Chapter 304: Fighting with Heaven for Life

Chapter 304: Fighting with Heaven for Life

Chapter 304: Fighting with Heaven for Life
Sichuan Province.

The edge of the snowy plateau in the west.

Around Glacier No. 1 of the huge Hailuogou Glacier, several engineering airships hoisted huge foam silicon components one by one, and then, under the guidance of ground staff, accurately placed the components in the mountains on both sides of the glacier.

This project is different from other large-scale engineering buildings.

The specific difference is that the structures of this project have no foundation and not even geological survey has been done.

The reason why no foundation was built and no geological exploration was done is that this is a new construction plan that can only be realized if some buildings are based on foam silicon materials.

Because structures made of foam silicon components are very light and strong, they can be built without foundations or exploration.

To use a metaphor, the foam silicon structure in front of us is like a large lid on a glacier.

Therefore, the foundation is actually a burden, because building the foundation means that the entire structure needs to be rigidly connected to the foundation. Once the glacier undergoes geological movement, it will inevitably squeeze and erode the foundation, causing the entire structure to slide to a low-lying area.

Instead, the foundation construction plan was abandoned. Since the entire structure is fixed in place by fitting in with the irregular contours of the surrounding terrain, it will be more stable.

At this time, nearly one-third of the area of ​​Glacier No. 1 of Hailuogou Glacier has been covered by foam silicon structures.

These structures are just the skeleton, on which many construction workers are installing retractable silicon carbide photovoltaic films.

About one-fifth of the skeletons have been covered with silicon carbide photovoltaic film.

These photovoltaic films are now generating electricity continuously, while at the same time coating the base film of the silicon carbide film white, and its reflectivity to sunlight is almost the same as that of ice.

Obviously, this project is not only for photovoltaic power generation, but also for protecting glaciers and stabilizing the climate of the snowy plateau.

You know, there are currently four large ice areas in the world.

They are: Antarctic ice sheet area, Greenland ice sheet area, Arctic ice sheet area, and snowy plateau glacier area.

Affected by extreme weather, these ice caps and glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate.

To a certain extent, rising sea levels and global temperatures will result in increased ocean evaporation, increased rainfall in some areas and drought in others.

Judging from the current general trend, due to its topographical reasons, East Asia will become a region where floods and droughts will occur alternately in the future.

So how can we suppress the negative impact of extreme weather?

A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences thought of the photovoltaic airship that had been tested in Chongqing before. The sunshade plan derived from the photovoltaic airship can indeed change the local microclimate. If the area is large enough, it may be able to directly change the global climate.

The core of this team is Dr. Wang Ding, who is currently at the construction site of Hailuogou Glacier.

Putting down the telescope, Dr. Wang Ding turned his head and looked at the project manager Chang Xinghua: "Manager Chang, when can the project be completed?"

"When can it be completed?" Chang Xinghua thought for a moment, then replied cautiously: "It depends on the supply speed of the Yecheng Component Factory. If we continue at the current speed, Glacier No. 1 will only take about two months to be completed."

"Two months? September too?"

"almost."

"I understand." Dr. Wang Ding continued to look at the glacier in the distance.

This project was a major undertaking launched just to verify his idea, so he was naturally very concerned about it. Fortunately, the official authorities were quite supportive, and compared to projects like the parasol project which were full of uncertainties, the artificial glacier project was not very risky.

Because the areas covered by artificial glacier projects are where glaciers exist, or where glaciers existed before, these areas naturally reflect sunlight.

Moreover, since there is no need to lay foundations and conduct geological surveys, the overall cost of the project has been greatly reduced, and is only about one-third of that of ordinary reinforced concrete buildings.

Of course, those photovoltaic films can generate a lot of electricity every day, and at the same time they can keep the glaciers warm, thereby reducing the scale of glacier melting in summer. Once it rains or snows in winter, the photovoltaic films will all shrink, allowing rain and snow to accumulate on the glaciers, continuing to increase the ice reserves of the glaciers.

You should know that the entire Hailuogou Glacier currently has a total of about 330 billion cubic meters of fresh water.

But this is not the peak of the Hailuogou Glacier. At its peak, the glacier contained about 1080 billion cubic meters of fresh water.

In other words, in order to restore the Hailuogou Glacier to its peak, at least 750 billion cubic meters of fresh water must be added.

