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Desertification. It is bad. Sands blow and drift from deserts onto arable land. It needs to stop.
About once every 6 months someone posts an idea in which giant mirrors are positioned in space to concentrate solar energy. Any of these projects could be used to stop desertification. I propose
that the white hot solar beam be played slowly across the sands, fusing them into glass. Dunes would be stabilized, and reflect even more light than they do now. This would also cut back windborne sand. Everyone wins.
Nuclear glass.
http://unitednuclear.com/trinitite.htm
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 24 2005]
[link]
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There are too many problems to list (what happens to any living creatures in the path?, what'll keep it from breaking?, etc), but I like the creativity. |
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Would be good to blind all the other planets looking at us. |
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Nice idea... But I'm with the Nuke guy...DrCurry, NUKE IT!
After all, the satellites after doing a stirling job of vetrifying the desert would eventually fall out of orbit... Where will they land? I'll tell you where... On the glass! That's where they'd land... and then it'd break... and someone might cut themselves.
Nuke it. It's the best solution. |
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This sort of scheme would also be especially effective against the giant man-eating desert ants. |
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This is stupid, how stupid can you get? And it's not funny or nice. - |
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For days the mirrors sat there.... no glass. But the intense, concentrated heat created a strong updraft. Unexpectedly, this changed the weather pattern! + |
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All you need to do, to put this idea into action, is to sign up several thousand subscribers to a satellite television service, all with their addresses in mid-desert. This will put the wheels of automated e-commerce into motion, which will cause the purchase, launch and deployment of a series of satellites aiming their radiation in a footprint at the sand-drifts. Given a short time, the transmitted radiation will do the job. |
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[Murdoch]You could make one serious plasma display with it! That's why it's better... It'd be big enough to be be viewed from space... then you could see it on google earth! |
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So, we're dropping nukes for safety, now? |
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Well, if it's for the public good... |
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So, I'm watching the Discover channel running series on planet Earth the other day, and the following statement, "As the Indian subcontinent moved northward into the south of Asia, its tectonic pressures raised the Himalaya mountains. Warm, moist air rose up these steep mountain slopes and was stripped of water vapor which produced rains or ice depending on temperature. A side effect of this air flow was the westerly flowing stream of dry air which settled thousands of miles to the west into northern Africa, beginning the desertification of the region which persists to this day." |
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Now, it occurs to me we have more than enough nukes to change the topology of Nepal, Tibet, and eastern India. Enlist the Chinese and there may be enough energy to reverse the Gobi desertification as well. |
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How about: Use mirrors to focus energy to Stirling Engines? The next big thing in energy: http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ |
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I think glassification could be accomplisheh better via a ground-based system: A large sand rover which heats the sand until it melts, and then cools the sand and tranfers the heat to the front: |
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<-Front --- Back->
HHHHHHCCCCCC |
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The tires would have to be huge, and far away from the hot part. The machine would move purty slow too, but all in all have less waste heat produced than space mirrors. |
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As regards nukes fusing the desert - I wonder if there are a few acres of fused desert at the test sites in Nevada? |
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If so, it would provide a venue to test another idea: Glass Skates. |
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Fishbone. The desert is an ecosystem all its own. In fact the desert is an ocean, with its life underground. Once you've been through the desert (on a horse with no name) you will understand. |
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[bungston] link.
Looks like nuclear glass isn't a smooth surface. |
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How so goes the depth of the fusion? I've me doubts on the ? |
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