other parts (e.g. the tropical rainforests), and might magnanimously offer themselves (with the help of financial incentives) for the greater good. If sufficient numbers of pumps of sufficient bore/capacity pump sea-water for sufficiently long periods onto/into these wastelands, then at least a temporary halt in the millimeter by millimeter rise might be affected. Yes there would be major ecological consequences, not least the changing of weather patterns on which many populations both human and non-human rely. But I believe these would be temporary one-off changes and a new ecological balance would eventually ensue. The adage No pain, no gain may apply. * The existing ecological beauty of the affected areas would be permanently altered if not destroyed. * There would be large-scale evaporation, causing a large percentage of the water to eventally return (as freshwater) to where it's not wanted ! However experiments to determine what fraction would be permanently soaked up in different landscapes might give widely different results. Obviously those areas that indicate a high absorption coefficient or soakability factor (sand dunes ?) would be best suited to large-scale water transfer. * Care would need to be taken to ensure that no one specific region received more sea-water than the underlying mantle can safely support - the sheer weight of the water added could possibly produce a fissure in Earth's crust. On the positive side, if as a consequence of the exercise, large areas were left with a surface of salt which had a higher reflectivity than what existed before (albedo effect), this would act as a mirror and cause more radiation to be reflected back to space. Ingenious or idiotic ??? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise
Mark If the ooze idea does not work you can do it with a 40 metre diameter bore hole. This is big but not impossible. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland. s.sal...@ed.ac.uk Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs U-tube Jamie Taylor Power for Change On 30/05/2014 21:36, markcap...@podenergy.org wrote: Stephen and Greg, This kind of discussion, a trade-off of (doomed) local environment to preserve some global environment, helps educate people about the need for action. It's useful to check how doomed are the local environments. For example does the clay barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara extend above sea level everywhere? If there are above-sea gaps in the clay, how much sea level rise before the Sea flows into the gap? Or what combination of sea level rise, high tide, and storm surge starts the flooding of land which is already below sea level (Dead Sea, Salton Sea, California Delta, etc.)? Thoughts on a meter of sea level mitigation via low groundwater tables or low ground: 1) We can generate hydropower energy as water flows from high to low. When generating energy, pressure is more important than flow rate because turbine efficiency is so much better above about 50 meters of water head than with lower pressure water. Is the future energy income sufficient to buy all the affected and doomed property or pay for the personal desalters Stephen and Greg mention? Should we build solar stills which are so large and high we can recover hydropower energy as the water drains off them? 2) It is more difficult to push water into an aquifer than to suck water out. However, advances in directional drilling and hydrofracturing (oil and gas drilling technology) might be helpful for increasing percolation into the aqufer. 3) We can maintain gravity flow of water in a pipe even if long distances of the pipe are nearly 10 meters above sea level. That is as long as the pipe inlet is in the sea and the outlet is below sea level. Normally, gases in the water come out of solution and this off-gasing is why every pipe high point requires an air release valve. I encountered just this high-point-too-high issue and fixed it with a tiny vacuum pump sucking on the air release valve. Mark Stephen's comment: Water runs down hill. If you look at the rock porosity and the depths of the water table below the Sahara you can see that we could store a world-metre of sea water down there. So why does it not flow down of its own accord? Answer because ooze on the sea bed in the oceans surrounding the Sahara has clogged the entrances to all the subterranean passages. All we have to do is some ooze-scraping to clear the blockage.Water below the Sahara is already extremely saline. We would have to provide solar-powered desalination plant for every man, woman, child, camel and goat but that would be much cheaper than building a flood wall round Manhattan let alone all the other coastal cities. I have been working on designs of wave-powered scrapers so we can do it without releasing any carbon from fossil fuel. If we can wash the salt it might be quite valuable. Greg's comment: Relatedly, there is an interesting scheme (being tested/built in the Middle East somewhere) that I think goes like this. A natural or artificial marine bay is covered with a high arching cover such that during the day the enclosed space is solar heated and seawater evaporates. During the night the cover naturally cools, freshwater condenses on the inside, trickles down the inside of the cover and is collected to water fields, etc. If water is collected high enough it could be sent inland via gravity/pipe (+- hydroelectric generation?). OK, probably won't stem sea level rise, but might do some good in the meantime, pending GE governance approval. *From:* geoengineering@googlegroups.com mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Mick West [m...@mickwest.com mailto:m...@mickwest.com] *Sent:* Friday, May 30, 2014 9:16 AM *To:* celso...@gmail.com mailto:celso...@gmail.com *Cc:* geoengineering *Subject:* Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise The world's largest pump does 150,000 gallons a second, and costs around $500 Million, and is only pumping a few feet. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/saving-new-orleans-worlds-largest-water-pump To offset 1 cm of sea level rise, this pump would have to run for 200 years. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28360+million+km2+*+1+cm%29+%2F+%2815+gallons%29+seconds+in+years Or you could have 200 pumps do 1cm per year
Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise
The world's largest pump does 150,000 gallons a second, and costs around $500 Million, and is only pumping a few feet. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/saving-new-orleans-worlds-largest-water-pump To offset 1 cm of sea level rise, this pump would have to run for 200 years. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28360+million+km2+*+1+cm%29+%2F+%2815+gallons%29+seconds+in+years Or you could have 200 pumps do 1cm per year, at a baseline cost of $100 Billion. But if you factor in distance and evaporation you'd probably need a lot more. Combined with the likely saturation of the area with only a small fraction of the 1cm worth of water, the destruction of the local ecosystem, and the need for continued pumping - I'd say this idea is a non-starter. Mick On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Celsus celso...@gmail.com wrote: I posted the following a few years ago . I'm putting it out again to see if there's further reaction The following is so simple and obvious, perhaps it's not so obvious ! It's low-tech and uses a large hammer to help crack a very large nut. It will not solve the problem of sea-level rise, but might mitigate it somewhat. Major negative side affects are envisaged - more about that later. The idea is to use brute force to bury the problem in the sand ! Where ? - in the deserts ! -- some parts of Earth's surface (which cannot be named for diplomatic reasons) are not as pretty as other parts (e.g. the tropical rainforests), and might magnanimously offer themselves (with the help of financial incentives) for the greater good. If sufficient numbers of pumps of sufficient bore/capacity pump sea-water for sufficiently long periods onto/into these wastelands, then at least a temporary halt in the millimeter by millimeter rise might be affected. Yes there would be major ecological consequences, not least the changing of weather patterns on which many populations both human and non-human rely. But I believe these would be temporary one-off changes and a new ecological balance would eventually ensue. The adage No pain, no gain may apply. * The existing ecological beauty of the affected areas would be permanently altered if not destroyed. * There would be large-scale evaporation, causing a large percentage of the water to eventally return (as freshwater) to where it's not wanted ! However experiments to determine what fraction would be permanently soaked up in different landscapes might give widely different results. Obviously those areas that indicate a high absorption coefficient or soakability factor (sand dunes ?) would be best suited to large-scale water transfer. * Care would need to be taken to ensure that no one specific region received more sea-water than the underlying mantle can safely support - the sheer weight of the water added could possibly produce a fissure in Earth's crust. On the positive side, if as a consequence of the exercise, large areas were left with a surface of salt which had a higher reflectivity than what existed before (albedo effect), this would act as a mirror and cause more radiation to be reflected back to space. Ingenious or idiotic ??? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise
Mick Water runs down hill. If you look at the rock porosity and the depths of the water table below the Sahara you can see that we could store a world-metre of sea water down there. So why does it not flow down of its own accord? Answer because ooze on the sea bed in the oceans surrounding the Sahara has clogged the entrances to all the subterranean passages. All we have to do is some ooze-scraping to clear the blockage.Water below the Sahara is already extremely saline. We would have to provide solar-powered desalination plant for every man, woman, child, camel and goat but that would be much cheaper than building a flood wall round Manhattan let alone all the other coastal cities. I have been working on designs of wave-powered scrapers so we can do it without releasing any carbon from fossil fuel. If we can wash the salt it might be quite valuable. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland. s.sal...@ed.ac.uk Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs U-tube Jamie Taylor Power for Change On 30/05/2014 17:16, Mick West wrote: The world's largest pump does 150,000 gallons a second, and costs around $500 Million, and is only pumping a few feet. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/saving-new-orleans-worlds-largest-water-pump To offset 1 cm of sea level rise, this pump would have to run for 200 years. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28360+million+km2+*+1+cm%29+%2F+%2815+gallons%29+seconds+in+years Or you could have 200 pumps do 1cm per year, at a baseline cost of $100 Billion. But if you factor in distance and evaporation you'd probably need a lot more. Combined with the likely saturation of the area with only a small fraction of the 1cm worth of water, the destruction of the local ecosystem, and the need for continued pumping - I'd say this idea is a non-starter. Mick On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Celsus celso...@gmail.com mailto:celso...