It is hard to know what to work on. Some schemes are fun and would be profitable, yet they point towards the ruin of Nature.
Of course, we are well on our way to ruin anyway. Getting rid of weather may be just another inevitable step. The elimination of clouds, rain and storms by a dense global network of water extractors will be the biggest step of progress since the introduction of blacktop. Silence is the answer to the messages we send to outer space. Civilizations are there, but they say nothing. A glimpse of Earth and they turn away.
We do the same thing. You don’t answer a filthy panhandler trying to get your attention. Smelly, wild eyed, when he aggressively raises his voice you move away, not to him as he demands. We call and call to the stars, but fail to reflect. Existence is a business with profits and losses, activity set to purposeful ends. Look at our blue green planet, what is wrong?
The earth is wreathed in clouds, one-half is hidden behind clouds. Life runs on sunlight, but we are one-half shut down, running at one-half speed. It is time for us to think over who we are and who we want to be. Why put up with cycles of clouds, storms, and precipitation? Why allow our atmosphere to have tantrums? Couldn’t the sun shine all day, everyday? If not, why not? Our weather is not productive, and let’s face it, no one wishes to communicate with losers. We certainly won’t attract the investors that can upgrade a planet’s operation. Along with our clouds, which we fail to remove, think of the confusion we court with songs and rhymes. Clouds and rhymes have no place on a well managed earth. One gets in the way of the sun, the other in the way of sense. What would successful, busy beings think?
Water can be taken from the atmosphere before it forms into clouds and rains. A dripping air conditioner takes water directly from air by dropping temperatures below dew point. The same cycle on a large scale could provide water for household or farm use. The cycle does not rob water, for the water is soon returned by evaporation to the atmosphere. It simply raises temperatures a bit and suppresses maximum humidity by grabbing the water before it can form clouds. Much ingenuity will be drawn to this since once embarked on, free water (rain) will be relentlessly removed by economic competition, for everyone must have water.
Desiccants such as glycol and silica gels are able to pull water from the air without lowering temperatures. Such substances give up water when heated and the water condensed.
Genetic engineers can design plants that have two sets of leaves, one green to grow, the other black to wrest water from the air, drinking it at night, dripping it out in the sunlight. The advantages of escaping the cloud, storm, rain cycle are enormous. Every day is sunny. There are no tornadoes, thunder storms, hurricanes or cyclones; of course fresh (rain-washed) air will be only a memory. The unwashed air, arriving with an indoor smell from other continents will be hazy, grimy, tired, and the un-irrigated land dusty, grimy and as strange as the dry dirt hidden far under a house. There will always be plenty of water for those who can pay for it. Remnants of native flora and fauna will linger in the tail waters that drain along old river courses. The landscape, free of all erosion by precipitation, nevertheless will be irritated by frequent dust devils. Their smell, like that from beating old rugs, will rise every sunny afternoon and linger into the mild evening.
Once the world citizens are trapped in the struggle to earn something that was once free, the transformation will be smooth and certain. Equipment that wrings water from the air is valuable in deserts. Each installation, suppressing humidity, enlarges the desert. As water wrung from the dry air makes the desert bloom, it also makes the desert grow and drives more people to find their water from the air. Thus, the desert must grow bigger yet.
In a few decades cloud cover would drop from 50% to 35%; in a century, less than 10%. Of course, the new cloudless climate will be fragile. The public, particularly those who manufacture and sell the desiccants, will be constantly anxious. The clear sky and great profits for all who live in the carefully desiccated atmosphere, will never be more than a few days away from the drama, turmoil and inefficiency we suffer from today’s weather. Blight on genetically altered plants, or sabotage of the huge glycol fountains (that smell like spilled anti-freeze) and mounting humidity would return the old clouds, storms, the lightning, rain and hail.
A few rainstorms with the escape of millions of gallons of valuable water in self-condensation would be dangerous. A carefree mood might infect the public. Scooping up buckets of water for nothing, seeing grass grow by itself on hillsides; all this could be intoxicating to people not remembering hurricanes, lightning and tornadoes. After a day of fresh air, settled dust and wet soil, the people might want more, might riot and destroy the valuable desiccators leased by Water, Inc and Wet Worlds. If the advanced civilizations never did notice our progress, never did come to invest, the public might forget to be ashamed of the clouds and storms that mankind had worked so hard to get rid of, and even start singing in the rain.
Source: Steve Baer, “Sunny Days Ahead!” Date from handwritten note on scan: July 2000. Text extracted by OCR from four-page scan.
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