Combating Desertification, Global Warming, and Rising Sea Levels While Providing Sustainable Agriculture and Jobs
Saving the planet from global warming has become a rallying cry for most of the world’s scientists and the governments of the world’s one hundred and ninety-five independent countries. Those governments met in Paris in December of 2015 to agree to limit carbon pollution and thereby limit the increase of global temperatures. All of this is welcome news, which has given rise to the hope that the earth will be saved from its human inhabitants by its human inhabitants.
But there are other measures that governments can take, in cooperation with the United Nations, that could help save the planet while providing sustainable potable water to arid regions. Sustainable potable water for arid regions could create sustainable vegetation as well as sustainable habitat for humans and other animals.
We know that trees and other vegetation take carbon dioxide from the air and return oxygen to the air. Trees are the most efficient carbon filtering devices known. They need only to be planted in a region and soil where they will prosper if sustainable water is provided.
And we know that a container with an opening as large as its width, filled with salt water, covered with an impermeable lid and placed in the sun, will produce non-salty water condensation on the underside of the lid.
So How About This?
How about excavating lakebeds in arid regions around the world that are in danger of desertification and then dredging canals from the oceans to the lakebeds? After the lakes are completed and filled with seawater, A-frame tents of glass panels (closed on all sides with bottom left open) could be erected in rows on supporting grids across the lakes. The tents would catch the condensation off the lakes. The condensation would roll down the inner sides of the tents into troughs which would carry the distilled water to pipes which would carry the water to holding tanks where minerals would be added to make man-made rain water.
After the tanks are full, pipes would carry the water from the tanks to nearby acreage where irrigation programs would be installed to turn arid land into greensward, tree plantations, and agriculture.
These regions would have sustainable water as long as there are oceans and sunlight and human beings to maintain and manage the infrastructure of canals plus seawater lakes plus A-frame tents plus holding tanks plus pipe systems.
All of this could be done on a massive scale across arid planes in warm areas everywhere in the world.
Think of the boon to drought stricken areas in the African Sahel, the American Southwest, the periphery of the Australian Outback, most of the Middle East, the vast Sudanese savannas, and the lowlands of Ethiopia.
Sustainable water for irrigation and human consumption without any rivers being dammed!
Think of the communities that would spring up due to jobs being provided. Think of the billions of cubic yards of seawater that would be pumped from the seas to fill the thousands of manmade lakes thereby reducing the rising sea levels endangering the coasts of continents and threatening to overwhelm island nations.
This is a simple idea needing the cooperation of governments, industry, and the inhabitants of our planet. If implemented on a global scale it could bring sustainable potable water to millions of people who have none. Lives could be rescued from misery and turned into lives of comfort.
Can’t be done? We have the technology to do everything mentioned above and the intelligence to make it work.
Too expensive? How much is it worth to us to save the planet from global warming, rising sea levels, and continued desertification of our arid regions?
