Similar weird are the snow making machines in the Alps and other regions. Thousands of units with water from many artificial lakes on top of the mountains to create snow for tourists.
Sadly the lakes are often lower down the mountain which requires a lot of not very environmentally friendly pumping to get it up. Here's one set up https://www.skiroundtop.com/how-snowmaking-works
Really? I write paragraph after paragraph of "insightful" commentary which languishes at 1 point, but a completely irrelevant comment that took no effort to write two levels down from another completely irrelevant comment that took no effort to write gets 8?
I thank you all for your recognition of my genius in this instance, but I clearly have no idea how this works.
> Really? I write paragraph after paragraph of "insightful" commentary which languishes at 1 point
This has happened to me on numerous occasions. Write something deliberately and painstakingly researching given field 0 rep. Point obvious meme reference. +14?!
The aspect of Dessert Sand not being a suitable alternative to Beach Sand was news to me.
I had a half baked notion that, given the long term downturn for Oil and the increasing shortage of Sand, the Middle Eastern countries could diversify into selling Dessert Sand apart from Black Gold. Guess it is not meant to be.
Not suitable for beaches but it's probably still suitable for industrial use, which is much, much larger than the beaches. It's just that it's not yet cost effective to haul sand halfway around the world
Unfortunately, desert sand is specifically not useful for one of the largest industrial uses: Concrete. The weathering of sand in a wind-blown environment reduces the sharp edges and makes it significantly less strong. The ideal in concrete sand is as sharp and as new as possible. It is also ideal that it be dust-free, since dust and other very fine particulates also negatively effect strength.
Surprisingly, not really even that. As pointed out in the Wired article The Deadly Global War for Sand [1]: "Desert sand generally doesn’t work for construction; shaped by wind rather than water, desert grains are too round to bind together well."
It's too bad the factories are stationary on land and not mobile. If factories were built on large boats, maybe old container boats, they could just move closer to the resource. It would still be very expensive to move such a bulk, but the costs would be known and could be evaluated against the other costs and profits involved.
To extend the idea, space travel might simplify this - if we build factories on very small asteroids, we could possibly move the whole asteroid across the solar system, to be closer to a resource.
In some uses it depends on what the sand is made of. Specifically, silicon dioxide (silica or quartz) is a chemical feedstock for the making of cement. I don't know what minerals compose desert sand.
The sea near where I live throws up huge amounts of sand each winter storm. It just keeps coming. The owners of the bay beach are give it away for free. They just cant get rid of it quickly enough. I take a few dump trucks worth every year.
So from my own subjective experience there seems to be a lot of sand in the sea. Are we really running out? Or is this just alarmist journalism?
I've heard in the news here in South Africa the prices of sand are going up and we are running out of sand, so I think this has a real basis in reality.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 30.1 ms ] threadhttps://youtu.be/CAPfwwb59uY
"Not like here. Here everything is... soft... and smooth." makes creepy advance on woman who's spent the whole movie shutting him down
shudder
I thank you all for your recognition of my genius in this instance, but I clearly have no idea how this works.
This has happened to me on numerous occasions. Write something deliberately and painstakingly researching given field 0 rep. Point obvious meme reference. +14?!
I had a half baked notion that, given the long term downturn for Oil and the increasing shortage of Sand, the Middle Eastern countries could diversify into selling Dessert Sand apart from Black Gold. Guess it is not meant to be.
And sprinkle on Baked Alaska for a delightful extra crunch!
[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/03/illegal-sand-mining/
To extend the idea, space travel might simplify this - if we build factories on very small asteroids, we could possibly move the whole asteroid across the solar system, to be closer to a resource.
So from my own subjective experience there seems to be a lot of sand in the sea. Are we really running out? Or is this just alarmist journalism?
http://www.ejolt.org/2014/08/building-an-economy-on-quicksan...
The original documentary, Sand - Die neue Umweltzeitbombe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEWqs1wJuLc