An Impending Crisis

A tsunami of methane –a greenhouse gas 27 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2)- of El Niño proportions may soon be released into the atmosphere, and no one can prevent that. If and when it happens, the concentration of greenhouse gases will exceed current projections by several orders of magnitude. Fortunately there’s hope. Once airborne, the methane will slowly combine with oxygen and transform into CO2. In other words, the initial spike in potency will be relatively temporary; however the concentration of CO2 will climb nonetheless, and so will the world’s temperature. As things now stand, by some estimates 25 to 50% of all species of flora and fauna on our planet are going to become extinct. That is certain to create a crisis for organisms at the top of the food chain, including us.

Tactical or tangential actions like carbon trading and caps on emissions from power plants –both fertile ground for corruption and fraud- are not going to stop, let alone reverse, Climate Change. The simple reality is that unless humanity stops using fossil fuels, higher demand due to growing population and affluence will inevitably send emissions soaring again. Already the damage done is out of control. Any effective antidote is going to require no less than uncommon political will, heroic courage, and an almost obsessive desire to cooperate among a tiny group of nations that can save –or destroy- the world. So far they have not initiated a public conversation, much less come up with a specific plan, to address core issues such as:

• How to reduce the acid in the ocean;
• Recycle current and future excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere;
• Address the chronic global shortage of fresh water and the rapid depletion of the world’s aquifers;
• Commit to specific quotas to accept the millions of refugees that will have to be evacuated from sinking nations due to rising seas.

Plan A is a scheme designed to use solar energy, seawater and gravity to produce hydrogen, pure water and a net surplus of electricity, and may well be the answer to the core issues outlined above. It envisions using existing technology and solar energy exclusively to produce hydrogen by electrolysis of seawater. The hydrogen is then compressed and piped to power plants built anywhere atop suitable mountains. There it is burned in special but already existing turbines to generate electricity; its byproduct –steam- is collected, condensed and piped by gravity at optimal pressure to a series of staggered hydroelectric turbines below the hydrogen plants; naturally, the higher the mountains, the more turbines that could be installed. The same water is used consecutively by all the turbines, therefore the electricity they generate in the aggregate, including the original hydrogen plant at the top, exceeds that which was consumed earlier in the production of the hydrogen. When the water reaches the bottom of the mountain it is collected and used as desired.

The plan compares favorably with desalination –a voracious consumer of energy that requires close proximity to a shore- and with fossil and nuclear-fired power plants, which do not yield commercially useful amounts of water. The hydrogen plants could be built anywhere, even in remote inland deserts, and the drought-proof pure water they would produce would be completely independent of the natural water cycle.

Carbon emissions are rapidly changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere and making the ocean increasingly acidic. This threatens the entire food chain in both habitats, including species we depend on for our food. The plan helps in two ways: it ends all emissions from the generation of electricity and simultaneously creates a new source of pure fresh water that could be used to make the deserts green. The new vegetation would help convert the CO2 into oxygen and sequester the carbon into the soil, the inverse of the process now causing Climate Change. The deserts would of course become darker and reflect less solar heat into space, however that would be offset by the lack of new emissions and the additional oxygen. That would benefit both the atmosphere and the ocean.

The new source of drought-proof water derived from Plan A could also be the answer to the worldwide shortage of water in cities on the west coast of South America that rely on rapidly disappearing tropical glaciers. This issue may not command the same sense of urgency in well-watered capitals such as Washington, Moscow, Paris, London, Rome or Berlin as it no doubt does in Beijing, but the former will also be severely impacted by the impending consequences –wars, famine, refugees- if the issue is not fully addressed on a planetary scale. Unfortunately, currently there are no other publicly disclosed plans or even suggestions to do so.

Rising Seas
Plan A envisions flooding natural below-sea-level depressions with seawater. In the United States it would require a canal from the Pacific to Death Valley; the system would be expanded to include many other dry lake beds in the vicinity covering many thousands of square kilometers. The same could possibly be done in Argentina, the Sahara Desert, the Dead Sea and other similar locations throughout the world which may or may not be enough to prevent densely populated areas like Bangladesh, Miami, New Orleans, New York and island nations in the Pacific, from ending up underwater.

Creating A Market

If there’s a buyer, there’s a seller. China has powerful reasons –insufficient water and energy resources to develop its arid western half- and the economic power to create a market for hydrogen, and it can do so virtually overnight. All it has to do is announce that at as of a specific date it will gradually commence buying it to fuel its power plants, and the world will respond.

Finally, if there are any better ideas, certainly now is the time to share them!