Keeping Earth warm while lowering sea levels

MarsDog · 2006-01-18 14:00:10

I doubt that someone will agree to be touched the earth itself, but why not to implement such scheme on closer orbitin to the primary worlds - alike Venus, Mercury, etc...

Near term results could be achieved.
100 cubic kilometers - 4.6 km per side (24 cubic miles - 2.9 miles per side) stored is 0.26 mm of sea level change.

Nothing complicated, a large spike of cold ice,
elevated several km above present, letting gravity do the rest.
Scouring the bottom continental crust, over decades or centuries.

With world population increasing, it will become profitable to increase land area.

karov · 2006-01-19 06:19:20

Absolutely - near term results could be achieved. It is not necessary to freeze antarctica completely, just initially enough to counteract the global warming sea level rise. Later we could decide to store more ice there and to decrease the sea levels gradually over decade or centuries in order to open mre and more sea bottom for habitation.

Finally Antarctica could be shaped as large "spike" ( indeed very non-sharp spike - several thousands of km in diamater, and with elevation from seveal hundred meters at the rim to seveal dozens of km at the centre, and yes - this cryogenically stiffened ice shall contineau to flow ablating the flattened solid rocks underneath, but "vented" in enough degree to stay with the world water distribution huge pipe system...) of packed in active cloth ice. The eccess of salt also could be stored in packaged "cubes" in the ice in order the remaining 2/3 liquid hydrosphere to not become with greater than the tolerable by the existing biomes salinity. These salt cubes within the ice, could be "mined" before storage stripped from everithing usefull - boron, uranium, gold, magnesium... enough energy from the antarctic collector to do so... From ecological means w could leave ofcourse the rim of the antarctica in natural state - to house the arctic and antrctic ecosystems intact... and to super-freeze and cover only the interior 100-500 km inwards to the south pole...

Thanks for the data for the ice volume to decrease of the depth ratio. What you give means that storing 1/3th of the earths hydrosphere ( 0.5x10exp9 km3) under the "wellstone" will make shallower the world ocean with 1 300 000 mm or with 1.3 kilometers!!!

For visualisation - We need also to store 5 000 000 such cubes of 4.6 km dimension per side of 100 km3 each + the exising now southern ice cup. One level of such cubes means about 100 000 000 km2 of coverage - inacceptablee, but if we put them one over another, 3 stories - ~ 33 mln km2, 4 - 25 000 000 km2... Within the circle of th southern 60 degrees latituide - all the room we need to put these 0.5x10exp9 km3... from them we also would extract ALL the metals and elements we`d need for the industry...

How would look this 1.3 lower ocean world - we may see from the maps. LOOOOTS of new land... This would uncover from water the shelves and the continental slopes - rich with all kinds of natural resourses.

How could we calculate the land revenue of such operation? How much dozens of millions of km of new land?

The territorial disputes are easy to resolve - just put the new land borders according to the lines of the sea zones boundary. The landlocked countries would not benfit in territory increase as the seaside ones, but some mechanisms of compensation could be elaborated... Per instance bigger water supply quotes?

karov · 2006-01-19 07:38:49

New land example:

http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/circular/c11 … dscape.pdf

, look the page 57 ( of the pdf-ed document ) the colour bathymetric threedimensional map of the sea area infront of Frisko USA ... Roughly the green shous the water region to 200 m depth after retreating the waters down with 1300 m. The gulf of Farallones becomes a plain, the Pioneer canyon - a fiord, the Pioneer seamount - Pioneer island, the shorelinee retreats with 70-100 kms from San Francisco. There the bottom is too steep... ther are now submerged regions which will become huge island land masses ... If in the new land emerge in high seas, out of the 200 mi zones of the exceptional economical zones of any country, they could be put under direct UN control - the first "international districts" ( the same DC doesn`t belongs to any state or the federal territories of other union countries)...

I`ll find global map of the new land, but I don`t know how to calculate the new area?

Some hints, taking 1300 meters?

REB · 2006-01-20 08:55:51

Too bad we don’t have the technology to build large islands out of ocean floor material. Imagine how much lowering of the sea level could be accomplished by building a island the size of Australia using material from the ocean floor. Of course, the lower the sea level would depend on how much material you could pile up above sea level.

