Libya's Vast Pipe Dream Taps Into Desert's Ice Age Water

The New York Times ^ | March 2, 2004 | PATRICK E. TYLER

[realpatriot]

What is the term for the sinking of the ground when something is extracted from below? Sub-something or other. Anyway, maybe Libya is rapidly converting itself into a lake (the size of Germany?)

[AM2000]

Subsidence?

[ServesURight]

Why don't they just build a pipeline from the Mediterranean Sea?

[AM2000]

Maybe desalination's too expensive?

[VOA]

What is the term for the sinking of the ground when something is extracted from below?

Same thing can happen to oil drilling platforms at sea.
I saw a short film about a Phillips Petroleum platform (in the North Sea, IIRC)
that had the ocean-floor sink enough after pumping out a lot of oil that the
company had to put HUGHMONGOUS hydraulic jacks on the platform legs...then jack up
the platform so that the raging waves wouldn't destroy it.

[StopGlobalWhining]

Pollution and burgeoning populations stress Earth's water resources

This may be for subscribers to Science News only, but it has a terrific photo that vividly illustrates ground subsidence.

Withdrawal of groundwater in California's San Joaquin valley has caused the ground to subside by more than 9 m. Signs in this 1977 photo, taken near Mendota, show where the ground surface was in 1925 and 1955.

U.S. Geological Survey

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[AM2000]

wow!

[wideminded]

An article I read about the Great Manmade River Project several years ago speculated that in fact the pipes were intended to convey troops and WMD's around Libya and might have nothing to do with water. I do not recall the source but it was in a mainstream publication, perhaps the NYT or US News. Sounds like this was wrong.

[StriperSniper]

Great pic!

Thanks for posting.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I had not heard of this.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[jimii]

no way, desalination is one of the cheapest way countries in the region get fresh water.
It may not be enough for farming & irrigation though,
One there project is complete there will be plenty of the best quality water available

[SunkenCiv]

A Blast from the Past.

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks!

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?1827

The ability of a sophisticated radar instrument to image large regions of the world from space, using different frequencies that can penetrate dry sand cover, produced the discovery in this image: a previously unknown branch of an ancient river, buried under thousands of years of windblown sand in a region of the Sahara Desert in North Africa. This area is near the Kufra Oasis in southeast Libya, centered at 23.3 degrees north latitude, 22.9 degrees east longitude. The image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture (SIR- C/X-SAR) imaging radar when it flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on its 60th orbit on October 4, 1994. This SIR-C image reveals a system of old, now inactive stream valleys, called "paleodrainage systems."

[Mike Darancette]

the extensive pipeline and pumping system that bores into the earth to draw down nonrenewable reserves of fossil water

I'll bet once you process the water it is just like any other water. It seems that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi did at least one thing of value to his people.

[Moonman62]

Water vapor is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Where's the outcry?