I never heard of these possibilities - and why not? This is the kind of thinking we need. Of course there will be repercussions, but it seems they are manageable with the technology today. The world is so set in how things are done that opportunities like this are overlooked.
Great piece again, thank you! Could you add a column to the table listing all depressions: By how many mm would mean sea level go down if they were filled to MSL?
Qattara region can even be filled with the the flooding of the Nile which is happening on the yearly monsoon between May and August. And it would have fresh water, not from the sea. But it probably would affect to the needs of the Nile Delta, and it can have a side effect
This discussion shows how many opportunities exist here on earth to improve current useless areas. We know with climate change we need to counter the rising oceans. We know there will be droughts and that will lead to food insecurity. So why are we looking at Mars when there are exceptional, if expensive, solutions. Being the innovative will be winners in the future and those areas will profit all around. The Saudis know oil is on the way out, even if slowly, so why not invest in these type of projects? So much is concentrated in the Middle East! And face it. there will not be enough space travel opportunities in time to relocate enough of us so we best find solutions here at home.
you will not extract enough energy from the flow for desalinization, let alone the brine to pump back. Additionally, you cannot effectively concentrate the brine without expending more power.
I defer to my colleague, chatgpt 4.0, whose mathematical understanding(and ability to document his work) is now extremely good.
using solar, and by my estimates and with the right technology, we can evaporate the sea using the sun and dump it into the depression. We will skip all of the math. Just understand that it was done using maximum solar possible efficiency and a totally passive system that will self-clean and self-recharge every day with the tides and the sun, and work year round.
we'll assume a 50% efficiency rate and that 640 acres will ultimately be needed per meter/second of water we wish to funnel into the depression. the depression's possible water holding capacity is approximately 1.213e+12 meters of water. my estimation is that around 100 miles of coastline are truly available and have not been significantly settled. I will assume that most of the desalinization facilities will be located on a single ridgeline of at most one acre deep which is artificially constructed near the beach, to minimize the amount of energy required, and that the fresh water will be pipelined into the depression from a buried collection system. Around 4 meters/second of water will flow.
The cost of the project, ultimately, is likely to be around 10 dollars per square foot, and totals 1,105,600,000- approximately 1.1 billion when all is done and said. This is around 1.25% of egypt's governmental budget, so it's not entirely unsustainable. However, labor costs and the cost of the land may be larger. So, in my estimation, the project is feasible, however.. that's not a lot of water.
Assuming there is no evaporation, it would require 11699 years to fill the depression.
nearly all of these have been considered in decades past and the projects abandoned. by far the largest reason for abandoning the projects was the belief that over time the water would simply become too salty and then become a stagnant and dead swamp- people prefer a desert over a swamp.
The challenge here, Tomas, is to come up with the engineering proof to measure the amount of energy that would be needed to desalinate the water and the amount of energy needed to pump the salt-rich brine back to the sea, and figure out a scenario where the inflow to our inland sea is sufficient for both. Once you have that equation solved, the scenario becomes a very good hypothetical.
While reading this I came to think about elevation differences as a non-renewable natural resource: once we fill the existing depressions, we won't have any more forming probably for millions of years! Just like oil, we can exploit some elevation differences for energy, but cannot easily make more of them without huge energy costs. Unlike oil, howerver, these probably come with a negative contribution to climate change, sort of like a one-time bonus we can use in our fight while looking for more permanent solutions. Anyway, this vantage point makes me think we should be extra-careful about how we exploit these resources... we want to really get the most out of them, and we have to get it right on the first try!
I never heard of these possibilities - and why not? This is the kind of thinking we need. Of course there will be repercussions, but it seems they are manageable with the technology today. The world is so set in how things are done that opportunities like this are overlooked.
Great piece again, thank you! Could you add a column to the table listing all depressions: By how many mm would mean sea level go down if they were filled to MSL?
why only look at below sealevel? with all the renewable energy and its peak productions, one could easily imagine other projects.
- aral sea
- mega lake chad
and so on.
