[CHRIS BEAN]

CHRIS BEAN asked the Naked Scientists:

Is it possible to build canals - like the Panama / Suez Canals so that rising sea levels can flow into the deserts of Africa - Namib and Sahara!

If the water were to go to a central place the salt would stay there. It would then evaporate and clean rain would dissapate over the entire desert. Sea levls would then drop. Or am I being too simplistic?

I often fly over deserts and can see that once these areas were seabeds.

What do you think?

[frethack]

There would be the possibility of salt runoff into major rivers such as the Nile that could do damage to the limited agriculture of Egypt and other countries that depend on it, as well as other rivers.  During the Roman period, a time of global warming, the northern outskirts of the Sahara produced quite a bit of the grain for the empire, and, *if* this benefit were to re-occur, the excess salt could also damage these areas.

The best bet for humanity is probably to just move further inland.

[VAlibrarian]

i do not see this as a realistic approach to the rising sea levels which will be the inevitable result of climate change. Why should we seek such fixes anyway? The climatologists tell us that the results of climate change will be very unpleasant, and that the best approach is to try to reduce our carbon emissions which currently measure in the billions of tons annually. This is the real challenge. We do not need to duck the real challenge and purse odd schemes of mitigating the damage that we still continue to create. It makes more sense to stop creating the damage.

[ukmicky]

You cant stop climate change, sooner or later with or without the help from man the earths climate will warm up and we we have to get used to living on a smaller land mass with different weather patterns. From the time of the last ice age the land mass has been decreasing as more and more of the ice on our planet has melted ,at one time it was even possible to walk from England to France without using a tunnel.  Its what you have to put up with when you live on a planet that's circling a sun .

At least if it happens now rather than in 200,300,400,or 500, years time the argument is that the population of the earth will still be at a level that we could still protect move and feed most people until the next change occurs.

[frethack]

Its what you have to put up with when you live on a planet that's circling a sun .

Exactly...which is why we should be looking for new Earths that DONT orbit suns...no need to put up with all that variable luminosity and cycling magnetism mumbo jumbo  []

Gotta love Sol

[akhenaten]

I think like Chris Bean it is logical to channel any excess of sea waters into areas that are dry and below the current sea level. Wouldn't a vast inland sea both reduce sea level in general and create an economic resource for fishing, holiday resorts and so on? Would it not also help stop future "ice ages" for although we will all be dead but in 10,000 years the next ice age will cover much of the northern hemisphere with an ice sheet up to one mile high. We plan to terraform Mars why not terrare-form Earth?

[JimBob]

I think like Chris Bean it is logical to channel any excess of sea waters into areas that are dry and below the current sea level. Wouldn't a vast inland sea both reduce sea level in general and create an economic resource for fishing, holiday resorts and so on? Would it not also help stop future "ice ages" for although we will all be dead but in 10,000 years the next ice age will cover much of the northern hemisphere with an ice sheet up to one mile high. We plan to terraform Mars why not terrare-form Earth?

There is very little land below present seal level. Not enough to even make a difference in sea level if flooded.