My friend and I built a machine in our backyard whose capacity of converting seawater (or any water) into pure water beats the rates given by the Seawater Greenhouses 16 fold. I did my calculations based on our rate of 15 gallons per hour and converted over to their claim of 1,000,000 gallons of water a day over a land mass of 10,000 hectares. My machine is about 6 square feet and runs off the sun (plenty in the deserts) and even works at night because the water stores a lot of heat.

Anyways, I’m trying to get a hold of the “trio of entrepeneurs” to pitch my idea. Anybody know who they are and how to contact them? I emailed Patton, but no response. They must be pretty busy. I need to hurry up before they spill a lot of money on something and then realize there is a cheaper way.

Thanks,
Shant

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

Far from being doomed to failure, each individual attempt at this project builds pieces of success for the next team to learn from. Witness the failure of the first Panama canal, versus the success of the second. Far too many rejected the project as impossible in the first place and reveled in the failure of the first French attempt. Yet this attempt discovered where the weak planning points were, and showed others the ultimate road to success.

With a reminder that both Panama Canal attempts surely cost over 30,000 lives, one cannot help but side with human history, and so also with these dreamers. Support them, even through their failures, I say. They will eventually get it right, but humanity will never learn how unless the brave fools try. And try they will, _because_ they are unreasonable. Perhaps those who get in their way are the real fools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk

It\\\’s a nice fantasy, and \\\”greening the desert\\\” is good to think with. But expect no practical solutions. What the small populations in the Sahel really need is micro-management of erosion and desertification, biochar soil enhancement, small reforestation efforts, irrigation infrastructures and water storage technologies.

The EU has its \\\”Green Wall for the Sahara\\\” project (Google it), and there is DESERTEC (integrated with desalination and agriculture) to bring electricity from CSP to Europe, but these plans are decades old and too difficult to pull of because of political and social reasons. They\\\’re also way too costly.

Greening the desert will forever remain a concept.