From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Sun Mar 26 2000 - 10:38:13 MST
In a message dated 3/26/00 6:16:15 AM Pacific Standard Time,
neptune@mars.superlink.net writes:
Re flooding the rift valley:
> On the practical side, what do you [anyone] think about the impact of this
> poor man's macroengineering project? Would it be a net gain or loss for
> people living there and in adjoining regions? What would its impact be in
> global climate and ecology?
For the local humans, generally good: they'd get ocean access, a milder
climate, and more rain. Some farmland and such gets flooded at the bottom,
but it's probably replaceable. Be a real headache keeping the pollution down,
though.
For the local ecology or paleontology, it's a catastrophe. Desert critters do
very poorly in shallow seas and anything interesting gets covered up or eaten
:-/
The rift valley isn't large enough to affect the whole world's climate or
ecology
directly.
>Michael S. Lorrey retroman@turbont.net wrote:
>> The only thing separating the Rift Valley from being flooded is about
>> 100 meters
>> of rock on the shore of the Red Sea. I could fix that situation with a
>> couple dozen pounds of C4.
I'm not convinced that blowing a (relatively) small hole in the rock barrier
will
suffice to flood the valley. The flow rate would have to exceed evaporation
from the entire flooded valley, and that's a lot. There are several places
where large river flows still don't suffice to raise a sea even close to sea
level
(e.g., the Caspian Sea) Flooding the rift valley is at most a mesoscale
project,
but I think you'd need more than a few dozen pounds of conventional explosive.
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