Re: World is 10 deg chillier: storing water in antarctica

From: Michael Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 14:46:49 MST


Spike Jones wrote:
>
> > someone, perhaps Anders Sandberg wrote:
> > ...
> > > >a technologically advanced nation of five or six million
> > > > people -- all of whom live within about ten feet of sea level.
> > > >
> > > > I'd rate submerging airports, research labs, and factories and
> > > > replacing them with mariculture ponds as a bad trade. (Tulip
> > > > farms are another matter.)
>
> Hey, Ive an idea. Many will agree that a rising sea is bad for those
> who live near it on low ground. What if we were to intentionally
> lower the sea level? Wouldnt we recover a bunch of ground that
> is currently good for nothing but lazy surfers and such? The Dutch
> would love this idea: could we not pump sea water inland on
> Antarctica and spew it into the sky on a cold dark summer day?
> We would create a mountain of ice and salt that would store water
> in a sense. Then we go ahead and let the earth warm up a bit,
> making it more hospitable to those who have a lotta money.
>
> Has this idea been proposed before?

I don't know, but this brings up an idea: What impact upon ocean sea
levels has the Russian redirecting of rivers away from the Caspian and
Aral seas done? If water flows were corrected, would this mitigate
rising sea levels?

Your idea I think would likely be a bad idea, since ice in Antarctica is
pure water, not salt water, adding salt would loosen it up and cause it
to flow outward. The water can easily be accumulated in freshwater
deposits if they are built for rains to fill.

The big solution is to drop an asteroid or two on the Nepal/Caspian
region, digging some huge lakebeds to fill up with water. Dredge out the
Great Lakes. Dam the Grand Canyon, Bryce canyon, and flood the Death
Valley and Dead Sea with canal tunnels from the coast, blast open an
inlet to the Great Rift Valley. Lake Baikal, for instance, could hold
twice as much water as it does if its outlet were dammed up.

I just put in a post to my cousin if he has any data on the volumes of
the below sea level volumes of the three areas I listed.



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