3 ms·
I wonder if they could cool down a desert; let's say, make nuclear reactors and plant them on the edge of Sahara, and do one thing with them: desalinate water f
by ddalex 3y ago
I wonder if they could cool down a desert; let's say, make nuclear reactors and plant them on the edge of Sahara, and do one thing with them: desalinate water from the sea; use the water to irrigate large portions of the desert, and plant them with bamboo; this will cool the desert, sequester CO2, and have global influence on the climate warming.
Back on the envelope calculations: 3.5 kWh/m^3 to desalinate water, 10 nuclear reactors, 1sq meter for a bamboo plant, you can water and grow 5.5 billion bamboo plant; let's say each plant fixes 10kg of CO2 per year, you reduce 10% of world's emissions in one clean sweep, for a total investment of maybe 100 billion USD
- jamie_ca 3y agoDesalination doesn't produce (freshwater + salt), it produces (freshwater + saltier water). Dealing with the waste brine is a challenge if you want to process that much in such a localized area.
- marcosdumay 3y agoThe area is very clearly not "localized".
- quesera 3y agoThe real problem is that the cost would be outrageous. If you go this route for greening the Sahara, you could allot 5% for the evaporation ponds to turn brine into dry salt. There are other reasons it will never happen, but this one is solvable! :)
- lostlogin 3y agoThat’s a vast amount of salt. They can go from destabilising the world energy supply to messing with world salt supply.
- xbmcuser 3y agoyou can't do mass change like that. This will change weather patterns could result in a lot of rain being sucked into the Sahara and make South America a desert. https://news.mongabay.com/2015/03/how-the-sahara-keeps-the-amazon-rainforest-going/ https://news.mongabay.com/2015/03/how-the-sahara-keeps-the-a...
- ddalex 3y agowell, anybody with a 100 billion can do that; we're in the age of such technology multipliers that private very rich men can undertake planet-scale geological projects without a sweat
- com2kid 3y agoHuman activity has lead to the Sahara being much larger now than it was in the past. There are ongoing efforts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0) to try and keep the Sahara from growing any more.
- araes 3y agoThere have been a couple attempts to do this previously. In India, there was one version used as a physical barrier on a customs line for 450 miles. Also happened to improve the area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line#Great_Hedge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line#Great_Hedg... https://amocarroll.com/projects/tracing-the-great-salt-hedge https://amocarroll.com/projects/tracing-the-great-salt-hedge China has the China's Three-North Shelterbelt Program where they're trying to hold back the desert in North China and Inner Mongollia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Three-North_Shelt... Based on reports, it has issues with tree survival, yet seems to be making progress based on aerial surveys. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259033221930274X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259033221... There's also an attempt in Africa in the Sahara that a bunch of countries signed on to. Unfortunately, their commitments have mostly amounted to talk without much funding or governmental support. Seen a few videos of locals who seems to believe in the idea, its just not getting much large scale help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa) I also use Ecosia (https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.ecosia.org/) as a web browser, and they supposedly plant trees based on number of searches and a percent diversion of search revenue. Seems to at least have some photographic evidence of money actually being spent somewhere. Senegal's an example with desert work. Seems to have evidence that at least some amount of trees are being planted with videos (harder to falsify). https://blog.ecosia.org/senegal/ https://blog.ecosia.org/senegal/ https://blog.ecosia.org/tag/senegal/ https://blog.ecosia.org/tag/senegal/
- BurningFrog 3y agoSaudi Arabia is building a mega-project that's kinda like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-13bKIS75Gk&ab_channel=TheImpossibleBuild https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-13bKIS75Gk&ab_channel=TheIm...
- lostlogin 3y agoThanks for that. I wasn’t clear on how they power it. Solar? Oil?
- downrightmike 3y agoYou need a ton of water just to run the reactors and the droughts have already required ones that are in desert like the Palo Verde plant to reduce output.
- ddalex 3y agoI mean, you have the Mediterranean sea right there, build them 500m off shore, we have the technology