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I don't know if it is doable but here it goes,
a world wide water system to transport water from areas
where there is an abundance of water to areas where
there
is too little
by doing this, one has a system by which one can, to
some
extent, alter vegetation world wide
by altering vegetation
world wide, one could alter the
evaporation and the weather
patterns
by altering the weather patterns, one could, possibly
come
to more rainfall and a better distribution of rain fall
etc.
so the effect might be cummulative, if more rain fall is
produced,even more water can be transported,even
more vegetation can arise, even more rain fall might be
produced and so on ?
and if it could be possible, which I do not know at all,
one could also thereby, increase carbon storage by
increasing vegetation
[link]
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It might require less plumbing to go off-shore to collect rainwater for on-shore use. With something like 70% of the planet covered by ocean, that's a lot of area getting rained upon wastefully! |
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[Kansan101] You seem to have made a couple of logical fallacies there. You assert (ipse dixit) that //alternative energy systems could take up the slack// (which) //is impossible without drastic declines in living standards//; you assume that it is *therefore* a bad idea to avoid burning fossil fuels - but that is also what you wish to prove (petitio principii). |
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(For the record, I think it might do more good than harm to decrease the standard of living (in the economic sense) in the western world, even leaving aside the issue of climate change. So, I disagree with your conclusion - but that is a separate issue from the question of whether your argument is reasoned) |
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//They are all met with horror by environmental groups.// Again, are they really? Do you have a link? |
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There _are_ plenty of environmental nuts, but it's not fair to generalise. |
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I'm not sure what you mean, [bellauk65]. |
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[Kansan101] seems to be implying that we must not stop using fossil fuels because doing so would cause a drastic decline in standard of living. I'm suggesting that that argument is not rigorous. |
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I'm also saying that, in my opinion, the answer to:
Q: Are we consuming:
(A) Not enough stuff,
(B) Just the right amount of stuff, or
(C) Too much stuff?
is not necessarily (A), or even (B). |
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One of the simpler "geoengineering" schemes that has been proposed is simply to paint all (or nearly all) rooftops white. Logically, all roads should be make white, too, and there are some obvious exceptions like greenhouse roofs. |
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I don't know of any environmentalists that oppose that plan. |
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They certainly oppose building new roofs and roads. and I'm sure some advocate destroying many existing roofs and roads, allowing land to be reclaimed by Nature... but I've not encountered opposition from them regarding slightly increasing the overall albedo of the Earth by making white as much human-constructed surface area as possible. |
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I'm rather vehemently opposed to pretty well the entire current petroleum industry from extraction (fracking which wrecks the local environment) through refining (which they don't do here which is economically ridiculous) through usage (lookit, either make sure there's enough foliage around to suck up the CO2 or remove the C before using the H as fuel), but frankly fossil-fuels are simply an energy bonus to the human race. |
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Perhaps it's worth remembering that environmentalism is an ideology, and will naturally present extreme views. |
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One could equally complain, for example, that "Any effort to regulate any aspect of the economy is bound to be torpedoed by lassez-fair economists." Duh! |
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The difficult, middle path to follow is to ask the hard questions (What is the expected result of X? Can we do anything to change X? Should we even try to change X?) without getting bogged down in any ideology. |
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(X = burn all the readily available fossil fuels, go back to the caves, use chlorofluorocarbons, etc.) |
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Boy howdy, this idea got the old tar and feathers job. Can we run it out of town on a rail, or is it bad enough to be drawn and quartered. I think that hubris, rather than malice, is the downfall of most human ambition. |
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[-] Not that I have anything against moving water around in a responsible fashion but, I reiterate: |
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Most fresh water is cycle-locked, ie: removing it locally removes it from the local precipitation pattern, ie: it isn't actually renewable. |
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The water level in the Great Lakes has dropped several metres in the last decade or so due to Lake Huron being diverted to be constantly flushing out the giant toilet known as "Detroit" through Lake St Clair. |
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The only system which won't notice freshwater missing is the one based on salt water, ie: precipitation from the ocean which would otherwise end up back in the ocean. |
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In other words, the polar ice caps or from coastal mountain ranges. |
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//cycle locked// shot myself in the foot there: I read some reports which made sense, but didn't like the terminology they used: "cycle locked" sounded more appropriate... but since I can't remember their terminology I can't dig it up for you. Long story short the only extra water a continent receives is precipitation from ocean-based evaporation. |
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There's a very picturesque "pot hole" (I'm not sure what they call them) in Aus; pictures taken about a hundred years ago there's people boating in it, but due to overusage of the local ground water, these days theres no surface water at all. When I get a minute I'll try to find the pictures; very picturesque: a rather famous tourist spot. |
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Re: the Great Lakes, basically the St Clair River gets too deeply dredged, in order to handle large-freighter traffic, and too much water comes pouring out. |
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Your graph from '94 to present shows a gross 2m drop in Superior and Huron/Michigan, an average of a little over a metre. Expanding it (neat!), shows an atypical average 1m drop in the last few decades but, yes, it does look constant if you go back to 1918, so I should do a bit more research to bolster my argument in that respect. (Lakes Erie and Ontario are fed from the other lakes so they don't really count) |
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In the meantime people on the shores of L.Michigan are bitching because their "lakeside cottage" isn't so lakeside anymore; I saw a news story recently where old shipwrecks are starting to (effectively) surface. |
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