It would also create new land.

What about building huge seas in the Sahara Desert and the Deserts of Austria. Not only would it lower sea level, it might produce rain, turning the deserts into rainforest. If you could pile up the material you removed to make the sea into mountain, the mountains would help create the rain.

Another way to lower sea level might be to pump sea water onto Antarctica.

MarsDog · 2006-01-20 10:38:30

I`ll find global map of the new land, but I don`t know how to calculate the new area?

Grid superimposed on the map is possible. Count the squares.

Good initial guess is area of continental shelves, calculated by others.
1.300 meter is slightly deeper than the usually given 1,000 depth.

There are datasets of elevations. Elevation above or below just count.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ocean+fl … era&rls=en

Good mapping software Esri etc. Not easy to use, for me anyway.
Excel possible ?

Writing your own software using a dataset. Most straightforward and most fun.
Then generate your own map onto a large bmp file.

===========================================

Too bad we don’t have the technology to build large islands out of ocean floor material

Heavy are Ocean floor rocks. Lighter Continental rocks float to make continents.

Pumice can float, so you could make large floating islands.

Technology is here, but the money and desire to terraform is not.

REB · 2006-01-20 10:48:37

I was thinking more along the lines of piling it up, that way , once your new land got above sea level, you would start lowering sea level (That is, if you use material from the seabed)

What we need is some kind of giant Star Trek transporter that can move large amounts of matter. With something like that, maybe you could arrange the matter so that the new island has granite roots. With such technology, you could sculpt the land any way you wanted.

Such technology is way beyond us, at the moment. The energy requirements alone would be huge, not to mention the data storage.

MarsDog · 2006-01-20 11:05:20

Things float:

Specific gravities:

Mantle 3.3
Ocean floor rocks 3.0
Continental Crust rocks 2.7
Water 1

You have 4 specific gravities to arrange.

Try to make an island out of dense rocks and it will sink.
Maybe only very slowly.

REB · 2006-01-20 11:18:57

But eventually it will become buoyant in the crust. Mountains have thick crust beneath them.

Just keep piling up the rock until you achieve this buoyancy.

MarsDog · 2006-01-20 16:55:14

Ocean crust sg=3, Floating on the Mantle (sg=3.3):

1 unit volume supports

3.3/3 volume of ocean bottom rocks = 1.1 that is 1 volume below and 0.1 above
100 km below only 10 km up.
So using ocean bottom material requires large volume below.

Very cold ice is best:
3.3/.92 volume of ice = 3.59 that is 1 volume below and 2.59 above
100 km below supports 259 km above. Into outer space.

Ice is 26 times better.

karov · 2006-01-21 03:48:53

I was thinking more along the lines of piling it up, that way , once your new land got above sea level, you would start lowering sea level (That is, if you use material from the seabed)
What we need is some kind of giant Star Trek transporter that can move large amounts of matter. With something like that, maybe you could arrange the matter so that the new island has granite roots. With such technology, you could sculpt the land any way you wanted.
Such technology is way beyond us, at the moment. The energy requirements alone would be huge, not to mention the data storage.

The advantage to work with water are:
- low density
- it exists in all three "normal" phases in narrow range of temperatures. Actually the water will transport itself to the pole, where the vapour will be activelly osmozed under the smart cloth...
- water slabs would have positive buoyancy even on liquid water - "terraformed icebergs"
- if you move to much rock over one spot, its sinking down will push the surrounding rock and mantle sidewais, hence causing some elevation...

karov · 2006-01-21 03:54:02

I`ll find global map of the new land, but I don`t know how to calculate the new area?
Grid superimposed on the map is possible. Count the squares.
Good initial guess is area of continental shelves, calculated by others.
1.300 meter is slightly deeper than the usually given 1,000 depth.
There are datasets of elevations. Elevation above or below just count.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ocean+fl … era&rls=en
Good mapping software Esri etc. Not easy to use, for me anyway.
Excel possible ?
Writing your own software using a dataset. Most straightforward and most fun.
Then generate your own map onto a large bmp file.
===========================================
Too bad we don’t have the technology to build large islands out of ocean floor material
Heavy are Ocean floor rocks. Lighter Continental rocks float to make continents.
Pumice can float, so you could make large floating islands.
Technology is here, but the money and desire to terraform is not.