Wang Ding naturally did not dare to hope that the Hailuogou Glacier could return to its peak in a short period of time, but at least it could not continue to melt at an accelerated rate.

Although the accelerated melting of glaciers will increase the annual runoff of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River in a short period of time, this increase is unsustainable and will probably only last for a few decades.

If the current trend continues, it is estimated that the Hailuogou Glacier will completely disappear in less than a decade. Once the Hailuogou Glacier disappears completely, the consequence will be a rapid rise in temperature on the snowy plateau. The snowy plateau, which already has little rainfall, will soon fall into drought, leading to accelerated desertification of the plateau.

At the same time, the continuous reduction in the area of ​​glaciers on land will cause the ground to continuously absorb heat from sunlight, which will continue to accelerate global warming.

Therefore, at this stage, the artificial glacier project of Wang Ding’s team is aimed at protecting domestic glaciers and restoring the scale of glaciers. At the same time, it uses photovoltaic films with good coverage to reflect sunlight and achieve an effect similar to that of glaciers in regulating the local climate.

These glacier-covered areas naturally reflect sunlight anyway, so using photovoltaic films as a replacement can kill two birds with one stone.

On the one hand, it protects the glacier, allowing it to continue to expand.

On the other hand, it has restored the local climate to a better stage.

The rainfall in Sichuan Province in July this year was very heavy, about 27% more than in previous years.

This resulted in abundant water in the Yangtze River and even local overflows. To put it bluntly, floods occurred in some places.

At this time, if the meltwater from glaciers on the snowy plateau continues to increase, the flood storage pressure on the Yangtze River will continue to increase.

Therefore, if the melting rate of glaciers can be controlled, this can further regulate the seasonal flow of the Yangtze River.

The artificial glacier project of Hailuogou Glacier is currently just an experimental project. If the test results this year are good, the authorities are prepared to invest large-scale in the construction of this artificial glacier.

Anyway, with global warming, annual rainfall in the eastern and even northwestern regions of the country is increasing. This is actually a good time to cultivate glaciers.

After all, there is plenty of water in the downstream, so the amount of meltwater from the upstream glaciers can be reduced or even eliminated.

Anyway, the entire Northwest region has completed the upgrading and renovation of the tap water and sewage systems this year. After the renovation, the per capita domestic water consumption in the Northwest region is almost the same as that in the South. It has even increased the ecological water replenishment share and the agricultural water share.

Industrial water consumption in the Northwest and North China regions has decreased instead of increased, because the authorities announced a comprehensive industrial upgrading plan in March this year.

The plan requires all companies that need water to install industrial wastewater recycling systems or to transfer polluted water to a dedicated sewage treatment plant network.

Among them, chemical companies, heavy industrial companies, textile companies, and food companies are key monitoring targets. If they fail to install professional equipment and connect to the sewage treatment plant's pipeline network, the consequence is that the factory will be forced to shut down.

Of course, in fact, many companies have taken the initiative to build internal sewage recycling systems. The reason why they are so active is mainly because this system can maximize the utilization rate of industrial sewage.

Especially for those enterprises that normally use a large amount of water, after switching to a sewage recycling system, the water cost can be reduced to about 10% to 20% of the previous level.

If it can reduce costs and increase efficiency, which factory would not be willing to transform?
Therefore, as these reforms continued to advance, in just over four months, the scale of industrial water use in the North China Plain has dropped by about 48% overall. If the reforms are further promoted, the overall scale may eventually drop by about 90%.

This change means that if the local area is willing to invest heavily, it can even develop an industrial scale about ten times the previous one.

But this is obviously impossible.

You must know that at this stage, the domestic industrial production capacity is already making other industrial countries around the world groan. If the scale is expanded tenfold, even if other industrial countries completely stop production and lie flat, Seres' industrial production capacity still cannot be absorbed.

Of course, if the consumption level of the entire population of the world is similar to that of the domestic per capita consumption, then a tenfold increase in industrial production capacity can barely be absorbed.

The problem is that it is almost a pipe dream for the entire world's population to achieve Seris' per capita consumption power.

Moreover, increasing industrial production capacity tenfold is not just a matter of water use. The country can barely meet the electricity needs, and building materials can barely be increased by about tenfold.

