Highest Rated Comments


Vasastan124 karma

3 billion acres is roughly the area of South America. You do realize that finding that much previously unplanted acreage is completely impossible, right?

Vasastan113 karma

I have a mild form of it - I recognize family and friends, but I will not recognize an acquaintance on the street even if I've met him or her ten times before. I also mistake unknown people for acquaintances.

There is an interesting counterpoint to the disability - some people are "super recognizers" and can identify someone instantly that they've met (or seen) only once twenty years ago. All traits lie on a bell curve, I guess.

Vasastan110 karma

Yes, in this case a dream of a new, unplanted continent.

Vasastan14 karma

So, assuming you can plant trees in the desert, napkin calculating with figures from the linked article and assuming that drip irrigation of trees requires 4 m3/acre/day, this would need 60 000 new desalination plants and power installations delivering 2x12 TW/day (2x b/c night production is 0, otherwise assuming 100% efficiency). The solar panels would cover around 29 million acres (roughly 1.5x Tunisia, and 170x the current world yearly production of solar panels).

Desal plant cost ~$18 trillion, power plant cost ~$36 trillion. World GDP is ~$80 trillion. I like trees, but one percent of this goal would still be a moonshot project.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/14/megadroughts-and-desalination-another-pressing-need-for-nuclear-power/