Turning the Tide: 
Greening the Sahara Desert:
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Technical Overview
Proposal is to irrigate the Sahara with desalinated water from the Atlantic Ocean.  

About the Sahara Desert:

 The Sahara Desert extends from coast to coast along the northern portion of the African 
continent. It is the largest desert in the world. The Sahara can be divided into three regions: 
the rocky yet fertile plains of the west, the mountain ranges of the central plateau, 
and the arid sand dunes of the Libyan Desert in the east.

The entire desert, is about 1,610 km (1,000 mi) deep and about 5,150 km (3,200 mi) wide 
from east to west. The total area of the Sahara is almost 9.1 million sq km (3.5 million sq mi), 
of which some 207,200 sq km (80,000 sq mi) consist of partially fertile oases.

The Sahara Desert is massive, almost the same size as the entire USA.
Irrigating the entire Sahara will effectively cause a reversal in Global Warming and instantly provide vast amounts of food for the starving millions in North Africa and other 3^rd World countries.  

The project proposal is to take oil initially from Chad & Mali, piped through Ghana, to the Atlantic coast. To build reciprocal Water Pipe-Lines to carry desalinated water back to the desert, to irrigate large tracts of the Sahara Desert.
Using Global Unity’s ‘Environmental Technology & Commonsense’ (ETC) Salt and other minerals can be extracted en-route: avoiding the necessity to build expensive ‘Desalinisation Plants’.
The cost of the project will be offset by the sales of the oil produced.    
The proposal is not intended as a means of producing yet more oil, but as the old adage would have it: ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!’
The technology can also be applied to many other areas of the Planet that are experiencing rapidly increasing water shortages, such as the Amazon Jungle, UK, USA and virtually every other part of the Planet, especially other arid Deserts that make up about ¼ of the Earth’s landmass.

“Sahara Water Company”:      
Recent weather forecasts have predicted that 2007 will be the ‘driest’ year since 1930, which some say, triggered the global financial collapse, more commonly known as the ‘1930s Depression’, which lasted up until the outbreak of WW2.

What will ‘break’ the next ‘Global Economic Collapse’?
Global Unity proposes to set-up the SWC initially in the UK, to build water-pipelines, to supply desalinated water for UK Domestic & Commercial users.

Similar new pipeline technology will be developed and tested for use in the Sahara-Mali Project. Basically, this will entail using ‘small bore’ plastic piping, based on the theory that ‘Overall’ it takes less energy to pump & siphon multiple small bore masses of water than a single large bore mass of water.     
(Ref: Holistic Philosophy: the sum of the individual parts is greater than the sum of the whole)

  It will also be easier and much cheaper to build and maintain than using current ‘Oil’ pipeline technology.
Salt and other valuable minerals can be extracted en-route using Solar & Wind generated Cathodic devices.
Pumps can be driven by electric motors, derived from Geothermal, Solar, Wind & other sustainable energy sources.

Click the Photos below to Enlarge

Rock drawing of animals in the Sahara circa 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. 
Courtesy of www. calacademy.org  

In the 1970s I worked as a geophysicist in Mali, Chad, Niger and Algeria, I had an opportunity to do an independent Magnetometer survey over a substantial area of the Mali Desert, which indicated that there could be considerable amounts of oil in this area.

The general consensus at the time, among governments and oil companies, was that it was not economically viable to extract oil from the landlocked sub-Saharan countries, due the high-cost of piping it over neighbouring coastal countries' territory.

It was also considered that there was not enough oil in the Sahara Desert to justify any serious production attempts.

CHAD and NIGER oil production.
Over the intervening 30 years, countries such as Chad and Niger (adjacent to Mali) have started producing oil, which is piped through Cameron. From my own experience and from recent unofficial reports, I believe there are substantial quantities of oil in both Mali and Upper Volta.

There are several articles on the Internet that explain the current economic situation in these countries in greater detail.

Chad: Oil And Gas Industry
http://www.mbendi.co.za/indy/oilg/af/ch/p0005.htm      

Chad - Cameroon Pipeline
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chad_cameroon.html      

Energy Security: Home Page.
http://www.iags.org/es071603.html      

West African Oil: Hope or Hype?
http://www.iags.org/es071603.html#1       

Mali Economy
http://www.appliedlanguage.com/country_guides/mali_country_economy.shtml     

Upper Volta Economy
http://www.exxun.com/BurkinaFaso/e_ec.html      

Cote d'Ivoire
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/cdivoire.html     

Niger Oil: Indians in Niger! Source: Iran Daily
http://www.tralac.org/scripts/content.php?id=3470        

WATER Pipelines:
The object of the 'Sahara Project' is not necessarily to produce more oil, but more of a means to use the oil as a trade-off and an opportunity to build reciprocal water pipelines from the Atlantic into the Sahara Desert, possibly through Ghanaian and Cote d'Ivoire territory. The purpose of these water pipelines is to irrigate the entire Sahara Desert.

