[extropy-chat] Terraforming Earth [WAS: FWD (SK) The Coming ClimateCollapse]

Spike spike66 at comcast.net
Fri Feb 13 02:57:27 UTC 2004


> Kevin Freels
> Terraforming Earth [WAS: FWD (SK) The Coming ClimateCollapse]
> 
> 
> All this talk has got me feeling all funny inside....like 
> when we used to climb the rope in gym class..:-)

Has anyone ever figured out what that was, why that 
used to happen, and why doesn't work anymore?

> ... could make some dramatic changes..for good or ill.
> Piping fresh water into Northern Africa from the Nile to 
> create an inland sea would reduce the water downstream, and much of it
would 
> evaporate. But that evaporated water would come back down somewhere as
well. 
> ...These seemingly crazy ideas have me thinking. What other mad 
> ideas can we dream up...

Please Kevin, explain to me what is crazy or mad about
that idea.  What is the downside?  There is all that
empty useless land out there that doesn't even support
much wildlife, never mind human life, simply because it is
too dry, and we do nothing to fix it.  The doing nothing
seems mad and crazy to me.  

We wouldn't even *need* to pipe water down from the 
Nile, the Congo or Lake Victoria necessarily, altho those
might prove to be excellent options.  We could dig an 
enormous north-south canal somewhere along the western 
seaboard of Africa, then pump water from the sea into it,
perhaps even by harnessing the tides.  Then we could 
arrange for some of it to evaporate, use the fresh water 
and drain the saltier water back out to sea.  

> that may actually help improve the lives of humans 
> worldwide?

Of course.

> What would their short and long term effects be?


Longer better lives for the north Africans.  Open that
place up to industry and tourism.  Look at the Bahamas:
almost entirely populated by Africans.  Lots of good
things happening there: tourism, trade like crazy,
lots of agriculture, etc.


> What drawbacks may be lingering
> that could do more harm than good?

None that I can tell.  They might eventually become
the new China, offering super cheap manufactured
goods, so that China needs to find other things
to do with all those people.  But the Chinese are
intelligent and resourceful, I have all confidence
in the world that they can find a solution.

I don't see why even the greens would object to
making the desert bloom.  We could put some forests
out there, move in some of our endangered species,
so everyone wins.

>From missionary work I have been very indirectly
involved with, one clear lesson is this: one cannot
help a population until you arrange for them to get
a steady supply of reliable clean water.  That is
problem 1.  Without a solution to that, we are
wasting our time trying to even stop constant
warfare.  If people are dying of thirst, or of
hunger from withered crops, they have nothing to
lose from killing their neighbors.

I don't know how this will work out eventually,
but I could even imagine the world deciding that
it is an international crime to allow fresh water 
to drain uselessly into the sea.  I can visualize
nations banding together build water control
infrastructure to divert water wherever it is needed,
and the same infrastructure used to prevent flooding
when the rains do come.

Consider that in most cases one need not even have
active pumping.  Example: water flows in pipes
from the Taxifornia Owens Valley, hundreds of
kilometers over mountains and thru valleys all the 
way down to the once-desert wasteland that is now the 
Los Angeles basin, all by gravity and clever engineering.  
We *know* how to do it, and pipes are cheap. 

> 
> I can;t even sleep at night right now with these crazy ideas flowing!
> 
> Kevin Freels

Again I ask, Kevin, what is so crazy?  There would
likely be terrorists who would try to blow up the
pipes for whatever reason, perhaps they observe that
poor people are more religious or whatever.  But with
modern tech, we could figure out solutions to that.
We might need to bury the pipes for much of the
way, but that can be arranged.  I suspect that
*every* north African government would go along
with the idea, with the possible exception of
Egypt, and so we buy their support.

Wasting water is wasting food is wasting money.
And we all know that it is a sin to waste money.

I can envision a billion people living comfortably
in the area that is now barely supporting a few million
war-torn and starving wretches.

spike




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