A Straight Forward (Albeit Rather Expensive) Solution To Any Future Big Sea Level Rises ?

[motch]

With various views on sea level rises in the future, could countries just dam masses volumes of water on land, or create huge artifical lakes to compensate any possible huge ice melts on land on Greenland and Antartica especially as they occur ?

Countries and continents like Canada, USA, Russia, Africa, Australia for instance would make ideal hosts. Make existing lakes wider and flood certain areas.

At the same time extracting the salt from the sea water to make fresh water perhaps.

and making more use of the extra hydro-electric that could be created somehow.

Seems a very far fetched crazy idea at first, but then looking at some of the chinese projects where they're just trying to transport water from south to north China at a cost of around $60 billion and god knows how much concrete - it's not out of the question ?

looking at the chinese picture below it's not the way it would be achieved, but just shows you how much of a project can be done with the right amount of money and motivation. the chinese project is about a 1000 miles long!

Edited May 25, 2013 by motch

[porca misèria]

Nope, you have a complete mismatch of scale.

Flooding deserts could be an interesting sci-fi idea. Becomes really useful if life forms (starting with algae) could be bioengineered (taking genetic modification to a whole new level) to grow in the saturated salt solution it would rapidly become as the water evaporates off, and create an ecosystem. But to think it could prevent sea level rise is like ... crossing your legs to avoid contributing a puddle.

As for the boreal forests (Russia, Canada, Scandinavia), they're already saturated. Around this time of year as the ice melt is in full flow, you see mile after mile of apparently-flooded forest. Serious sea level rise would be associated with Greenland and/or substantial chunks of Antarctica becoming gradually like that.

[Stainless Sam]

It would be cheaper to carve big chunks of the ice cap off with a f3ck-off Dr Evil laser and drag them to the moon with an anti-gravity space ship.

Even better, we could just lower the Tibetan plateu by 15000 feet or so and pile it high with ice before it melts and runs into the sea.

There's a reason why existing lakes are where they are - they are lower down than where the water starts off from.

Maybe the idea will get traction in government. After all, the last competent scientist in cabinet was Thatcher and she was only a chemist. Hydrology would have been a stretch for her. This current crop couldn't run a bath, let alone deal with climate change.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Stainless Sam

[Tired of Waiting]

With various views on sea level rises in the future, could countries just dam masses volumes of water on land, (...)

Interesting idea.

And you won't even need to dam it if you use geographical depressions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_on_land_with_elevations_below_sea_level

Though I have no idea of the comparative scale of these factors. The sea is huge. Supposing its surface area is just 1000 times bigger than the depressions' area (and I guess it's more than 1,000 bigger), you would need to fill the depressions with water 1000m high to lower the sea by just 1m.

The problem is that depressions are not near this deep. Supposing the average depression depth is 100m (and I guess the average is even less than that) then filling them all up would lower sea level by just 10cm, or 4 inches.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Tired of Waiting

[R K]

or just move.

like humans have done for the last 10,000 years.

out of London for instance

[Dorkins]

Even better, we could just lower the Tibetan plateu by 15000 feet or so and pile it high with ice before it melts and runs into the sea.

It definitely seems like it would be easier to store the unwanted water as ice. Surround Antarctica with nuclear-powered desalination plants and pump the water into the centre of the continent where it would be frozen for storage. Antarctica is 14 million sq km to Greenland's 2 million, so you could presumably undo the melting of the Greenland ice cap that way at least.

[thecrashingisles]

Just build a load of Titanics for people to live on. At least there'd be fewer icebergs to worry about.

[The Masked Tulip]

Why not just find a very thristy person and give him him/her a straw?

[Executive Sadman]

Ive thought about this before, but more big lakes up in siberia to keep all that weight near the north pole and preserve earths orbit!

Dont really think its all that important though.

[porca misèria]

Why not just find a very thristy person and give him him/her a straw?

Thor had a jolly good try. Drank so much he created the tides.

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

The concept is valid... huge dams.

The problem is if you could convince the owners of the land to allow you to submerge their land, if you stored enough water you would risk creating unwanted side effects... especially unwanted tectonic side effects... you would be changing the weight/balance of a tectonic plate.

[motch]

The concept is valid... huge dams.

The problem is if you could convince the owners of the land to allow you to submerge their land, if you stored enough water you would risk creating unwanted side effects... especially unwanted tectonic side effects... you would be changing the weight/balance of a tectonic plate.

I didn't think much about the tectonic side effects, massive amount of weight added and possible cracks and collapses

just did a rough calculation and to lower the sea level by each 1m would need this much extra water to be stored onland (approx)

361132000000000 metres squared. I'm guessing thats quite a few extra loch ness size areas!

