h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Edward

The question of throughput obviously would be important, but (a) we do have potentially quite an extensive canal network, and (b) what I have suggested would quite naturally move more water during winter and spring than other times, and (c)it should not be beyond the wit of man to stop it from over-flowing.. more overspill reservoirs. Moreover Mol's suggestion might have some merit. Why not stretches of plastic pipe floating along the canal system to supplement the flow?

It makes me think of an earlier "crazy idea" of mine about the canals, which will horrify environmentalists.. Everyone knows that water is the most energy efficient way to move things, but the canals were too slow- though the system was also sabotaged by the railway companies.

But with modern technology we could run pipes the length of stretches of canal that would keep them permanently frozen the way that we can now create ice-rinks on demand. The Dutch know all about that too, which is no doubt why for so long the Dutch dominated the sport of speed-scating. Canals would then become new "super-highways" for getting to places fast.

Cass

I've skated on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. I like that idea.

Although I suspect that highways will remain the super-highways for getting places fast.

Trouble is, frozen canals aren't going to move the actual water about very fast, what with it being in a solid state. Or do the speed skaters all carry a couple of litres each and pass it on in a relay-fashion?

Mol

The other solution is desalination, but it comes at a cost. London opened its first plant last year at a cost of £250m - it can supply 1 million users: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/thames-water-desalination-plant

Are there economics on the canal/pipeline options?

Polders!

Mol

Yes.. The frozen canal idea predated my concern over moving water around. I probably thought of it around the time of the Oil Crisis of 1973 when we were all looking at ways to use energy more efficiently.

And perhaps it might only be suitable to connect rather different places - nb. ones with very little need for locks at all, like perhaps across my native Upper Thames Basin. Are there some canals between the Chilterns and Birmingham that could be used for a High-Speed sledge link that might be cheaper, faster and more economic than HS2?

Back to water I noticed on another article today that some academic had identified a viable use of a disused canal tunnel that could be used to bring water from the Severn system into the Thames.

By the way was there coverage in the UK of the ceremony last year when President Sarkozy launched the huge Civil Engineering project to build a new Ship Canal from Lille- that old Flemish version of Venice- up to the Scheldt Estuary and the Rhine?

Cass

>>a High-Speed sledge link

Now we're definitely talking!



No - not seen any canal coverage today - although I knew of the project. It came up in conversation with some shippers a while ago.

'We are all Keyensians now', eh?

Icy North beat be to mentioned desalination: as I understand it there are breakthroughs to be made and technologies to be developed in that field so the price will come down. It's certainly more feasible than a giant canal system that will only move water very slowly.

Actually my water idea was all inter-connected with a concern over the energy implications of climate change.

People had been talking about desertification and the world drying up with global warming. But driving through bitterly cold June or July rain in France, it seemed to me that, if the world is getting warmer and the sea-level is rising, then three things would be likely to follow (a) in a warmer world with a larger surface area of water the amount of global evaporation would increase (b)the water vapour would have to rise higher in the atmosphere before it condensed back into water, radically changing the nature of precipitation to more tropical patterns, and (c) the transference of heat-energy from sea-level into the Upper Atmosphere would radically impact upon activity in the Upper Atmosphere with things like the Jet Stream.

All of this seemed to imply more turbulent and unpredictable weather, and less of the weeks of drizzle that one of the water-board representatives has called for. I have already fitted bigger gutters to a part of my roof for here in London we get torrential rains which we did not get before, and such rains on dry ground produce dangerous floods in drought-ridden parts of Africa.

In the long run, however, I speculated that the changes listed above might actually operate rather like the opening of the valve in my car cooling system,triggering "Global Cooling.

Since more energy is being carried up into the Upper Atmosphere which, as things expand with heat, is presumably increasing the surface area of the Earth's interface with Space- therefore the rate at which energy can be lost into the immensity of Space should increase.

Just more of my perhaps crazy thoughts.

Cass

I suspect that you may need a more complex model of climate the the simple feedback mechanism of a valve. We're talking supercomputer stuff here. Brain the size of a planet.

As for desalination- I have no problem with that, but why spend vast amounts on sea-water when there is rain being captured and channelled on every roof in a huge conurbation like Greater London? We are metred here, and we already have two French wine-barrels, two 100 litre rain-butts, and a couple of bath size tanks in which we store rainwater for garden and general use. And they have been overflowing for weeks.

