Turn deserts green, feed hungry people and combat climate change!

[DennisTate]

A surprising number of my Christian friends regard the ideas about climate change as a socialist conspiracy to take away their freedom to drive their cars.

I say that combatting climate change may be the perfect excuse to turn the world’s poorest one billion people in to a market for food that has been produced in the desert through both aquaculture as well as agriculture powered by improved methods of desalination.

If world oceans rise by one meter over one hundred million people will be forced out of their homes. The Maldive Islands would be gone and virtually the entire nation of Bangledesh would be uninhabitable. I posted the following comments to the Gates Foundation official group. I would greatly appreciate your prayers, comments and criticism. Since Bill and Melinda Gates plan to spend something like $24 billion to make the world a better place I certainly would not want to give them bad advice!

Topic: Improve Aquaculture

facebook.com/topic.php?topic=15192&uid=164385420820#/topic.php?uid=11309713071&topic=13786

There is a biologist in New Mexico named Carl Cantrell who advocates that we can directly combat climate change by initiating a massive program of desalination of ocean water and pumping it to the ridges in North Africa so that we turn more of the Sahara Desert green.

His theory makes a lot of sense.

1. China has had great success at turning deserts areas green by planting and irrigating some species of bamboo. Bamboo often grows a root system for five years before beginning to shoot up above ground at an astounding rate. Obviously lots of vegetation or trees or bamboo in North Africa will create a significant CARBON SINK.

1. Biologist Cantrell has stated that the bulk of the heat going into the atmosphere is coming from the world’s top five deserts. He stated that satellite images in infrared show that the deserts radiate far more heat into the atmosphere than our cities do. His idea is that by turning deserts green we would directly reduce the amount of heat going into the atmosphere. I believe that he is correct in this assertion.

1. It is theoreticallly possible to pump salt water to a large aquaculture facility on or near a ridge in North Africa, produce fish through aquaculture, then desalinate the salt water by solar energy. Every cubic meter of H2O added to the water table of North Africa or the Middle East will NOT be ON TOP OF Holland, or the State of Florida or the city of New Orleans in the event that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to collapse!

1. There are one billion hungry people on this earth. If monetary policy is altered so that they could purchase fish or food grown in the world’s desert areas, then if a billion hungry people were to purchase a thousand dollars worth of groceries, this would mean that ONE TRILLION dollars had just been directed into combating climate change!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Speculative, of course. But while we’re doing it, I have sometimes wondered why at least some water from the Mississippi basin is not pumped into huge pipelines to do the same thing in our own southwestern deserts. After all, there are very large petroleum and gas pipelines from Texas and Oklahoma into the upper midwest. The whole Miss basin carries an enormous amount of surplus water in the spring months. Could be stored out west in huge lakes. Now, if slatted solar panels were also set up there, some amount of electricity could be produced, and crops could be grown right under them.

Probable answer why nobody proposes it: Not cost effective. I suspect the desalination of ocean water to irrigate North Africa is even less cost effective.

But if Bill Gates wants to spend his billions on it, it’s fine with me, so long as he doesn’t try to make me pay for it as well.

 

[edwest2]

Climate change? Really? How do we know we’re not just going through a normal climate cycle? Greening deserts has been tried before with limited success. The surrounding land/sand and average air temperature means a lot of evaporation.

Desalinization is a great idea but what happens to the salt?

Peace,
Ed

 

[Southern_Cross]

A surprising number of my Christian friends regard the ideas about climate change as a socialist conspiracy to take away their freedom to drive their cars.

I say that combatting climate change may be the perfect excuse to turn the world’s poorest one billion people in to a market for food that has been produced in the desert through both aquaculture as well as agriculture powered by improved methods of desalination.

If world oceans rise by one meter over one hundred million people will be forced out of their homes. The Maldive Islands would be gone and virtually the entire nation of Bangledesh would be uninhabitable. I posted the following comments to the Gates Foundation official group. I would greatly appreciate your prayers, comments and criticism. Since Bill and Melinda Gates plan to spend something like $24 billion to make the world a better place I certainly would not want to give them bad advice!

