SHORT URL: http://tinyurl.com/Steele-Water
IF sea level is rising by 3mm a year, and there are roughly 335,258,000 square kilometers of ocean surface, and a 3mm rise equates to 3,000 cubic meters per square kilometer, THEN there are one trillion cubic meters (1,005,774,000,000) of sea water available for harvesting if our objective is to both maintain the sea level and solve the industrial gutting of aquifers and related drought issues.
If I have the math right, 1,005,774,000,000 cubic meters translates into 266 trillion (265,695,317,580,000) gallons of water available for harvesting; divided by 365 days that is 738 billion (727,932,376,932) gallons per day in clean water that could be brought on tap within the year.
Embracing the idea that plants processing 5 million gallons per day are rapidly created, and that using open source technology can drop the price for each from $25 million per plant to $2.5 million per plant, this means that an investment of $364 billion for 146,000 plants (145,586) could both stabilize the sea level — something of concern from Bangladesh to Miami — and largely eradicate drinking and agricultural water sourcing as an issue.
I am including in the cost of each plant its renewable energy and its advanced energy storage, both open source. The 3.5% of the water that is salt represents a storage and neutralization issue still to be addressed, but polarized solution streams may make it possible to combine CO2 to make sodium carbonate. Energy is becoming cheaper, water more expensive — the time has come to be serious about all this.
These idle reflections do not factor in the equally dramatic opportunities available in recycling gray water and in restoring indigenous practices that harvest every drop of rain to turn back deforestation and restore food forests.
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