Making the desert bloom.
Discussion
Simpo Two said:
dirty boy said:
Slightly OT, but wasn't there a wealthy Arab type bloke in the late 70s early 80s who thought that if he planted thousands of trees he could create a rain forest and tried and failed?
What he and the OP are not seeing is that every area of Earth has its own natural climate - temperature, insolation (amount of sun), humidity, wind, soil/lack of. That controls what grows or doesn't grow there. Whatever you plant, nature will try to turn it back to what it was. That's why it was what it was in the first place - the natural conclusion of ecological succession. In this country you can go, with time, from sand to grass to scrub to small trees to deciduous forest, as that is our natural fauna. Do it in Brazil and you'll get tropical rain forest; do it in the Sahara and you'll get sand. The exception is when what you do changes the local climate, but that's a massive undertaking.
What about all the organic waste we produce? Wouldn't putting that in the desert support some sort of ecosystem?
What about all the grass available in the northern hemisphere? Couldn't we use that to increase beef and lamb production?
How bout large greenhouses to stop the sand and snakes getting in?
Like money, it's mostly about distribution. The West has (well had) plenty of money and food because they are generally well organised. As for the others, draw your own conclusions. There will always be rich and poor, fat and starving, clever and stupid. That's how the human race is and how it works.
Hugo a Gogo said:
convert the whole of Iceland into a seawater-to-hydrogen plant
I always thought we should have used the Icelandic bank bailouts to buy access to Iceland's geothermic resources - a long way for an electrical link but shipping hydrogen or hydrocarbons could have workedHow about:
Stick one end of a big long black pipe into the sea, use a solar powered pump to slowly suck water from sea into pipe.
Along the top of the pipe have reflective capillary pipes that bend round and join a second smaller pipe that's buried under the sand out of the way of heat, make this thermally insulated.
Water comes in to big pipe, heated by the sun, evaporates and is collected in the second pipe.
If the second pipe is slightly leaky then you'd irrigate the land with clean distilled water.
You'd have to filter the sea water coming in and it would require maintenance to clear it of salt to stop it clogging up, but the desalination process wouldn't require any energy other than what is provided by the Sun.
Blooming Desert
Stick one end of a big long black pipe into the sea, use a solar powered pump to slowly suck water from sea into pipe.
Along the top of the pipe have reflective capillary pipes that bend round and join a second smaller pipe that's buried under the sand out of the way of heat, make this thermally insulated.
Water comes in to big pipe, heated by the sun, evaporates and is collected in the second pipe.
If the second pipe is slightly leaky then you'd irrigate the land with clean distilled water.
You'd have to filter the sea water coming in and it would require maintenance to clear it of salt to stop it clogging up, but the desalination process wouldn't require any energy other than what is provided by the Sun.
Blooming Desert
qube_TA said:
Stick one end of a big long black pipe into the sea, use a solar powered pump to slowly suck water from sea into pipe.
Along the top of the pipe have reflective capillary pipes that bend round and join a second smaller pipe that's buried under the sand out of the way of heat, make this thermally insulated.
Water comes in to big pipe, heated by the sun, evaporates and is collected in the second pipe.
If the second pipe is slightly leaky then you'd irrigate the land with clean distilled water.
The point of a capilliary (ie very narrow) tube is that water goes up, to a small extent, because the molecules are attracted to the inner surfaces. What does that have to do with evaporation, and how does water evaporate in a closed pipe?Along the top of the pipe have reflective capillary pipes that bend round and join a second smaller pipe that's buried under the sand out of the way of heat, make this thermally insulated.
Water comes in to big pipe, heated by the sun, evaporates and is collected in the second pipe.
If the second pipe is slightly leaky then you'd irrigate the land with clean distilled water.
Countdown said:
That's an interesting idea. Look at what's happened historically. A-rabs rich in oil, dig it up, sell it and get rich. Ruskies rich in Gas, same thing. Maybe these poor desert countries will be the next Arab states experting the results of harvesting their single biggest natural resource?
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