Answers to World Problems. Butch Biendara

it’s support. Rather than having the tops be the full height of a pyramid, they would truncate at half the height to have the top half inverted into a depressed cone shape. The bottom surface of the cover would collect distilled water into the center drain tube and the outer perimeter collection channels.

      An alternative cover design could have the top cover be full height and thereby eliminate the drains in the center of each small hexagon to have just the three perimeter drains collect all of the water.

      Each panel has 21 square feet of surface area and they would be made of a strong, lightweight material that a man or two could handle for transport and leveling with no machinery. They need to support the 55 pounds that a half-inch layer of water would weigh. With a simple float controlled refilling valve they would always be refilled with salt water.

      These solar pans could be set up as rooftops where a group of them would provide shade and shelter for a living space under them. A nice feature of the multi-hexagon shape is that additional panels fit together nicely to form a larger continuous panel. Or in non-farmed areas even on rocky ground or steep hillsides, they would be leveled with dirt, rocks or sticks, and anchored down by simple means any peasant could understand. Salt water would flow into the pan’s bottom tray where the sun then evaporates it and the vapor collects on the inside of the cover to flow to the edges where a separate channel carries the fresh water to a corner where it drains into an external collection pot. Periodically, after many refills and evaporation cycles, the remaining salt residue would build up to very salty brine, and attention is needed to remove the cover and clean the bottom pan. The salt brine can then be left in open air pools to completely dry for a recoverable sea-salt by-product with its own commercial value. And another environmental benefit is that with the waste water pools of heavily salted water setting out to dry completely, there is some small reduction in air temperature and an increase in air humidity, both are improvements to the local desert weather.

      With endless wind to power the pumps, endless sun to distill the saltwater and grow crops, refugee or impoverished groups could set up communities on the former barren land to grow their own productive crops and to plant and grow trees as well. With wide interests and choices, experimentation will find what type of trees grows best in any particular soil and is most productive. It will not be an instant corporate success but rather a slowly progressing experiment to bring people with limited skills into productive roles to feed themselves and grow the exportable crops and logs that they will eventually harvest.

      BROAD WORKING FRONT

      The coastal ‘shoreline’ of North Africa which is the Atlantic to the west and south and the Mediterranean to the north runs to about 5,000 miles long. Skipping the few places where rivers currently flow to the sea and port towns have grown and agriculture in now underway, it still leaves an immense span of shoreline to begin pushing back the desert wasteland. Surveys will locate the areas of better soils most suitable for planting along with the better areas for locations of windmills and laying pipelines. There is room for potentially thousands of systems to be developed on experimental basis.

      SOCIAL - CULTURAL ISSUES

      Will there be problems? Of course there will be unforeseen social or cultural issues to be solved. Any time there is something of value at another place, there is a move to capture that value by those who have less. Greed is the driving force behind most efforts. But the vast empty barren lands of northern Africa can allow for the many cultures and societies to move away from conflicts and starvation to distant lands where they can form communities as they find their best fit.

      Is that a migration of peoples to be concerned about? It might be somewhat similar to the migrations of early humans out of Africa, the other migrations of peoples east and west, or the migration of the people of Europe moving on to the New World of the Americas.

      Yes there will be problems to deal with but the enormous space to be developed can allow for vast numbers of people to develop an otherwise barren land into a viable productive paradise.

      BACK TO GLOBAL WARMING

      And to return to the beginning point where we started with the topic of global warming, in a few hundred years the solar furnace of North Africa will have been turned down by the ‘harvesting’ of that solar energy to grow productive food and forests. Thus the solar engine that stores up energy and crosses the Atlantic to pull moisture aloft and builds the huge storms that spend that energy to cause so much destruction in the USA will be tamed in a productive way before they grow into a monster.

      REDUCED CARBON DIOXIDE

      As the formerly barren land develops into cropland and forest, the growth slowly extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a natural process. Pulling that huge amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will in itself help to reduce global warming.

      THE ULTIMATE FIX?

      In a hundred years, there may be new issues to resolve, if the desert is covered with forests and farms to satisfy the millions of new residents. When we are taming the solar tiger that sends killing storms to the USA we will be blessed if we can only get halfway to that goal by the end of this century.