[motch]

Nope, you have a complete mismatch of scale.

Flooding deserts could be an interesting sci-fi idea. Becomes really useful if life forms (starting with algae) could be bioengineered (taking genetic modification to a whole new level) to grow in the saturated salt solution it would rapidly become as the water evaporates off, and create an ecosystem. But to think it could prevent sea level rise is like ... crossing your legs to avoid contributing a puddle.

As for the boreal forests (Russia, Canada, Scandinavia), they're already saturated. Around this time of year as the ice melt is in full flow, you see mile after mile of apparently-flooded forest. Serious sea level rise would be associated with Greenland and/or substantial chunks of Antarctica becoming gradually like that.

Yes you are right.

I was going to sugest a huge wall/dam around Greenland, thinking the ice caps might be a 100 metres or so average depth. Then i googled it and it's over 2km thick on average, I think i'll withdraw that idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet

[frank rizzo]

I say let it all melt and be done with us, we'd only ****** it up even more anyway.

[interestrateripoff]

Why not just build a big freezer unit at both poles to stop them from melting? You could build a huge solar farm at each pole?

[motch]

Why not just build a big freezer unit at both poles to stop them from melting? You could build a huge solar farm at each pole?

I think Polar Bears are a protected species, however I think polar burgers would taste nice

[DeepLurker]

I agree with the poster who said there's a mismatch of scale.

Some back-of-a-fag-packet calculation: the seas cover around 70% of the surface of the earth; let's say two thirds, to make things easier.

Imagine that the sea levels go up by a meter - we will assume that the areas covered by the sea stays the same, i.e. no new lands flooded.

So anyway, the sea goes up by a meter - if you want to drain all that away and put it on land, you'd end up with every bit of land across the globe covered by two meters of water. That's all the plains, the forests, the deserts, the mountains. Everything.

You could re-arrange some of this water into deep dams - but how many dams would you need? Imagine a Three Gorges in every county, and you might be starting to get there.

So I'm afraid interesting blue-sky thinking, but not practical

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

just did a rough calculation and to lower the sea level by each 1m would need this much extra water to be stored onland (approx) 361132000000000 metres squared.

1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 ton.

You could re-arrange some of this water into deep dams - but how many dams would you need? Imagine a Three Gorges in every county, and you might be starting to get there.

So I'm afraid interesting blue-sky thinking, but not practical

So it's not technically impossible, it's just the human race is too big a jerk to work together and do it. A huge canal network criss-crossing Africa could provide water to irrigate the desert, generate free electricity etc etc but it would require 2 things: The west to give a crap about Africa, and the people in Africa to stop cutting each other up with machetes.

[tinker]

Can't we evaporate it? Rain will fall more spread out.

Anyway, I'm sure Mother Nature will take care of it. In the scheme of the planet we are inconsequential.

[fluffy666]

Anyway, I'm sure Mother Nature will take care of it. In the scheme of the planet we are inconsequential.

Well, yes.. Mother Nature is quite happy with epicontinental seas

Quote:

As a result of higher sea levels during the Late Cretaceous, marine waters inundated the continents, creating relatively shallow epicontinental seas in North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Australia. In addition, all continents shrank somewhat as their margins flooded. At its maximum, land covered only about 18 percent of the Earth’s surface, compared with approximately 2[8 percent nowadays]

Here's the fun bit: Imagine we did create vast artificial lakes in the various deserts. That would increase humidity in those areas and reduce the albedo, thus causing overall warming..

[Nationalist]

We could just build a circular dam around the entire British Isles, including the island of Ireland. Then the world sea level could rise but we would just pump out the rain that fell on us.

[fluffy666]

We could just build a circular dam around the entire British Isles, including the island of Ireland. Then the world sea level could rise but we would just pump out the rain that fell on us.

Of course, if we didn't pump, then given the amount it seems to rain around here, we'd have a monopoly on water in a couple of months..

Admittedly we'd have to raise all our houses up several hundred kilometers on stilts, and there would be a bit of whining from the green faction, but quite frankly when did we ever listen to them?

[Nationalist]

Once we had a circular dam we could even pump out all the sea and re-expose Doggerland for the first time in 10,000 years. It seems like quite an interesting place...

[debtlessmanc]

We could just build a circular dam around the entire British Isles, including the island of Ireland. Then the world sea level could rise but we would just pump out the rain that fell on us.

When I used to talk to Dutch people about global warming, they would claim they are in the best position as they already have dykes...

Actually it appears some uk politicians have thought about this!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1521210/Redwoods-150000-homes-on-Thames.html

One solution to the countries overcrowding, build see wall to cut off the wash, pump it out and build a new city....