Why Salt May Be a Better Investment Than Gold

Why Salt May Be a Better Investment Than Gold The Demand for Salt Skyrocket Beyond Belief Lex Loeb Contributor Network . Before modern mining techniques, particularly those employing diesel fuel, salt was a very valuable and expensive commodity. If the earth actually does prove to be warming, regardless of the cause, salt may again become an expensive luxury. It is true if the earth truly did get warmer that humans and animals would necessarily need more salt in their diets. Cruise liners in tropical climate zones apparently stock more salt than cruise liners in cooler zones. Salt does seem sweet to taste in hotter climates than cooler ones but that is not the main reason the cost of salt could go up. A warmer earth might make it faster to crystallize and dry salt from sea water but if the polar ice all melts the proportion of salt in the oceans could decline unless rock salt buried on continents starts to dissolve into the oceans. Again that is not the main reason salt prices will go from being common and cheap to luxurious and expensive. Salt was more expensive than gold in Africa for centuries. In ancient China and Rome salt was currency. The world "Slave" comes from the amount of salt it took to buy a slave in the Ancient Roman Empire. King Herod of Jerusalem could only afford to go about his major building programs because of a salt monopoly from the dead sea region. This is why his Masada Fortress and Palace overlooked the dead sea and the route from which the salt was extracted and shipped though out the Roman Empire. Salt is the only reason Roman Emperors gave a damn about controlling the Judea province. Salt also created the basis for the rise of Venice as a banking powerhouse as just a few financial examples. The reason why salt can become ever more expensive in our modern world went supplies seem limitless that salt can be used to control the ocean currents and hence the weather. If global warming becomes a fact salt can be used to reverse some of the unfortunate consequences. See what Woodshole Oceanographic instituter's page has to say about fresh water piling up at the poles when sea ice melts . Salt water is denser than fresh water and if it piles up at the surface the gradient of salt is lower at the surface threatening the regular ocean currents. This is how salt can be used as an environmental engineering tool. The main reason would be to actually work to prevent the most alarming effects of global warming which would be global cooling. The theory goes this way: If the poles melted the fresh water would flood and float over the denser cooler salt water preventing the sinking of heavier saltier water from forming the world wide conveyor currents such as the gulf stream that make it possible for areas as far north as Britain and Sweden not to be frozen solid. The theory is more believable than the greenhouse gas thesis as it can actually be tested. When Ice forms on top of salt water the ice is frozen as fresh water releasing the salt into the sea water below. This is a known fact. Water saturated with more salt is heavier and it causes the heavier water from the surface which is actually warmer than the water below to fall and creates a convection draft with a syringe like force. Once the heavier salt saturated water falls it displaces water at lower levels and it has to move out of the way . This is thought to be the main cause for the oceans convection conveyor system. The result is that warmer waters from the tropics get sucked into the displacement reaction and this has the effect of moderating global temperatures both north and south. The theory is if the fresh water floats on top and prevents the down draft from occurring the heat conveyor system could shut down and with out warm water arriving from the equatorial areas then the ice caps would expand. There are a few problems with the thesis as it could just be that the conveyors might reverse in direction but that still might end up freezing the polar regions more than other wise but then you worry about the feed back reactions because if the polar areas expand than the convection down draft of salt water begins again. If the theory does act to warm the poles threatening the next ice age that would destroy most of the world's industrial countries, then the only solution to prevent that occurrence would be to pulverize as much salt from rock salt mines and brine harvesting areas as possible , put it on ships and spray the powder over the surface of the ocean water along the arctic circle. It may not take a lot of salt to do it but it would definitely cut into the existing supply network. This could be one of the best reasons Dow Chemical Corporation should be in a hurry to buy Rolm and Haas because of it's salt production holdings. Because the theory can be tested in the open seas it actually should be tested. Use of salt at particular points along the polar caps and in the tropics can actually be used to control the world's weather with computer modeling in advance. A few ships loaded with powered salt could undermine the worst of the Typhon's, and Hurricanes and redirect them to where their forces might be wanted and away from places where they would cause harm. The idea of seeding clouds with chemicals is much less potent technology than just using salt assuming that the theory is true that ocean water, warm or cold will sink when it's salinity increases. It it worked it would be possible to redirect ocean currents where we wanted them and to increase their velocity. It would be possible to make it rain on the Sahara desert and the Gobi without altering the environment elsewhere. What would that be worth if the Sahara could be turned into Savanna again and populated by plants animals, people and agriculture? It will make salt worth a fortune and the cost of table salt would sky rocket. Salt for melting ice on roads would probably need to find an alternative. There has been a lot of silly talk about environmental engineering such as dumping iron fertilizer on the open seas to produce more photosynthesis but that theory requires that the carbon dioxide part of global warming thesis be correct . It seems to be the weakest link in that theory . Salt gradients in water that cause initial forces allowing major whole ocean conveyor effects seem like a more powerful means of selecting how, where, what and when is heated and cooled. Wondering where the source of the information comes from that salt gradients in the oceans can change currents and the major conveyors of heat? It comes from the global warming theorists themselves. The theory says that as Ice melts at the poles due to global warming that the fresh water that is actually lighter in density and floats over the sea water temporarily can cause the polar upwelling to stop . upwelling is caused by ice forming that takes salt out of salt water and leaves it in higher concentrations in the sea water below the floating sea ice. This causes a down draft of heavier water that energizes the up welling of deeper waters and is theorized as the main cause of the major ocean water heat conveyors. So it is not a big leap of science to note that the artificial human use of salt at the ocean surface can have the exact same effect. The beauty of using salt artificially is that it can be introduced anywhere to cause water to become more dense at the surface and to subside. This is logic. Logic makes science a tool and not just a careful means of making observations and predicting future observations. There is even more evidence including evidence from smaller less open salt water lakes and seas including the Mediterranean Sea. I am willing to bet that governments already are considering my salt solution to modify the earth's climate since the value of a lot of the earth's great tracts of wasteland can be reclaimed and hurricanes might be diverted just by adding salt to the ocean's surface. It does sound like science fiction. As a global warming skeptic , I think it is less fiction than that theory is. Salt added to sea water does not appear to cause any ecological harm since it naturally occurs where ice is frozen on top of the surface of the oceans. Source: http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?cid=9986&pid=12455&tid=282 .