Part of the problem is the Victorian obsession with doing everything on a large scale, as I always think on the basis of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon idea of centalisation and large-scale economies.

Instead of making homes viable places for people to live and work the focus has been all on fitting them into giant economic and social mechanisms. Perhaps each house should deal with its own sewage and waste- as in some US projects- and then the sewers and drains could be cleaned and adapted to collect rainwater.

Cass

Tell you what - you save up all your shite for a few months and come back and tell us if it works.

Why not combine the need for high speed rail, a water network and a means of getting electricity generated in the North (e.g. wave pawer off North coast of Scotland. Combine the three and maybe get some financing from water & electric companies to build a combined railway, canal and power lines. Not on new virgin (as in not yet built upon, nothing to do with trains!) routes, but alongside existing motorways. Maybe get the railway to carry freight shuttles, thus roping in money from freight industry.

Edward the Bonobo

Well it used to work before Joseph Bramah invented the water-closet.. Before then in houses with gardens and gardeners, sacks of top-soil were carried up to the loft, and then the toilet pan was "washed" with this soil, which took "everything" down a down-pipe, where it piled up. The gardener then took it away and dug it into the garden.

But I saw on TV more modern systems being developed by US survivalists years ago in which everything was contained and pure decomposted material came out the other end.

Cass

Is there not some sort of rule that doesn't allow you to keep rainwater for more than a couple of weeks, for fear of harbouring bugs which then find their way into the soil if used to water gardens?

Such plans are not new...

Canal Drifter has put a bit on his blog about it.
http://boaters-web.com/canaldrifter/2012/02/20/water-transfer-the-grand-scheme/
which references a 1942 scheme
http://mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/1942%20Pownall%202.pdf

Pheroneous

Well for a start no-one is going to start investing in schemes involving Scotland in that kind of way as long as not only there is the independence issue, but also the idea being commonly expressed of Scotland as an alien " place apart" and looking for a "special relationship".

I am not sure whether even Mr Cameron's hi-speed rail-link will even get to the Scottish border until things are more settled and a whatever kind of Scotland we are going to have has committed itself to building its own section.

Moreover I think that strategically speaking such a monopoly system would be seen as making the country too vulnerable.. A recent programms on the Special Services featured one of their first ventures was against a railway viaduct in the Balkans which all German munitions passing to North Africa had to pass. With a handfull of operatives and some Balkan resistance fighters they managed to "take it out."

And those benefitting from such a concentration on their doorstep would complain about having all the "pain", while those in other parts would complain about having none of the gain.

Cass

>>I am not sure whether even Mr Cameron's hi-speed rail-link will even get to the Scottish border until things are more settled and a whatever kind of Scotland we are going to have has committed itself to building its own section.


Well I do keep saying this. The game plan is:

- Feck off big sub sea turbines in the Pentland Firth (one of the world's strongest, most reliable currents)

- Maglev railway from Glasgow/Edinburgh to London.

- Southeasterners who've lost their jobs due to the collapse of the London finance market commute north as migrant labour to where the money is.

Oh - and let's add a hi-speed sledge link along the Forth and Clyde Canal. Hell - why not.

Pheroneous

I have not heard of such a rule. But I do know that garden centres sell chemicals to add to the rain-butts to prevent such things..

That seems to me to defeat the object, and my systems (as I suggested in my over-flowing reference) do not allow the rainwater to stagnate, as they normally do with the commercial rain-trap systems, but get freshly renewed at each rainfall. The only live things we have ever had came from our early use of our genuine French wine-barrels for even though we washed out the residues of crystallised sugars it seemed that the life-force in the wines still had some vitality.

And whoever dug up the document from the Second World War time, it took me back to my father's days in the post-war British Road Services which was conceived as part of a joined up Nationalised transport system..

It was perhaps with this in mind that in an essay c19623 I suggested that goods could be packed in large containers that could be lifted by cranes off and on to lorries, barges, railway trucks and ships saving on the man-hours needed to transfer such loads. I believe that "Containers" had already been invented and have subsequently revolutionised the world.. Some of my ideas are not so crazy.

As I wrote in a song "To wake To wake. Perchance to dream. And dreams may yet come true".

Cass

PS. Edward I had missed one of your posts.. I did not envisage whole floating cities- just annexes- Docklands ?

Edward the Bonobo

I will keep just repeating "Darrien Scheme".. Good ideas are just good ideas. It costs very little to speculate in thought. But those who have only their lives to speculate with are more wary- or even "canny".

Cass