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

From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 14:07:55 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?
>
> Lets see, the earth is 6370 km radius and about 3/4 of that is
> ocean, so
>
> (6.4E6)^2*4*pi*0.75 = 4E14 m^2
>
> so if we pump 4E14 cubic meters of sea water up... what?
> a km in altitude, and a cubic meter of sea water is about
> 1000 kg mass, or weight of 1E4 newtons on this planet,
> thats about 4E21 newton meters. A good sized power
> plant makes a gigawatt, so a thousand of these working
> round the clock could lower the seas a meter in 127 years.
> Lets get on this! spike

Maybe better to sink refridgerant rods into the North Atlantic, or turn a
bunch of plankton into ice machines.

If the heat transfer can be used for power, then heat could be transfered
from the oceans and atmosphere into the fridge for power, cooling the
atmosphere.

Greenhouse gasses have the effect of trapping heat from the Sun on
Earth. Combined with the heat of the processes that generate the
greenhouse gasses, we get largescale environmental changes and also
altered microclimates in urban and rural environments.

Consider the changes in the weather in the last twenty years.

Ross

--
Ross Andrew Finlayson
Finlayson Consulting
Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
Confucious says, "My name is Confucious."



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