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icecap sewers
drain the antarctic meltwaters to reduce the flow of ice streams | |
As glaciers and ice caps melt the water sinks and lubricates the bottom of the icesheet. This allows it to flow. In Antartica there are particularly 'fast' moving ice sheets called icestreams.
If we could stop these streams, maybe we could prevent or even reverse the decline in the antarctic ice sheets.
I
suggest we create a vast system of sewers somewhat upstream from these flows. This would drain the water (from the last say 20 miles) of the ice stream. this edge would have less lubrication and hopefully stop moving, so damning the stream and
reducing the formation of icebergs.
This would allow us to control world sea-levels.
This would be a vast engineering project but hopefully it would only be an edge we would have to drain.
Cosmic Background Refrigeration
Cosmic_20Background_20Refrigeration
for use with the suggested alternative in my anno [BunsenHoneydew, Feb 09 2007]
Mama Nature Beat you to it!
http://www.livescie...ntarctic_lakes.html
Antarctica Hides Surprising Underground Plumbing System [Galbinus_Caeli, Feb 15 2007]
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And where are you draining the water to? |
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The sewer would drain to the sea.
I imagine a pretty large tunnel. |
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So the water that you are trying to keep out of the sea ends up in the sea? I don't get it. Also aren't the last few dozen kilometers of those ice shelves resting on bedrock that is below sea level? |
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//So the water that you are trying to keep
out of the sea ends up in the sea?// I
think the idea was to drain away the small
amount of meltwater that is lubricating the
ice-sheet-flow, thereby slowing down the
movement of the large bulk of ice.
Whether this makes sense or not, I have no
idea. |
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I dunno if it would really work, but it could be done by just buldozing channels along the top of the ice and lining them with plastic sheet. Once you got the meltwater to the top of the ice, that is. |
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It's a good idea, guys, as the surface run-off water is falling down cracks in the ice and either freezing and expanding, which forms more cracks, or lubricating the bottom of the glaciers. Taking water off the top to the sea would actually decrease the amount of ice falling into the sea. |
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Maybe they could cover the top of those glaciers with something with a really high albedo and try to reflect all the solar energy back into space. |
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What's the albedo of an average glacier?
Presumably near 1 if it's snow-covered,
but maybe less if it's grubby? |
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Perhaps I'm missing something, how would surface channels work? |
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Wouldn't they need to be over the whole feeding melt area as opposed to across a line that all this meltwater crosses on its way back to the sea? |
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I imagined a row of sink holes horizontal to the ice stream at the bottom of the glacier feeding into (a) massive tunnel/s. |
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I suppose we should put a hydroelectric plant at the end as well really. Only it might be pointless, as there is no-one or nothing near enough to use it. |
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It's also pointless, because the ice/rock interface is below sea level to start with. So there's no height difference to your advantage that you could extract energy from; on the contrary, it will cost you energy to pump it out to sea. |
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A couple of nice, warm fission reactors should do the trick. |
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Also, at least as far as I understand it, the liquid water at the interface is caused by geological heat trapped under the said kilometers of ice, not trickling liquid water from the surface which somehow escapes freezing on its way down. That said, it should be possible (with the aforementioned massive engineering) to drain that liquid. |
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Only problem being that as you do, the ice above it will sink down onto the rock, and melt, and you'll have to pump that out, which means you're effectively melting the glacier faster and filling the oceans with it. Bad, bad, bad. |
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Better to drill down from the surface of the ice and install a massive refrigeration loop - refreeze the liquid layer in place, and dump the geological heat above the glacier (maybe into space [link] ). You'd need a refrigerant that stays liquid at well below the core temperature of the ice sheet and/or a very well insulated return loop so you don't end up heating the whole glacier through. But these are mere engineering problems, and nothing to deter the determined halfbaker. |
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