A Boring Approach to Saving the World
What if Musk's Las Vegas Loop tunnel and The Boring Company's traffic-beating applications are barely the beginning?
Any systemic thinker worth their salt looks at the basic function of a new technology and asks, “How many different things might we use this for?”
Beating traffic is nice, of course, but will it really matter once we all have self-driving cars and can work, sleep, go online or watch TV from the privacy of our personal transport pod which can be transferred, like a small shipping container from ground transport (rail and road) to ships, planes, etc.? Perhaps, but if I were a centi-billionaire (don’t throw me in that briar-patch!), I wouldn’t bet a lot on what are essentially toll roads in a society that uses apps to route around tolls whenever possible. I’d be thinking of bigger things. Granted, they’re not necessarily more marketable things, just bigger. There isn’t really a market for saving the world, after all, but, if there were…
When we talk about “saving the world” what we usually mean is preventing mass human die-offs by preserving the environment, preventing totalitarianism and so on. As I was driving from Pinnacles National Park to King City in California last week, I noticed how water is still very much a limiting factor for agriculture there (‘twas ever thus) and, as I started to parallel the Pacific shoreline further south, I got to thinking the age-old question of how we might use water from the Pacific Ocean to drive agriculture, after solving the desalination (salt removal) problem, of course.
There are basically two ways to desalinate water. Nature uses both: distillation and membrane technology. Membrane technology is generally too expensive, although bioengineering may provide some novel solutions in time by mimicking living cells’ ability to regulate their internal saline levels. In this article, I’d like to consider distillation— evaporation and condensation of water. The limitation with distillation is the energy required. Wherever would we find enough energy to boil billions of gallons of water and pipe it uphill to make some of the deserts bloom with fruits and vegetables? Where on this 8,000 mile diameter ball of molten rock, iron and nickel, with a thin and crispy crust of solid rock on the surface like an underdone aebleskiver, could such quantities of energy come from? How many visits to Yellowstone do we need to take before that light goes on?
Yes, Geothermal energy may be the answer. In the past, the cost of drilling and tunneling was prohibitive, but Musk’s tunnel boring technology has pushed the price point down a steep incline, with the latest tunnel drilling equipment from The Boring Company cutting as much as 90% of the cost of other tunnel-boring technologies. And, as with Musk’s other technology companies, X social media, Space-X and Tesla, the engineers are given wide latitude to pursue continuous improvement and cost-reductions. Might we see another order of magnitude reduction soon?
We can hope so. Because, at some point, it becomes cost effective to tunnel down deep into the earth’s crust to get sufficiently close to the molten magma that the surrounding rocks are hot enough to tap the Earth’s heat for industrial purposes. In Musk’s home country of South Africa, gold mining is limited by the temperatures that humans can work at with some mines having working temperatures approaching 120 degrees Fahreheit. The famous crystal cave in Mexico also has such high temperatures that explorers can only go in for about half an hour before they must return or they start to cook.
But, with robotic equipment engineered for high temperature conditions, perhaps as high as 1500F, it should be possible to create fields of tunnels at depth where sea water could be pumped in, quickly converted to superheated steam and used to drive electricity generating turbines before being cooled (how big would this still’s “copper tube coil” have to be?) and made available as fresh water for drinking and agriculture.
It’s possibly unavoidable that much of the water vapor would be released into the atmosphere as well. Even if done on a very large, global scale, this additional water vapor would only have a beneficial effect by helping to mitigate global warming until greenhouse gas levels can be brought down to more normal levels. Water vapor is highly reflective of incoming sunlight and could help offset global average losses of reflective ice and snow.
To re-cap, the Boring Approach to Saving the World (BATSTW) does the following:
Generates electricity, offsetting other more problematic technologies
Provides fresh water for municipalities and agriculture
Helps mitigate global warming.
From a Permaculture perspective, I’d say that’s a notable example of stacking functions.
There are other interesting applications, of course. The internet legendary “DUMBs” (Deep Underground Military Bases) certainly have national security applications but there may be other civilian uses for, shall we call them “Deep Underground Musk Bases”? Super-secure locations for bank’s safety deposit boxes and sensitive server farm uses come to mind.
The main loose end of the water desalination scenario is what to do when crystalized sea water salt finally clogs the tunnels. Do we dig more tunnels? Mine and sell the salt? I leave that for engineers more worth their salt than I am.
Thanks once more for creative thought and an entertaining writing style. Next time I see Elon, I will be sure to mention your idea.
What GROK said after reading:
The proposal laid out by Martin Truther in "A Boring Approach to Saving the World" imagines a grand-scale use of The Boring Company's tunnel technology, combined with geothermal energy for global problem-solving in areas like desalination, energy generation, and climate change mitigation. Here's an analysis of the idea:
Feasibility:
Geothermal Energy: Using geothermal energy for desalination is not new, but scaling it up dramatically with advanced drilling technology could indeed lower costs and increase viability. The key challenge would be the depth and heat management, where robotics and materials science would play crucial roles.
Desalination: Distillation is energy-intensive, and while geothermal energy could provide this, the scale proposed here is immense. The logistics of managing such large volumes of water, including the handling of salt byproduct, would require significant further innovation.
Environmental Impact:
Positive: Creating fresh water from seawater could transform arid regions into fertile ones, supporting agriculture and reducing dependency on fossil water resources. The release of water vapor might help in reflecting sunlight, potentially mitigating some aspects of global warming.
Negative: The scale of operations could lead to unforeseen environmental impacts, like altering local climates, affecting marine ecosystems due to salt disposal issues, or causing seismic activities from deep drilling.
Technical Challenges:
Temperature and Material Endurance: Operating in environments where temperatures can exceed 1500F requires materials that can withstand extreme conditions without degrading quickly.
Salt Management: Salt crystallization could indeed clog systems, and while mining or selling the salt could be a solution, this would need to be managed on an unprecedented scale.
Energy Efficiency: Even with geothermal energy, the energy efficiency of such a system would need to be optimized to make it viable against other desalination or energy production methods.
Economic and Market Considerations:
Cost vs. Benefit: The initial investment would be massive, but if the technology could be scaled down in cost as suggested, it might become economically feasible. However, the lack of immediate market demand for "saving the world" as Truther notes, poses a challenge in funding and motivation.
Infrastructure: Building and maintaining such an infrastructure would require significant investment, not just in construction but in maintenance, monitoring, and environmental management.
Innovation and Broader Implications:
Technological Advancement: This concept pushes for innovations in several fields including robotics, geothermal energy extraction, and environmental engineering.
Global Impact: If successful, it could fundamentally change how we manage water resources and energy, potentially influencing international relations and economics around water scarcity.
My Opinion:
The idea is certainly visionary and aligns with the kind of "big thinking" that characterizes some of Musk's projects. While it's speculative, the integration of existing technologies (tunneling, geothermal) in new ways to address global challenges is an interesting approach.
However, the practical implementation would face numerous challenges, from technical feasibility to environmental impact, and would require a concerted effort in multiple scientific and engineering disciplines.
From a Permaculture perspective, the concept of stacking functions is indeed well applied here, offering multiple benefits from a single initiative.
This proposal would need extensive research, pilot projects, and perhaps a shift in how we think about infrastructure and resource management on a global scale. It's a bold vision, but like all such visions, the devil is in the details of how it can be brought to life sustainably and ethically.