The shelves area is indeed quite exact figure of how much of the continents will show off over the water, but also over will appear all gayotes, seamounts, middle ridges...

About the sofware - it also occured to me to count the squares - but i`m not enough computer literate...

karov · 2006-01-21 03:54:34

I`ll find global map of the new land, but I don`t know how to calculate the new area?
Grid superimposed on the map is possible. Count the squares.
Good initial guess is area of continental shelves, calculated by others.
1.300 meter is slightly deeper than the usually given 1,000 depth.
There are datasets of elevations. Elevation above or below just count.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ocean+fl … era&rls=en
Good mapping software Esri etc. Not easy to use, for me anyway.
Excel possible ?
Writing your own software using a dataset. Most straightforward and most fun.
Then generate your own map onto a large bmp file.
===========================================
Too bad we don’t have the technology to build large islands out of ocean floor material
Heavy are Ocean floor rocks. Lighter Continental rocks float to make continents.
Pumice can float, so you could make large floating islands.
Technology is here, but the money and desire to terraform is not.

The shelves area is indeed quite exact figure of how much of the continents will show off over the water, but also over will appear all gayotes, seamounts, middle ridges...

About the sofware - it also occured to me to count the squares - but i`m not enough computer literate...

karov · 2006-01-21 03:57:25

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761 … inent.html

6% increase of the earths land from the shelves...

karov · 2006-01-21 04:02:11

http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/dds/dds-55/pac … p_info.htm

from shelves about 1.5 mln km2 teritorrial gain only for USA.

karov · 2006-01-21 04:04:53

http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/su … ec_sum.pdf

about 1 000 000 km2 for Brazil

Note - 1300 meters decrease of the sea level would cause also the air to drop with so. Holland and Bangladesh and venice become high mountain sites!!!

karov · 2006-01-21 04:06:06

http://www.offshore-environment.com/russianoil.html

Russia gains 5.2-6.2 millions of km2 from plodering the shelves.

karov · 2006-01-21 09:38:19

Can`t we via just "moving" the colour coding of the normal bathymetrics maps/charts -- down with 1300 m to see, how the land area changes?

Than all the land above the nowadays "minus 1300 meters" will apperar in normal colours... Do these "do-a-map" progs have "square counting" included...?

Because there is optimum of "land productivity" of the different regimes - if we remove 500 meters of water column , we`ll have not much more new land than removing 1500 meters!!!

If I have a program that changes the colour codes, and counts the colour squares, than we can follow the "dynamics" of the productivity.

The water/heat exchange - could be led by underground pipes - dig under the land areas via kinda supercavitation. The pipes themselves would carry all the hydropower electricity to feed the digging machines. Because the new antarctic ice is so high, there always be positive gravitational potential to bring the water where necessary all over the globe. All surface points even Everest, will be lowlands compared with the suborbital hights of the new antarctic ice cover... Imagine underground/underwater tunnels several hundred meters deep and several dozens of meters wide, running as spikes from antarctica to the other pole, feeding as huge artesian wells the surfaces, at some points keeping full some inner continental fresh water seas ( the remnants of Black, Red, Mediterranean see, Artcic ocean, Mexican gulf...etc...) Much-much better and even heat and moisture redistribution than the old one rellying on climate cells , ocean currents, circulation... Removing ~1000 meters of ocean depth gives us ( regarding increase of , say up to 42% of the land area over the total earth area minus 14-15 000 000 km2 of packaged ice)... ~ 200 000 000 km2 of perfect land - no deserts, no tundra, ...

MarsDog · 2006-01-22 15:45:50

Don't see easy way around it.
Need a good dataset to start from - some are in magnetic tape format.
A dataset is in polar coordinates 2 minute - (1.6 km resolution)
Look also in the slides directory.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/relief/ETOPO2/

Adding up area is easier, but actually drawing a map I have not figured out.

For 1,300 meters water removed,
there will be rebound of several hundred meters, but not very fast.