Topic: Improve Aquaculture

facebook.com/topic.php?topic=15192&uid=164385420820#/topic.php?uid=11309713071&topic=13786

Today there are more obese people in the world than those starving.

news-medical.net/news/2006/09/04/19792.aspx

So here’s an idea…instead of investing valuable resources into optimistic and ultimately unsound projects like “greening deserts”; those who are selfishly consuming the world’s food resources at an unsustainable level for their own gratification could instead adopt a social conscience.

The world is not overpopulated! There is enough food! We just need to be humane in deciding on its proper distribution.

 

[kimmielittle]

Today there are more obese people in the world than those starving.

news-medical.net/news/2006/09/04/19792.aspx

So here’s an idea…instead of investing valuable resources into optimistic and ultimately unsound projects like “greening deserts”; those who are selfishly consuming the world’s food resources at an unsustainable level for their own gratification could instead adopt a social conscience.

But…we do not know what causes all cases of obesity…many have thyroid dysfunction. To blame over indulgence IMHO, is akin to blaming C02 emissions…also a speculated subjective theory with no concrete evidence.

I hope this helps

 

[YourAverageJoe]

Today there are more obese people in the world than those starving.

news-medical.net/news/2006/09/04/19792.aspx

So here’s an idea…instead of investing valuable resources into optimistic and ultimately unsound projects like “greening deserts”; those who are selfishly consuming the world’s food resources at an unsustainable level for their own gratification could instead adopt a social conscience.

The world is not overpopulated! There is enough food! We just need to be humane in deciding on its proper distribution.

Agreed 100%. You can not farm on desert sand. Its impossible! However there remians much untapped farmland in the world, ie Iraq (some areas between the rivers are very fertile), Mexico, Argentina, etc… These places just need the infrastructure (damns and irrigation) and capital (farm Machinery) and of course training. My economics proffessor also owns a large farm here in Californias Central Valley. He indicates that becuase of technology, crops per acre have increased 2-3% every year, since 1920. This due to better machinery, fertilizers, soil treatments, that allow for example more tomatoes to grow on a single plant than normally. Farm output has always exceeded population growth here in the San Joaquin Valley. The problem is that goverment takes available farmland away…or refuses to give allocated water to farm such lands… Such is the case now in the San Joaquin Valley, where water is redistributed away from farms and into the San Joaquin/Sacramento river deltas to save a 2 inch fish…

 

[kimmielittle]

Agreed 100%. You can not farm on desert sand. Its impossible! However there remians much untapped farmland in the world, ie Iraq (some areas between the rivers are very fertile), Mexico, Argentina, etc… These places just need the infrastructure (damns and irrigation) and capital (farm Machinery) and of course training. My economics proffessor also owns a large farm here in Californias Central Valley. He indicates that becuase of technology, crops per acre have increased 2-3% every year, since 1920. This due to better machiner, fertilizers, that allow for example more tomatoes to grow on a single plant than normally. Farm output has always exceeded population growth here in the San Joaquin Valley. The problem is that goverment takes available farmland away…or refuses to give allocated water to farm such lands… Such is the case now in the San Joaquin Valley, where water is redistributed away from farms and into the San Joaquin/Sacramento river deltas to save a 2 inch fish…

IMHO Government extreme regulations stifle solutions

 

[Southern_Cross]

Agreed 100%. You can not farm on desert sand. Its impossible! However there remians much untapped farmland in the world, ie Iraq (some areas between the rivers are very fertile), Mexico, Argentina, etc… These places just need the infrastructure (damns and irrigation) and capital (farm Machinery) and of course training. My economics proffessor also owns a large farm here in Californias Central Valley. He indicates that becuase of technology, crops per acre have increased 2-3% every year, since 1920. This due to better machinery, fertilizers, soil treatments, that allow for example more tomatoes to grow on a single plant than normally. Farm output has always exceeded population growth here in the San Joaquin Valley. The problem is that goverment takes available farmland away…or refuses to give allocated water to farm such lands… Such is the case now in the San Joaquin Valley, where water is redistributed away from farms and into the San Joaquin/Sacramento river deltas to save a 2 inch fish…

Absolutely! The irrigation of Israel after Jewish settlement is a great example.

Its interesting…here is Australia it has always been thought that with a little investment the North of the country could be irrigated and farmed. A recent report has shown that significant agriculture would be impossible due to the irregularity of rainfall (i.e. heavy rain in the wet season only) Unfortunately I think this might also be the case in many of the places you mention.