@gmail.com wrote: I posted the following a few years ago . I'm putting it out again to see if there's further reaction The following is so simple and obvious, perhaps it's not so obvious ! It's low-tech and uses a large hammer to help crack a very large nut. It will not solve the problem of sea-level rise, but might mitigate it somewhat. Major negative side affects are envisaged - more about that later. The idea is to use brute force to bury the problem in the sand ! Where ? - in the deserts ! -- some parts of Earth's surface (which cannot be named for diplomatic reasons) are not as pretty as other parts (e.g. the tropical rainforests), and might magnanimously offer themselves (with the help of financial incentives) for the greater good. If sufficient numbers of pumps of sufficient bore/capacity pump sea-water for sufficiently long periods onto/into these wastelands, then at least a temporary halt in the millimeter by millimeter rise might be affected. Yes there would be major ecological consequences, not least the changing of weather patterns on which many populations both human and non-human rely. But I believe these would be temporary one-off changes and a new ecological balance would eventually ensue. The adage No pain, no gain may apply. * The existing ecological beauty of the affected areas would be permanently altered if not destroyed. * There would be large-scale evaporation, causing a large percentage of the water to eventally return (as freshwater) to where it's not wanted ! However experiments to determine what fraction would be permanently soaked up in different landscapes might give widely different results. Obviously those areas that indicate a high absorption coefficient or soakability factor (sand dunes ?) would be best suited to large-scale water transfer. * Care would need to be taken to ensure that no one specific region received more sea-water than the underlying mantle can safely support - the sheer weight of the water added could possibly produce a fissure in Earth's crust. On the positive side, if as a consequence of the exercise, large areas were left with a surface of salt which had a higher reflectivity than what existed before (albedo effect), this would act as a mirror and cause more radiation to be reflected back to space. Ingenious or idiotic ??? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this
RE: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise
Relatedly, there is an interesting scheme (being tested/built in the Middle East somewhere) that I think goes like this. A natural or artificial marine bay is covered with a high arching cover such that during the day the enclosed space is solar heated and seawater evaporates. During the night the cover naturally cools, freshwater condenses on the inside, trickles down the inside of the cover and is collected to water fields, etc. If water is collected high enough it could be sent inland via gravity/pipe (+- hydroelectric generation?). OK, probably won't stem sea level rise, but might do some good in the meantime, pending GE governance approval. Greg From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Mick West [m...@mickwest.com] Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 9:16 AM To: celso...@gmail.com Cc: geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise The world's largest pump does 150,000 gallons a second, and costs around $500 Million, and is only pumping a few feet. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/saving-new-orleans-worlds-largest-water-pump To offset 1 cm of sea level rise, this pump would have to run for 200 years. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28360+million+km2+*+1+cm%29+%2F+%2815+gallons%29+seconds+in+years Or you could have 200 pumps do 1cm per year, at a baseline cost of $100 Billion. But if you factor in distance and evaporation you'd probably need a lot more. Combined with the likely saturation of the area with only a small fraction of the 1cm worth of water, the destruction of the local ecosystem, and the need for continued pumping - I'd say this idea is a non-starter. Mick On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Celsus celso...@gmail.commailto:celso...@gmail.com wrote: I posted the following a few years ago . I'm putting it out again to see if there's further reaction The following is so simple and obvious, perhaps it's not so obvious ! It's low-tech and uses a large hammer to help crack a very large nut. It will not solve the problem of sea-level rise, but might mitigate it somewhat. Major negative side affects are envisaged - more about that later. The idea is to use brute force to bury the problem in the sand ! Where ? - in the deserts ! -- some parts of Earth's surface (which cannot be named for diplomatic reasons) are not as pretty as other parts (e.g. the tropical rainforests), and might magnanimously offer themselves (with the help of financial incentives) for the greater good. If sufficient numbers of pumps of sufficient bore/capacity pump sea-water for sufficiently long periods onto/into these wastelands, then at least a temporary halt in the millimeter by millimeter rise might be affected. Yes there would be major ecological consequences, not least the changing of weather patterns on which many populations both human and non-human rely. But I believe these would be temporary one-off changes and a new ecological balance would eventually ensue. The adage No pain, no gain may apply. * The existing ecological beauty of the affected areas would be permanently altered if not destroyed. * There would be large-scale evaporation, causing a large percentage of the water to eventally return (as freshwater) to where it's not wanted ! However experiments to determine what fraction would be permanently soaked up in different landscapes might give widely different results. Obviously those areas that indicate a high absorption coefficient or soakability factor (sand dunes ?) would be best suited to large-scale water transfer. * Care would need to be taken to ensure that no one specific region received more sea-water than the underlying mantle can safely support - the sheer weight of the water added could possibly produce a fissure in Earth's crust. On the positive side, if as a consequence of the exercise, large areas were left with a surface of salt which had a higher reflectivity than what existed before (albedo effect), this would act as a mirror and cause more radiation to be reflected back to space. Ingenious or idiotic ??? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.commailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.commailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.commailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email