Some parts of North America are still rebounding slowly from last ice age.

karov · 2006-01-23 03:38:46

Actually I thought about using ready bathymetric map of the world ocean, and changing the colour code with kinda image processing program ( Photoshop, etc) , for computer images design. Unfortunatlly as a lawyer I don`t have the time to go through the full capabilities of such programs. I hoped that you know about these design programs more...

Yes, there would be rebound, which is going to add more land - the new terrotories will be free of water column pressure of up to 130 bars. The weight over the mantle will decrease. Opposite -- in antarctica where the superfreezed ice is going to be stored, the mantle will be pushed down by greater weight -- and the planetary hydrostatics of the liquid and semiliquid mantle phases will redistribute the increased local polar pressure in even bigger rebound out of Antarctica. This pressure change will spread like a slow wave and will have much moree complicated consequences over the tectonics and the voulcanism, but indeed such changes are predictble and manageable... the damage zone of a volcano or supervolcano eruption is not so grait and indeed is quite well restrictable in size.

The molten interior of the Earth possesses kinda "weather" which will be affected with such project.

MarsDog · 2006-02-03 14:32:03

Easy and versatile program to use:
(1) http://www.globalmapper.com/

download little edian dos data set (ETOPO2.dos.bin)
(2) http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/relief/ETOPO2/

(3) rename to etopo2.dos

(4) start program and load etopo2.dos

Note that you can choose your own sea level
pulldown menu (tools -- configure -- vertical options -- enter your sea level)

Superimposed -1300 and 0000 sea level from above, reduced to 20% of original
http://www.geocities.com/marscatdog/

========================================

http://www.globalmapper.com/formats.html#24
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/rel … readme.txt

"ETOPO2 is in the Cylindrical Equidistant Projection
(sometimes called Latitude-Longitude, or Geographic)"

Still trying to figure out how to calculate land area from all this.
(Write a small basic program to calculate directly from the dataset.)

karov · 2006-02-04 15:17:18

Thank you very much -- I was sure the task was too far away from my skills.

To calculate the land area gain from 1300 meters decrease of the sea level?

Can`t you "just" make the prog to calculate how many new non-blue pixels are there between -- the older ground zero ( nowaday sea level - 0 m ), and the new sea level ( minus 1300 meters from present) -- appearing. Every pixel should respond to certain amount of square kilometers. Of course having in mind the distortion die to the 2D projection of the geoide...

MarsDog · 2006-02-04 16:26:29

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Zone.html

Used the etopo2 data - wrote quickbasic program -
got extra 49,017,306 km^2
or 9.6% of total Earth surface (area between -1300m and 0m elevation)

Instead of 29% percent land, it would become 38%

Total volume water between -1300m and sea level:
4.8x10^8 km^3 or almost 30% of Earth total.
That would mean 30 km ice hidden in Antarctica.
10 km below and 20 km above

http://www.geocities.com/marscatdog/
http://www.geocities.com/marscatdog/AREA.BAS

Sphere approximation used, instead of WGS84 ellipsoid used in etopo2.
So results will be slightly different.

karov · 2006-02-16 06:58:42

MarsDog,

It`s more than a mere visualiation!

We could use the same tech to get rid of ( to squester en situ ) other volatiles on other worlds... Essentially this is puting the water or other things in huge global plumbing system...

MarsDog · 2006-02-18 20:26:43

Even a 100 meter reduction in sea levels would would produce significant change:
http://www.geocities.com/marscatdog/100.gif

22,100,000 km^2 or 4.3% imcrease in land area

2.5% of Earth water would have to be stored
an increase of 2.5 km of Antarctic ice cover.

Could you store 1 meter per year ?

karov · 2006-02-19 12:38:37

Perhaps you might store more than one meter per year given artificial refrigeration under sheet of solar power panels + isolation...

BTW, what`s the most efficient solution, i.e. maximization of the new land gain times the water column displacement? There shoulda be solution minimizing the water removal vs. maximizing the territorial gain...

I also noticed, cause after the continental shelf and slope, the decrease of the depth, gives less and less, marginal land profit, cause the increase of the depth goes too steep... Perhaps the truth is close to these 100 to 300 meters... This also avoids the problem with traditional low lands suddenly elevated to over 1000 meters altitude... Holland and Bangladesh turn into Swiss...

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