It might be an easier project to get the Gulf States to carry out a similar proposal in the Arabian Desert, and fund similar projects in the Sahara. Unfortunately this concept will probably raise many political-religious issues.

With the development of these new oil fields there will be considerable interest from America, for the usual cynical reasons, but also from India, that has a new, Muslim orientated geophysical industry. See attached-links

Cowboys and Indians:
The great drawback with American involvement is their primary objective to dominate the entire world's oil market. They are certainly not interested in providing any form of water supply to the very needy Sahara Desert.

The Indians on the other hand would be very happy to put in water pipelines but then would quickly follow it by possibly importing millions of Indian refugees into the newly reclaimed land, which will probably very rapidly end up a bit like down town Calcutta.

Halliburton Involvement: 
Sticking in the US Dick!?! 
I had thought about asking Halliburton, (Dick Cheney's American Nightmare) to become involved, partly through contacts in other environmental projects. I have since decided this is not very good idea as it would directly involve the US 'Sticking their Dick into this scenario', which would undoubtedly produce very adverse publicity.

French Connection.
The current thinking is to involve the French government into this project, for various good reasons. Most of the Sahara states including Mali are ex-French colonies and still connected to the CFA. The French generally have a very good rapport with their ex colonies and are very environmentally aware, although some may disagree with this opinion.

The French public, through their 1901 law, "the Formation and Associations" have an excellent democratic system that allows the public to operate independently from government and political interference. The concept of the French 1901 law could also be introduced into many other countries including the UK.

Ref: Associations: On the Welcome Page.

French Foreign Legion
Some time ago the French government propose to setting up a "Foreign Legion Styled: Peacekeeping Force" along similar lines to the original ‘French Foreign Legion’, as a standing force to combat terrorism and provide medical and emergency services in disaster areas. This would also provide a much-needed training "boot" camp for many juvenile delinquents currently rampaging around the UK. It would also provide a substantial Technical & Scientific workforce for construction of water pipelines and the initial agriculture infrastructure in the newly ‘Greened Sahara Desert’.

Global Financial Collapse
Many Etherealists (Spiritual believers), which include many Environmentalists, believe there is a possibility of an imminent global financial collapse, followed shortly after  by a 2-5 year Global winter caused by several super volcanoes erupting, or other geological events.
(Mayan Calendar predictions around 2013)

Many people believe that the Sahara desert was caused by human activity in deforestation and overgrazing by animals etc. A recent and possibly a more accurate theory, is that the Sahara Desert was caused by the last Ice Age.  As ice built-up in Europe, just north of the Sahara, it attracted warmer moisture from the surrounding warmer climatic zones, the nearest being in North Africa. This effectively dehydrated everything in the Sahara Desert, which has never had an opportunity to recover to its original climate.

This 'Sahara Project' would be a very useful and timely project to revert the Sahara desert back to its original climate. Within about five years or less, of Greening the entire Sahara Desert, a new, natural climatic zone will have been rapidly created which should eventually function automatically as moist air is pulled in from the surrounding Atlantic and Mediterranean sea.

The new and Green Sahara will be a vital factor in mankind's survival through any Global Winter. If however the prediction is wrong, regarding the Global Winter, the newly 'Greened Sahara’ Desert will not have been wasted. It will continue to reduce the 'Global Warming' dramatically by absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide and heat from the atmosphere.

The Meridian Rally
A Global Unity 'friend', a director of a small UK based oil company, currently resurrecting old oil wells in Nigeria, has put forward a proposal to run an international rally up the Greenwich Meridian, from Accra, Ghana to Greenwich, England, along similar lines to the Paris-Dakar rally. The difference being that all vehicles should use alternative energy sources.
The Greenwich Meridian runs through Ghana, Upper Volta, Mali, Algeria, France and onto Greenwich, London: or possibly the other way round. The Meridian Project could be a fantastic promotional vehicle for all the above proposals.

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e-mail. globalunity2000@aol.com

he following images of the Sahara desert are by courtesy of: www.OneWorld Magazine Deserts.htm