Desert reclamation/terraforming

[Berra]

Another option is the Las Vegas route. That is THE case of making the desert green (or neon colored).

 

[ddtim]

i think the best option, for starters, would be this:
1. set up a solar furnace next to the quatar depression.
2. the glass and ceramics produced would be put towards building a glass roof over the depression

Let's create a vast elastic dome over the Sahara, with towers stretching the ceiling a mile high or more.

except smaller, and non elastic.
3. tunnel into the meditereanean
4. collect the water that evaporates then recondensates on the glass, and pipe it out at night to water the nearby fields/beach grass(to increase soil fertility before crops)
5. GM cows to feed on the grass, increasing soil fertility further and faster.

 

[pacifichistorian]

this was suggested in the 1970s by Gerard K O'Neill, who envisioned them being produced by a lunar colony. These satellites would, according to his research, reduce power costs to less than 1 cent. the microwave beams have been theorized to help calm down hurricanes and the like, adding another benefit. the efficiency of these beams in the lab at the time he wrote about it (1976), was about 54%.

Actually not. Gerry suggested orbital powersats (from a '68 concept by Paul Glaser IIRC), tho IIRC Gerry posed PRS network to transfer power. I'm presuming PRS first, since OPS is harder to do & harder to justify. Once PRS is in place, OPS makes a ton more sense. (BTW, IIRC the DC-DC efficience was more like 60%, but maybe I'm quibbling...)

@ph: Thread necromancy!

Sue me.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

5. GM cows to feed on the grass, increasing soil fertility further and faster.

Toyota hybrid cows give better fuel efficiency

 

[ddtim]

Toyota hybrid cows give better fuel efficiency

thank you for that Mcnugget of information.

 

[pacifichistorian]

Toyota hybrid cows give better fuel efficiency

But they're smaller, & not only that, half an hour later, you're hungry again. And you have to eat them raw. Or with horseradish. Or maybe just lots & lots of saki. (Come to think of it, that explains why you drink Scotch with haggis.)

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

Clear the desert areas of all nomadic herd grazers, and do not shoot any lions/etc that move in. The vegetation will then slowly recover naturally, in most deserts. Before Man came, most grazing animals had to move away when all the surface water dried. Man digging deep wells made a stress that the vegetation could not cope with.

 

[Alien and Sedition Bat]

Here's one ATL that might work: First, Mussolini never joins the Nazis in World War Two, stays out of the war until 1944 and then joins the Allies. This means the Italians never lose Libya. They adopt a policy of turning Libya into an integral part of Italy attracting enough Italians and European war refugees with economic incentives so that the population becomes overwhelmingly European. (This means establishing the equivalent of today's enterprise zones and industrial parks around Libya's ports and cities.) Libya becomes a Christian European country; a slice of it is given to the indigenous Arabs as a country of their own. The Italians justify this by saying that Arab pirates had raided the islands and coasts of Italy for over 1200 years looting, enslaving and killing in the name of jihad, so tough luck.

Italy gains great oil wealth from Libya and at some point decides to use that wealth to drive back the desert. People on this thread have talked about desalinization but the real keys would be (a) drip agriculture; (b) drip forestry--building belts of drout resistant trees to hold back the desert; (c) saltwater/brackish water agriculture; and (d) careful use of deep Saharan groundwater reserves to help sustain all this. Moisture nets on mountains near the coast, as mentioned by somebody above, are also a possibility (read about the forests, bushland and grasslands generated on Ascension Island's Green Mountain over the past century).

Italy also encourages Tunisia, a well-run country, to join in the process, and even helps to subsidize their efforts because Italy knows such efforts will benefit both countries. Then it's up to other nearby countries to join in if they have the will and skill to do so.

 

[Coalition]

Those nations would also greatly benefit if they get a fair share out of the energy and possibly hydrogene production. Of course, technical problems of long distance energy transfer still have to be solved...

If you have high energy supplies in one location, put your energy hungry industry in that area. I.e aluminum smelting, which uses large amounts of electricity would benefit.

For a lower cost aid, one stunt is to make it tidally based. At high tide, the salt water flows over a dam, into a holding pond. The center of the holding pond is painted black, so the salt water has a tendency to evaporate. The sides of the holding pond have light colors, and high walls to keep the cooled water from contacting the salt water.

The depth of the salt water tank would have to be calculated, so every high tide fills it with water, and by the time the next tide comes around it is ready for more. At night you'd have the employees scraping the excess salt out for final drying, and either sale to an interested bidder, or dumping into ocean currents to resalinate the ocean.

Construction would be a sealed concrete basic with two shallow trenches on either side. Plastic or glass covers would be made assembly line style, as they are all the same pattern. Extras at the end would be used to keep most of the humid air indoors.

No power necessary, just people cleaning out the salt tank every night. They'll need protection from the salt of course.

 

[Joke Insurance]

If any of the previous posters read this, I gotta ask; where did you guys get all your information from on this topic?