It is a given that California’s Salton Sea is rapidly accumulating toxic
wastes that are being concentrated by natural conditions. The increasingly
drastic conditions from Palm Springs to Mexico actually could have a very simple
solution. The solution emerges as a matter of an elementary train of thought.
The first and most obvious remedy begins with the simple idea that the easiest
way to make its water less toxic is to dilute it. Less polluted water is easier
to detoxify. But it’s in the desert.
Salton Sea
(credit:
http://www.saltonsea.ca.gov/thesea.htm )
The Pacific Ocean is a scant 60 miles away. Even though the intervening
mountain ranges reach to 6600 feet above sea level, the technology needed to
build a pipe line (gangs of pipe lines,) is already in use. If such a pipe line
were constructed to link the ocean and the Salton Sea, it would be possible to
prime the western slope pipes until at the summit; water would flow down hill
into the sub-sea basin. As water seeks its own level, it would continue to flow
until the level of the inland sea reaches sea level itself. This would be the
simplest way to detoxify the Salton Sea.
If the pumping stations were to be powered by dynamos, the only inputs of
electric power required would be to prime the line. Water recovers about 93% of
the energy needed to elevate it as it descends a declining slope. If dynamos
were also located on the Eastern slope the descending flow would return most of
its initial energy back onto the grid.
Once equilibrium becomes established, the rise and fall of the tidal Pacific
would siphon water first one way and then the other through the pipeline in
perpetuity. The dynamos would then be mechanically producing predictable amounts
of electricity without consumption of fuel.
This device is called a Geo-Global Tidal Siphon Engine. It has three moving
parts. They are the Earth, its Moon, and the Oceans. As long as the Earth spins,
the Moon orbits, and gravity remains in effect, this device will produce
electricity without consumption of fuel.
When one considers previously proposed solutions this one is a singularly
unique. It will work. Since excess demand exists for its primary product it will
also pay for itself exponentially as time progresses.
ENGINE NUMBER TWO
Death Valley represents an even vaster application than does a GGTSE in
Southern California. Its sub-sea basin is deeper and further from the coast.
This translates out into a longer line from which to generate electricity.
Central California agriculture will have cheap water, the need for subsidies
will disappear, produce will cost less, and the river systems now being diverted
and sucked dry can return to their natural flows. Deserts all the way to Utah
could become productive.
![[small map of Death Valley]](death-valley-small.jpg)
Death Valley
A FEW OBVIOUS BENEFITS
First and probably foremost is this additional supply of electric power in
Southern California. Electric power generation that does not pollute. Electric
power that lowers its cost to users in the entire region. End of shortages. End
of brown outs. Manufacturing can convert to all electric energy, save money,
increase profits. Coal fired and other types of energy sources requiring
combustion can be phased out. Cheap and clean power will allow American
businesses to defeat competition fueled by cheap labor.
Given the availability of low cost energy, coupled with solar resources, and
an endless supply of raw material in the form of sea water, all sorts of
industrial and environmental applications become feasible.
Desalinization of sea water becomes economically viable by a combination of
solar and electric methods. The GGTSE can also be utilized to produce unlimited
amounts of potable water for use in throughout the entire Southwest region.
Water can be contributed to the Colorado River.
Northern Mexico can be irrigated.
Dry lake beds can be re-filled. Re-filling the Great Salt Lake may be
possible.
Aquaculture industries can be spawned.
Southern California will never again go dry.
Vast recreational areas will be created.
The deserts will bloom.
Land values will increase.
Air pollution will be reduced.
Predicted rising sea levels caused by global warming can be ameliorated for
awhile.
Water may be stored under ground. The Oglala Aquifer can be re-filled. No
more dust bowl. Wells in Texas and Oklahoma will never again run dry.
The new shore line will create a building boom. It will take a century or
more to build out. Completely new habitations can be created in vast open areas
of the Southwest anywhere water can be made available.
Solar collectors heating sea water can produce steam for further electric
production, while the steam is also being scrubbed and filtered for its mineral
content.
It is said that there is a cubic yard of gold in every cubic mile of sea
water. As sea water is in unlimited supply, extraction of minerals and precious
metals becomes viable. Our national forte being innovation, with unlimited raw
material and cheap energy, extractive industries will bloom like dandelions.
Superior levels of technology will be developed specifically for this purpose,
opportunity for profit being the Mother of Invention in the U.S.
FLIES IN THE OINTMENT and OTHER PROBLEMS
Building a device of this type probably qualifies as an inherently
governmental proposition in that the rights of imminent domain will be needed to
assemble rights of way.