RE: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise
Stephen and Greg,This kind of discussion, a trade-off of (doomed) local environment to preserve some global environment, helps educate people about the need for action. It's useful to check how "doomed" are the local environments. For example does the clay barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara extend above sea level everywhere? If there are above-sea gaps in the clay, how much sea level rise before the Sea flows into the gap? Or what combination of sea level rise, high tide, and storm surge starts the flooding of land which is already below sea level (Dead Sea, Salton Sea, California Delta, etc.)?Thoughts on a meter of sea level mitigation via low groundwater tables or low ground:1) We can generate hydropower energy as water flows from high to low. When generating energy, pressure is more important than flow rate because turbine efficiency is so much better above about 50 meters of water head than with lower pressure water. Is the future energy income sufficient to "buy" all the affected and doomed property or pay for the personal desalters Stephen and Greg mention? Should we build solar stills which are so large and high we can recover hydropower energy as the water drains off them?2) It is more difficult to push water into an aquifer than to suck water out. However, advances in directional drilling and hydrofracturing (oil and gas drilling technology) might be helpful for increasing percolation into the aqufer.3) We can maintain gravity flow of water in a pipe even if long distances of the pipe are nearly 10 meters above sea level. That is as long as the pipe inlet is in the sea and the outlet is below sea level. Normally, gases in the water come out of solution and this off-gasing is why every pipe "high point" requires an air release valve. I encountered just this high-point-too-high issue and fixed it with a tiny vacuum pump sucking on the air release valve.MarkStephen's comment:Water runs down hill. If you look at the rock porosity and the depths of the water table below the Sahara you can see that we could store a world-metre of sea water down there. So why does it not flow down of its own accord? Answer because ooze on the sea bed in the oceans surrounding the Sahara has clogged the entrances to all the subterranean passages. All we have to do is some ooze-scraping to clear the blockage. Water below the Sahara is already extremely saline. We would have to provide solar-powered desalination plant for every man, woman, child, camel and goat but that would be much cheaper than building a flood wall round Manhattan let alone all the other coastal cities.I have been working on designs of wave-powered scrapers so we can do it without releasing any carbon from fossil fuel. If we can wash the salt it might be quite valuable.Greg's comment: Relatedly, there is an interesting scheme (being tested/built in the Middle East somewhere) that I think goes like this. A natural or artificial marine bay is covered with a high arching cover such that during the day the enclosed space is solar heated and seawater evaporates. During the night the cover naturally cools, freshwater condenses on the inside, trickles down the inside of the cover and is collected to water fields, etc. If water is collected high enough it could be sent inland via gravity/pipe (+- hydroelectric generation?). OK, probably won't stem sea level rise, but might do some good in the meantime, pending GE governance approval. From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Mick West [m...@mickwest.com] Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 9:16 AM To: celso...@gmail.com Cc: geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] Mitigate the sea-level rise The world's largest pump does 150,000 gallons a second, and costs around $500 Million, and is only pumping a few feet. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/saving-new-orleans-worlds-largest-water-pumpTo offset 1 cm of sea level rise, this pump would have to run for 200 years. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28360+million+km2+*+1+cm%29+%2F+%2815+gallons%29+seconds+in+yearsOr you could have 200 pumps do 1cm per year, at a baseline cost of $100 Billion. But if you factor in distance and evaporation you'd probably need a lot more. Combined with the likely saturation of the area with only a small fraction of the 1cm worth of water, the destruction of the local ecosystem, and the need for continued pumping - I'd say this idea is a non-starter. MickOn Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Celsus celso...@gmail.com wrote: I posted the following a few years ago . I'm putting it out again to see if there's further reactionThe following is so simple and obvious, perhaps it's not so obvious !It's low-tech anduses a large hammer to help crack a very large nut. It will not solvethe problem of sea-level rise, but might mitigate it somewhat. Majornegative side affects are envisaged - more about that later.
