lol(can't frubal this for some reason?)
Soil is the key Taipan,plenty tree's to absorb all the moisture & soil that soaks up water like a big sponge-Preferably on the mountain tops & high area's.
Starting with the area developed above New Orlean's.knock down any houses,get rid of any concrete or non-pourous,grow lot's of tree's,don't burn the wood let it rot to enrich the soil & keep in the damp.As the Glacier retreat's in India,grow stuff at the head at the source of the River Ganga.
This is going to happen with or without us(human).Dykebuilding sound's kinda King Canute style,You ozzies need the water anyway?so attract it where it is needed..
Well I guess we could put Australia on stilts but I think we would run out of trees, plus the termites are pretty mean round here.
However, looking at the problem at hand. I do have solutions, but who would listen to my ranting and raving.
The first problem to overcome is perception.
Fact we have rising sea levels and more extreme weather.
So instead of examining methods of addressing the problem we have bamboozled ourselves with the SEP (Someone elses problem) basket. Was it natural or manmade? What a tangential furphie! Who cares! surely the situation is the medium term economic impact of loosing commercial global centres such as New York London Paris Shanghai, most of Bangladesh not to mention a series of south pacific island nations.
Next the issue should be taken seriously. Figures arrived at in Copenhagen are in the vicinity of $10-100 billion.
Whats that for? ... the administrative bill?
We have two centuries of catch up here and each day we use 84 million more barrels of oil at $70 a barrel thats around $6 Billion a day. And they are offering $100 billion ie petty cash, to address a 200 year old growing problem. They are obviously either insincere or naive.
In the past we would have waved our hands in the air and said "well its gods will" and then go off and buy a new house on higher ground.
The point is Natural
OR Manmade, for the first time in history mankind has the capability to have some control over the earths weather, but lacks the will.
So lets say we get serious, We throw a $trillion at the problem ie less than the USA spends on bombs and their delivery systems. We might utilise a process like those I am about to describe.
Sure we can replace our light bulbs and paint our rooves white, but this only delays the inevitable it doesn't stop it. We could alter the earths Albido and reflect more radiation, we could even put huge shade arrays in geostationary orbit. I am not saying stop development of photovoltaics, geothermal, tidal and wind alternative energy production, but I think there may be another compatible solution.
Rather than
Starting with the area developed above New Orlean's.knock down any houses,get rid of any concrete or non-pourous,grow lot's of tree's,don't burn the wood let it rot to enrich the soil & keep in the damp.As the Glacier retreat's in India,grow stuff at the head at the source of the River Ganga.
I am sure the population displacement would upset a few people, why not use some space that is useless for anything else instead.
Solution 1
Instead of growing slow inefficient trees, why not use far more efficient fast continuous harvest high yielding algea
Crop Oil in Liters per sq km Soy 44600 Safflower 77900 Sunflower 95200 Castor 141300 Coconut 268900 Palm 595000 Algae (optimum) 10000000
Next where?
In South Australia the Eyre Basin is an arid desert region much of it below sealevel. It occupies about 1,000,000 sq kms, It is occupied by only 50,000 people and the main industry is low yield cattle and mining. At its southern end it is less than 100km to the coast, the Spencer Gulf ie the sea. There is a thin strip of low hills between.
If we flood the Eyre Basin with sea water it would form a shallow sea. By preparing the channels and sea paddocks, dyking mining operations and moving some small towns to higher ground, we could have an industry of algal production on a grand scale.
In other words we devote a piece of otherwise arid unarable land and offer it as lungs for the planet.
Having learned the process then repeated at other locations around the planet eg the Sahara, Kalihari etc enough CO2 may be able to be removed permanently from the atmosphere to affect the greenhouse effect offering a means of controlling global temperature.
It is far more efficient to put these algeal ponds at the source eg Coal power stations cement making facilities etc, than the lower yield by passive diffusion into an inland sea. Still if we can have the sea why not use it?