The longer a GGTSE pipeline gets the more energy it produces. Therefore
increasing its length by snaking it back and forth on each slope maximizes its
potential. Utility easements will be required to accomplish this.
The scope of feasibilities, planning, budgeting, funding, designing,
construction and operation may require a quasi-governmental authority to be
created. Funding mechanisms such as bond issues will have to be developed and
marketed. It could be ten to twenty year process.
Who owns and who gets to control, distribute, and profit from the co-products
of water and electricity are issues fraught with political peril. Oil has its
synthetic substitutes, water does not.
The sea level demarcation line runs into Mexico. Unless a dam is erected at
the border, this will create a vast open stretch of water to police and patrol.
This may be easier to do than it is on land. A causeway across the border is a
possibility, as is a boom.
Most of the Coachella Valley will be submerged. This will result in the
permanent loss of its territory as is currently developed, but creates a greater
good as unlimited water and cheap power expand the total land area which may
then be put into production. California will experience temporary loss of a
major agrarian market.
The northern end of the Sea will have to be partitioned off with a dam. Palm
Springs is below sea level.
The government will have to create a program of traded development rights and
land grants to compensate displaced people and businesses.
The government will have to subsidize the incomes of the displaced until such
time as economic viability is re-established.
Conservationists and animal rights groups will mount strong protest against
the loss of habitat and perhaps even extinction of some species of plants and
animals. It must be remembered that all of the Southwest has been the ocean
floor 4 or 5 times. Life has returned after every cycle.
SOCIO-ECONOMIC and TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
The creation of lebensraum in virtually uninhabitable desert areas will
foster an economic expansion that will continue for several centuries.
New opportunities for all social and economic classes will arise as has never
before been witnessed. Individuals, industries, and the nation can look forward
to continued growth for the entire 21st century.
The opportunity to become a better society can not be passed up. We may never
have an opportunity to restructure life in the United States like this again.
New locations will express new social and political attitudes.
Strategically located GGTSEs may become the salvation of our civilization
within a few hundred years. Short term consequences will have to yield to the
greater need of survival itself. Even now survival of civilizations is not
assured. The consequences of global warming are unknown, but its affects are
being experienced now.
Growing public fear and apprehension regarding global warming can be offset
somewhat if it becomes known that help is on the way. Diminish fear; reduce
stress and tension, while increasing perceptions of security and contentment.
All good for the country whether or not it turns out to be wishful thinking.
What would it mean for instance, if the displaced populations (such as Katrina
refugees,) could be re-located en masses to habitats that need workers and have
jobs waiting?
There will be major relocation and demographic shifts that will have
permanent socio-economic benefits. Humankind is, after all, in the same state of
evolution as is nature. We are part and parcel of the same beginning. We
recognize change as the only universal constant.
FORWARD THINKING
There will be vast amounts of disposable water available throughout the
Southwest region. Water may not only be stored underground, it may also be
stored in the atmosphere in the form of vapor. The scope may be vast, but by
injection into the atmosphere as vapor, judicious humidity can be created which,
used in conjunction with prevailing winds, can cause rain to fall in specific
areas at specific times. This will be the beginning of the control of weather.
It is said that Mars will be the only planet of use to us in our solar
system. It will be of little use however until we know how to create an
atmosphere. This can be done by control of its weather. We can not control the
weather on Mars until we can control the weather on Earth. The GGTSE is the
beginning of the process that will allow us to fulfill this destiny.
PRACTICALITY
The necessity for this is borne of adversity. But even if adversity was
absent the development of GGTSE’s is positive in and of itself.
Installation of Geo-Global Tidal Siphon Engines represents a single solution
which contributes to solving a world of problems.
The Geo-Global Tidal Siphon Engine while simple in concept is incredibly
complex in practicality. But global warming is upon us. The melting of polar ice
caps will cause rising sea levels to encroach coastal areas around the globe.
Most likely we have already squandered the time that can be squandered. Given
the lead time it will require, it is imperative the project be initiated
beginning immediately.
Seen from the shores of the Salton Sea, the Siphon Engine seems to be beyond
the scope of our resources. Seen from a satellite, it will appear no larger than
a straw. A straw is all it really is. The only difference is the scale. The
project itself is scaleable if the will to proceed is present.
The Roman leaders had their doubters when they envisioned aqueducts.
Aqueducts must have seemed even more far fetched and impossible than a GGTSE
sounds today. But they ignored the nattering nabobs of negativism, and so should
we. The proof of the triumph of the open minded over their conservative
counterparts is visible today, two millenniums later. Their aqueducts still
stand.
As went Rome, so went the world.
* * *
Copyright Jennis Strickland Pot. Falls, Va. April 2006 Strickland.jack@gmail.com
