Ninety per cent of the World's Energy Needs from the Desert?

[NJCher]

Carl Hodges is growing salicornia, a crop nourished by ocean water that holds the potential to provide food and fuel to millions.

These are the kind of stories I love--someone with vision, tenacity, brains--who sizes up what's happening and comes up with a solution. Melting polar ice caps? This system will take advantage of it.

Carl Hodges is a scientist who had a top spot in the Environmental Research Lab at the age of 30. It was there that he started his life's work--finding ways of making farming work with seawater. This innovative system that he has in mind (and that he has put into practice already) wastes nothing.

This is a fascinating story but it is not without its criticism, as you will find out on the second page of the story. There is a slide show that accompanies it, also several diagrams.

The old man who farms with the sea

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-fi-seafarm10-2008jul10,0,1419955.story

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That's because salicornia has another nifty quality: It can be converted into biofuel. And, unlike grain-based ethanol, it doesn't need rain or prime farmland, and it doesn't distort global food markets. NASA has estimated that halophytes planted over an area the size of the Sahara Desert could supply more than 90% of the world's energy needs.

The plan is to cut an ocean canal into the desert to nourish commercial ponds of shrimp and fish. Instead of dumping the effluent back into the ocean, the company would channel it further inland to fertilize fields of salicornia for biofuel. The seawater's next stop would be man-made wetlands. These mangrove forests could be "sold" to polluters to meet emissions cuts mandated by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Global Seawater already has a small refinery to process salicornia oil into biodiesel fuel, which Hodges believes can be produced for at least one-third less than the current market price of crude oil. Leftover plant material would be converted into solid biofuel "logs" that he said burned cleaner than coal or wood.

NASA is interested in testing fuel from Hodges' halophyte. So are cement makers and other heavy industries. Retired executives from some major corporations are so encouraged by the potential that they are helping Global Seawater raise capital and focus on generating returns for investors.

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Cher

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Intriguing.

[enid602]

2. Salton Sea

Sounds like something they could do near the Salton Sea in California.