Qattara region can even be filled with the the flooding of the Nile which is happening on the yearly monsoon between May and August. And it would have fresh water, not from the sea. But it probably would affect to the needs of the Nile Delta, and it can have a side effect
Interesting how California is dealing with this problem: "strategic retreat" is their euphemism for pack up and move to higher ground
There was a big book decades ago on Macroengineering and the Earth. Bravura ideas, tough to carry out. I guess we'll see. My guess is the Dead Sea will be first. https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9781898563594/macro-engineering-and-the-earth
Great
This discussion shows how many opportunities exist here on earth to improve current useless areas. We know with climate change we need to counter the rising oceans. We know there will be droughts and that will lead to food insecurity. So why are we looking at Mars when there are exceptional, if expensive, solutions. Being the innovative will be winners in the future and those areas will profit all around. The Saudis know oil is on the way out, even if slowly, so why not invest in these type of projects? So much is concentrated in the Middle East! And face it. there will not be enough space travel opportunities in time to relocate enough of us so we best find solutions here at home.
you will not extract enough energy from the flow for desalinization, let alone the brine to pump back. Additionally, you cannot effectively concentrate the brine without expending more power.
I defer to my colleague, chatgpt 4.0, whose mathematical understanding(and ability to document his work) is now extremely good.
using solar, and by my estimates and with the right technology, we can evaporate the sea using the sun and dump it into the depression. We will skip all of the math. Just understand that it was done using maximum solar possible efficiency and a totally passive system that will self-clean and self-recharge every day with the tides and the sun, and work year round.
we'll assume a 50% efficiency rate and that 640 acres will ultimately be needed per meter/second of water we wish to funnel into the depression. the depression's possible water holding capacity is approximately 1.213e+12 meters of water. my estimation is that around 100 miles of coastline are truly available and have not been significantly settled. I will assume that most of the desalinization facilities will be located on a single ridgeline of at most one acre deep which is artificially constructed near the beach, to minimize the amount of energy required, and that the fresh water will be pipelined into the depression from a buried collection system. Around 4 meters/second of water will flow.
The cost of the project, ultimately, is likely to be around 10 dollars per square foot, and totals 1,105,600,000- approximately 1.1 billion when all is done and said. This is around 1.25% of egypt's governmental budget, so it's not entirely unsustainable. However, labor costs and the cost of the land may be larger. So, in my estimation, the project is feasible, however.. that's not a lot of water.
Assuming there is no evaporation, it would require 11699 years to fill the depression.
nearly all of these have been considered in decades past and the projects abandoned. by far the largest reason for abandoning the projects was the belief that over time the water would simply become too salty and then become a stagnant and dead swamp- people prefer a desert over a swamp.
The challenge here, Tomas, is to come up with the engineering proof to measure the amount of energy that would be needed to desalinate the water and the amount of energy needed to pump the salt-rich brine back to the sea, and figure out a scenario where the inflow to our inland sea is sufficient for both. Once you have that equation solved, the scenario becomes a very good hypothetical.
I have always loved the word "picayune" and it's amusing that it's such a long word for referring to "tiny" or "insignificant."
Great article, food for thought. Seems like a feasible idea, if presented to the right audience. Thank you for this.
Super intriguing. Perhaps the most unusual, innovative proposition I have read in quite a while. I shall follow this with interest................
While reading this I came to think about elevation differences as a non-renewable natural resource: once we fill the existing depressions, we won't have any more forming probably for millions of years! Just like oil, we can exploit some elevation differences for energy, but cannot easily make more of them without huge energy costs. Unlike oil, howerver, these probably come with a negative contribution to climate change, sort of like a one-time bonus we can use in our fight while looking for more permanent solutions. Anyway, this vantage point makes me think we should be extra-careful about how we exploit these resources... we want to really get the most out of them, and we have to get it right on the first try!
great article!! thanks!
This is fantastic. I wrote about some slightly similar ideas, in much less detail, about 5 years ago for IGMS.
http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=randall_hayes&article=030