From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Mar 16 2002 - 16:56:20 MST
On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, Damien R. Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 04:01:13PM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> What's the relevance of that? We need fresh water for human
> consumption, industry, and agriculture. Mostly the latter two.
> Our agriculture is freshwater.
Cyanobacteria (salt water bacteria) harvest CO2 using photosynthesis.
You use the bacteria to feed shrimp and the shrimp to feed fish
(if you want to go that much further up the food chain). Our
agriculture is non-salt based because much of the relatively flat
agricultural land isn't near any salt water.
> It may be possible to grow GM wheat in saltwater, but it's hardly
> been done, and someone could ask about the energy losses if it was done.
There are some energy losses because plants would have to expend
energy to pump out excessive amounts of salt. But it isn't a show
stopper.
> At a global level I think there's enough fresh water to go around, but
> the distribution is uneven, and the moment large regions are short or
> will be. Or so the analysts say.
Its just that most of the food crops have been bred to utilize
fresh water. No reason we can't fix that with a little genetic
engineering.
> > Fertile agricultural soil is a red herring. You can grow what you
> > need in solar ponds where your only requirement is the addition
>
> Huh, that's a new one. I usually think of more intensive hydroponic
> systems.
Nope. You engineer the bacteria to grow most of the pond for you.
>
> [snip] Producing fresh water,
> oxygen, food, sufficient light to stay sane, etc.? Where by "know how"
> I mean not ability to sketch a system, which we can do, but to build one
> which will actually work efficiently and do literally everything needed?
> Taking into account toxin buildups, pollination costs, etc...
You can do it quite easily by engineering more complex bacteria to
perform the various functions required.
Robert
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