November 26, 2017

Background

Once again a study, in this case ice-breaking, has the scientific community in emergency mode. It turns out that two of the largest glaciers in Antarctica may actually trigger the disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet in a mere 20 to 50 years. That’s barely enough time to mitigate the effect of the catastrophic sea level rise that will follow –assuming we start now. To put it into perspective, a 2 meter rise would partially or completely submerge many coastal mega cities throughout the world, including New York, Houston, New Orleans, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City.

A Solution

One solution –albeit partial- is to flood with sea water uninhabited or sparsely populated below-sea-level depressions throughout the world. Among the most promising sites are Death Valley and its neighboring dry lake beds in California and Nevada, the Dead Sea in Israel/Jordan, Laguna del Carbón in Argentina, and the Qattara Depression in Egypt. Not only would their combined volume serve as a giant holding tank to mitigate sea level rise, they all have abundant sunlight that could be used to mass-produce hydrogen, the one element that when combined with oxygen in the atmosphere produces pure water and energy. The water crisis will start hitting us in earnest in tandem with the aforementioned ice-breaking event because the world’s great aquifers on which billions depend on for drinking water and agriculture are inexorably drying up. In some critical areas like the American Southwest, parts of China and India, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the rainfall cycle simply isn’t enough to satisfy current or (much less) future demand. Only hydrogen can simultaneously halt the production of carbon dioxide (by replacing nuclear fission and fossil fuels), mass-produce water with oxygen already in the air, boost food production worldwide to satisfy the growing demand, and create much needed jobs in new industries that cannot be outsourced and largely impervious (at least for the foreseeable future) to robotics and artificial intelligence. The Earth has all the physical ingredients to solve the problem. All we have to do is contribute the political willpower to overcome the powerful objections and resistance of those who stand to profit from the status quo, organize on a scale never before attempted, and get it done in record time -before it’s too late.