As this area is prone to inland fresh watershed flooding, dykes should be made to keep the fresh water storage separate from the salt water system, allowing controlled mixing of ponds of optimum salinity for algael bloom. Algae can be harvested continuously unlike normal crops that are grown then harvested only once a year as a batch process.
OK we go ahead and we end up with farms producing millions of tonnes of green slime.
Big deal!, they will rot and put CO2 back in the atmosphere.
Not if we put it on a conveyor belt and focus a bit of sun (which is extremely plentiful out there) and dry it ie remove water. Then if we run it through a glass tube where solar energy is focused and heated to around 300C, in an atmosphere of inert nitrogen where the oxygen has been removed, we will get anaerobic charcoalisation. The end product when pressed into "briquettes" will be similar in nature to coal.
So we could replace normal lower grade heating (brown) coal, with our green coal. Or we could just bury it. Carbon eg coal graphite diamonds, is non toxic, inert away from oxygen, easily stored and transported. So we bury it and trade carbon credits for it. Coal shows carbon can be buried for millions of years and still be stable.
Normal 100 tonnes per sq Km 20,000 sq km 2000000 tonnes
100 @AUD$/tonne $200,000,000
Optimum CO2 and Nutrients 10000 tonnes per sq Km 20,000 sq km 200000000 tonnes
100 @AUD$/tonne $20,000,000,000
equals half Australias annual coal exports
As an aside several new industries could also have their genesis at such a facility. various aquaculture projects salmon, trout, prawns, yabbies. Many algae under suitable conditions produce oils suitable for use as biodiesel fuels. In an area the size we are talking her Australia could be self sufficient in Biodiesel Add hydrogen to our carbon plus more solar heat we can make methane. The whole system could be powered by geothermal which is present in the area. The micro-climate influence should assist rainfall on the desperately drought ridden western side of the great divide possibly increasing precipitation over the Murray-Darling Basin. Thus increasing agricultural output.
High evaporation rates and salinity control can be turned to advantage. Power can be generated from brine solar pondages. Evaporated water will probably precipitate in areas where it is desperately needed. Higher salinity water could be piped back to the ocean through the same pipes used to flood it in the first place.
So I see this as
win for the locals,
win for their neighbors,
win for the world,
win for actually converting that nasty greenouse gas CO2 back into manageable chunks of solid carbon in quantities that are significant.
Great so who pays for wonder boys dreams? It will be a huge project, $100 billion would be used in the first week. But look at the returns. Australia could pay for it then charge the rest of the world for its use, but this is much more than Australia could afford. However if the whole world paid through a fund, but there are energy, coal power plant, cement, aluminium manufacturing companies who must find carbon credits to remain competitive, perhaps we have a solution that helps everyone.
Solution 2
I have another solution which involves the antarctic.
CO2 is a gas which is much denser than air. At about -80C it remains stable as a solid ie dry ice or under pressure as a liquid. The Antarctic plateau has areas where the temperature in the mile thick ice are around -50C. If we made large deep wells in the ice formation, baffled to reduce wind effects, CO2 in the still air will sink to the bottom of these shafts because of its greater density. If we took this CO2 enriched atmoshphere we may be able to further concentrate it using large but simple centrifuges where finally the concertrated CO2, now in a much smaller volume, could be refrigerated the extra 30 degrees to a solid or pumped as liquid under pressure into sealed prepared deep chambers in the ice and stored there. The constant katabatic cold air flow of 50-70mph off the plateau could be used to power the system from wind energy.
Food for though but who's listening.
Cheers
what do you guys think.Copenhagen, Denmark - Delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference are "running short on time" to reach agreement on a deal, U.S. President Barack Obama told them Friday."There is no time to waste," he said. "Now I believe it's the time for the nations and the people of the world to come behind a common purpose. We are ready to get this done today, but there has to be movement on all sides."
