> 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:25 MDT