 

[Southern_Cross]

But…we do not know what causes all cases of obesity…many have thyroid dysfunction. To blame over indulgence IMHO, is akin to blaming C02 emissions…also a speculated subjective theory with no concrete evidence.

I hope this helps

I agree with you; there are indeed other causes of obesity. But if we are honest with ourselves we will see that the vast majority of obesity cases are caused by over consumption, pure and simple.

 

[DennisTate]

Climate change? Really? How do we know we’re not just going through a normal climate cycle? Greening deserts has been tried before with limited success. The surrounding land/sand and average air temperature means a lot of evaporation.

Desalinization is a great idea but what happens to the salt?

Peace,
Ed

Good point, yes high levels of evaporation present us with a major obsticle.

On the other hand the possible consequences of ocean level rise are so terrible that we do need to talk more about this option.

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday_2 .html

The complete melting of Greenland would raise sea levels by 7 meters (23 feet). But even a partial melting would cause a one-meter (three-foot) rise. Such a rise would have a devastating impact on low-lying island countries, such as the Indian Ocean’s Maldives, which would be entirely submerged.

Densely populated areas like the Nile Delta and parts of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable, potentially driving hundreds of millions of people from their land.

A one-meter sea level rise would wreak particular havoc on the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard of the United States.

“No one will be free from this,” said Overpeck, whose maps show that every U.S. East Coast city from Boston to Miami would be swamped. A one-meter sea rise in New Orleans, Overpeck said, would mean “no more Mardi Gras.”

 

[edwest2]

There is enough food but the US government pays farmers billions to grow nothing. Look up farm subsidies. It’s designed to keep prices at a certain level – too much corn, for example, on the market and prices go down.

I don’t want to sound negative, but if all the surplus grain was made available, who would pay for shipping and final delivery? You could fill a tanker with grain, dock at an African port, unload and then truck it to the interior. Note that I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, it’s just that the logistics of such an operation are rarely brought up. The US does ship some grain to other countries as Foreign Aid.

Peace,
Ed

 

[DennisTate]

There is enough food but the US government pays farmers billions to grow nothing. Look up farm subsidies. It’s designed to keep prices at a certain level – too much corn, for example, on the market and prices go down.

…
Peace,
Ed

Yes Ed, I do agree that the problem of world hunger can be traced in part to seriously flawed economic policies. Back in 2006 I did my best to explain some of our alternatives in economics in my provicial level campaign as an independent.

bankingsystemflaws.blogspot.com/

When well trained workers have high quality technology to work with then the total of all wages and benefits paid out to employees is only a fraction of the retail value of the products they produce. As a result of this fact the only way to move products out of warehouses is to extend higher and higher levels of credit. One problem with an abundance of red ink is that compound interest on all this government, business and personal debt over a period of decades will grow to astronomical levels. At this time there is approximately TEN TIMES as much debt in Canada as there is money. A simple explanation for how this happened can be seen here:
michaeljournal.org/plenty34.htm
In my opinion this rather simple mathematical problem is perhaps the number one cause of inflation in the Canadian economy over the past three decades. This is also perhaps the number one reason why our costs of production are so high and Canadian products cannot compete on the world markets as well as they could under better conditions.

From 1940 to 1970 the Government of Canada put roughly half of the total money supply into the economy through loans issued through the federally owned Bank of Canada. Provincial and municipal governments could borrow the money to build roads, schools, hospitals and sewage treatment facilities at zero or one percent interest. In 1970 we changed our system and since that time a higher and higher percentage of all government debt is financed through loans issued through privately owned banks. At this time it is ninety eight percent. This policy may be great for our banking sector but it was estimated that in the one year of 1995 alone our federal government could have saved roughly SIXTY FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments if we had gone back to creating half the total money supply through these low interest rate loans issued through the bank that is OWNED BY ALL CANADIANS.

Considering that our deficit was approximately thirty billion dollars for that year, simply by changing back to an already proven monetary and banking system, we could theoretically have had a FEDERAL BUDGET SURPLUS OF THIRTY FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in 1995.

The massive cutbacks in the Canadian military, in health care, highway construction, social programs and education were profoundly affected by these accounting practices?

