I’m not proposing this as an actual solution, it’s just a dumb idea. But if we dug a huge, wide hole at the bottom of the ocean, or maybe widened the Mariana Trench or something, could that extra space make the sea levels drop enough to keep the land from flooding?
Possible yes, practical no. Effectively you would need to build a new sub-continant to have an appreciable impact on sea level. That said, you don’t need to dredge from the low point in the ocean, all that matters is displacing solid material from below sea level to above sea level, so the best option would be to find a shallow sea with an existing archipelago of islands and build up from there making it a deep sea with the islands connected as a continent. Alternately you could go after reefs, despite the collateral damage, with the great barrier reef being the obvious choice, essentially pump up dredged sand from the surrounding ocean bed onto the reef to make new land, the reef has the advantage of being very shallow and stabilized with lots of surface area, so good for making lots of land if you don’t mind being the architect of an ecological apocalypse of unprecedented proportions.
The energy required to lift that amount of rock from the seabed to above the surface would be impractical. But good news! It doesn’t need to be from the bottom of the sea, just a part below the desired waterline. So we can dig these big holes you want right off the coastline and then, as a bonus, use the materials as landfill to raise or extend the current coastline. Still wildly impractical, but much less so than digging at the bottom.
Sounds like… Dykes. See: The Netherlands.
It’s “dikes” in this case, and yes, you could use the stone for dikes or levees, but since most of it would be sedimentary rock I’m not sure how well it would work for the purpose: most sedimentary rocks are rather porous.
Oh whoops, thanks for the correction!
Still more practical than musk rat going to mars though.
I say we still do that one, though. As long as he goes, personally.
With no return trip
With the failure rate SpaceX is hitting with their Starships, that problem would likely take care of itself.
To lower the surface of the ocean 1" you would need to move 1.1 billion cubic kilometers of dirt/rock. That’s 12 million MT Everests worth of material.
If you spread this evenly across the entire surface of the land, it would raise it by 7".
Is it probable? No Is it possible? Technically yes? But that’s purely hypothetical.
Sourse: Duck duck go AI and bad math so take it with a grain of crack
take it with a grain of crack
This is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time and I will be stealing it
The Irish version would also work here.
“Take it with a grain of craic”
1" = 2.54 cm
7" = 17.78 cm
You could dig a hole to the other side and wait till all the water has drained.
The big problem is that the bottom of the ocean is a very very very long way down.
Better to take the Dutch solution and build dikes.
There is no reason to build it at the bottom it would be equally effective build anywhere underwater
The weight of the removed soil would sink the land.
Not if it was deposited on bedrock, or even if it wasn’t if it was done in a way that works with the currents. There are many examples of artificial islands being built successfully.
I don’t see any issues as long as you carted away all of the material that you excavated. You could even build up the land to make it taller and harder to flood.
But unless you did it without burning any fossil fuels, then the additional greenhouse gases would cause more ice to melt. And you’d run the risk of fucking up ocean currents and weather systems which, again, could worsen global heating…
On second thoughts, maybe hold off on that plan for now
Another way is to electrolyze the water into h and o. Some hydrogen will escape the atmosphere and not be recombined. Nonreversible process so gl with that.
That’s… A lot of added gas. Pre-space-loss, it would probably feel something like Jupiter’s atmosphere
Sure lol
Well yeah, but you’d need to dig a crazy huge hole for that, probably the size of multiple mountains
A majority of water in the planet (magnitudes larger than all the surface oceans) is within the earth so digging a whole would not fix anything. Besides the sea levels aren’t rising.
Wrong. Now, shut up.
Peons never surprise me with their lack of understanding https://iere.org/where-is-most-of-the-water-on-earth-found/
Research and research some more on other sites, publications, scientific papers. More than 5 times of the earths water is underground. Also you’ve never saw anyone step outside and say “oh no, the water is up to my shoes now because the sea levels are rising” this even goes for people who live on beachfront properties.
From your own link:
While approximately 97% of Earth’s water is in the oceans
🤦
That’s setting aside that physics being physics, it doesn’t matter how much water is underground since removing mass from underneath the ocean means the water in the ocean will fill the empty space created and the resulting water level will lower. How did groundwater even factor into this discussion? Sheesh.
Because a hole would be dug underground lmao duuh
What. Do you not get the concept of volume? Forget your sites and papers and studies, you need to go back to grade school.
I’ll write that in my notes. You didn’t even know about the ground water yet you’re so sure about this hypothetical. 🐑
Argh.
Look, imagine you have an aquarium. You fill the bottom half up with the solid of your choice. Gravel, sand, clay, whatever. Then you fill up the rest of it with water. You’ve created a simple model of the ocean, including the groundwater you’re talking about
Now dig out a hole in the middle and toss the sand you dug out into the trash. Your water level will lower, because you’ve removed some mass that was occupying some volume and the water will fill that empty space. You’ve successfully lowered the ocean level. It doesn’t matter how much groundwater there is, it’s totally irrelevant to the question OP posted.
If you don’t believe in sea levels rising, you’re utterly moronic. Not another word you type holds any validity.
What a buffoon!
Just curious, does that amount of stupid ever burn? Because when I see that amount of ignorance I saw “the stupid, it burns”.