 

[edwest2]

Good point, yes high levels of evaporation present us with a major obsticle.

On the other hand the possible consequences of ocean level rise are so terrible that we do need to talk more about this option.

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday_2 .html

The wealthy. The billionaires, will not allow their beachfront property to sink into the ocean. Whatever action will be taken is mostly out of our hands. I don’t need to think how terrible something might be when options and choices will be made by others who will also attempt to turn a profit by doing so.

Already, there is a plan to orbit satellites like massive umbrellas that will shield parts of the earth from the sun. Perhaps they can park a dozen or so above Greenland and Antarctica. However, air circulation is so complex that they run the risk of upsetting other things. Even with sophisticated equipment and computer analysis, there are still aspects of the weather that are poorly understood.

Peace,
Ed

 

[DennisTate]

…

Desalinization is a great idea but what happens to the salt?

Peace,
Ed

The Mediterranean is rather polluted but if our desalination facility was on the Atlantic sea salt is an excellent source of trace minerals. A Dr. Joel Wallach has commented that in the various communities worldwide where tremendous longevity is reported it seems that the people are getting fifty to seventy trace minerals in their diet.

In villages in Loja, Ecuador they are taking regular dips in hot and/or cold water springs where the water is reddish with many trace minerals.

It would be great if we created a glut on the market of the much healthier sea salt.

 

[kimmielittle]

Good point, yes high levels of evaporation present us with a major obsticle.

On the other hand the possible consequences of ocean level rise are so terrible that we do need to talk more about this option.

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday_2 .html

Hiyas

There are many scientists who debunk this theory

**Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears **
Posted By Marc Morano – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov 9:55 AM ET
Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions. The AP article also has been accused of mischaracterizing the views of a leading skeptic of man-made global warming fears. The scientists are dismissing the AP article, entitled “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History” (LINK) as a “scare tactic,” “sheer speculation,” and “hype of the worst order.” (H/T: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org - LINK)
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer ridiculed the AP article.
“Rarely have I read such a collection of unsubstantiated and scare-mongering twaddle. Not only do real studies show no increase to rate of sea level change, the [AP] article gives reasons for concern that are nonsense,” Courtney told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23.
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand slammed the article as well:

epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=37cd65f0-802a-23ad-4a69-5a1509a4a551

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....ecord_id=37cd65f0-802a-23ad-4a69-5a1509a4a551

 

[edwest2]

Yes Ed, I do agree that the problem of world hunger can be traced in part to seriously flawed economic policies. Back in 2006 I did my best to explain some of our alternatives in economics in my provicial level campaign as an independent.

bankingsystemflaws.blogspot.com/

Well. The people who hold the money are running the show. Look at the present Global economic downturn. The blame should be on Wall Street. The same people with “unique skills” got Christmas bonuses. I don’t begrudge anyone a bonus, but “unique skills?” Like what? Performing brain surgery while writing a Credit Default Swap? Do you see the sense of people making money if they can bet that a particular commodity will fall in price?

It is not too hard to imagine rooms full of people cooking up schemes to frighten people into giving up even more money. Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing? The part of the equation missing from most economic lessons is this: For some, there is no such thing as too much money. Followed by: We’re wealthy now but we’ll make even more by fraudulent means.

Credit led to the first Great Depression in the US and it meant the death of Lehman Brothers who owed (if I recall correctly) $27.00 for every actual dollar they held. Imagine their surprise, and mine, when they reacted to the sudden (???) realization that they were so “exposed.”

Peace,
Ed

 

[kimmielittle]

I have a question; Why can’t we use the ocean to turn electric turbines?

 

[Southern_Cross]

I have a question; Why can’t we use the ocean to turn electric turbines?

We can.

Here in Perth Western Australia a series of tidal generators are up and running, with enhancements its said they could power the city (more than 2 million people)

 

[kimmielittle]

We can.

Here in Perth Western Australia a series of tidal generators are up and running, with enhancements its said they could power the city (more than 2 million people)

Now, that’s GOOD news

 

[stringbeanduck]

I picked the first option. I don’t believe in the Climate Change being scattered throughout the media, but I believe it would be a good idea to devout more time areas that are commonly in droughts.