However, it is almost impossible to increase the production capacity of raw materials such as steel, plastic, aluminum and copper needed for industrial products by ten times at this stage.

However, even so, Seres' overall industrial potential at this time is almost three times that of 2025.

That’s right, the industrial potential of Seris in 2028 is about three times that of Seris in 2025.

The main reason is that the incremental growth brought by Hailufeng Company is too huge.

Senzu soybeans can replace traditional soybeans, and at the same time increase the overall potential of biofuels, textiles, building materials, and special components, replacing part of the uses of oil and gas, steel, aluminum alloys, cotton, and staple foods.

The rubber grass currently planted on a large scale in the southern part of the desert has replaced a large part of natural rubber and synthetic rubber, as well as part of artificial sweeteners and part of plastic.

Sugarcane also replaces sugarcane and sugar beets, and also replaces some plastics (white sugar is used to make polylactic acid plastic).

Foam silicon material replaced part of the reinforced concrete.

As a result, the traditional production capacities that were replaced began to overflow on a large scale.

Even though Australia is now clamoring to increase taxes on iron ore, it has always been a lot of noise with little action.

Because they discovered a terrible situation, that is, although the steel production capacity of Seris' steel companies is still maintained, it is mainly based on cheap export steel, and domestic steel consumption is declining.

Although the export competitiveness of Seris' industrial products has declined slightly due to the appreciation of the Chinese yuan, Seris' technology is now in a huge leading position.

For example, the reduction in water and electricity costs, and the reduction in pollutant treatment costs have led to a continuous decline in domestic regional production costs.

In addition, due to the appreciation of the Chinese yuan, although the wages of most domestic companies have only increased by about 2025% compared to the average median in 2.3, the purchasing power of the Chinese yuan is soaring.

In particular, the purchasing cost of food has dropped by about 47% compared to three years ago.

The purchasing cost of industrial products also fell by about 31%.

The cost of water and electricity for residents is also falling.

In this way, it seems that wages have not increased much, but the purchasing power of wages has increased by about 35% on average.

In this way, domestic companies have achieved industrial upgrading without increasing wages and working hours.

Australia's iron ore industry is not completely monopolized. After all, the new iron ore discovered in Serbia in recent years has an overall scale of about 121 billion tons. In addition to the remaining iron ore reserves of about 155 billion tons and scrap steel resources of 152 billion, the steel mills have their own iron ore reserves of 17 billion tons. The total steel resource reserves in the whole society are 455 billion tons.

Although it is not as high as Australia's current iron ore reserves of 779 billion tons, Serbia is currently the world's second largest iron ore reserve country.

If Seris is pushed into a corner, the worst that can happen is that they will break up. The country can completely use materials such as foam silicon, silicon carbide, silicon bean silk, boron bean silk, etc. to replace a large part of the steel use, and then squeeze out a part of the remaining steel production capacity as export products.

As long as domestic prices remain low, it will be difficult to expand the scale of steel products in other regions.

Even since the beginning of this year, domestic steel companies have lowered their prices, causing prices in the international steel market to remain sluggish.

Countries like South Korea, Japan, and Sweden, which also have relatively large steel production capacity, feel very uncomfortable.

You know, after decades of hard work, domestic steel companies are almost on par with foreign ones in terms of technology, and are even in the leading position in some areas.

For example, flash iron smelting technology allows domestic low-grade iron ore to be used efficiently, while the production cost is almost the same as that of steel mills using traditional Australian ore.

Faced with this situation, Australia and several major iron ore suppliers dare not raise prices and can only engage in a war of words.

As for India, which once clamored to become the new generation of "world factory", its domestic grain production capacity has dropped by about 14% due to extreme weather this year, and is now almost on the brink of famine.

In order to deal with the possible spread of leaf blight, India has urgently forced the promotion of the planting of cassava, potatoes and sweet potatoes.

Obviously, India is very clear that given their relationship with Seris, it is basically impossible to buy "friend grain", and Lucia has been cheated by India many times. They will not accept India's request to pay with rupees, and even US dollars are not willing to be accepted by Lucia, nor are they willing to expand the scale of grain exports.

Therefore, Tianzhu has been very low-key recently, and its previous high-profile style has subsided.

After all, if a food crisis breaks out, with their population of 14 billion, plus there are several populous countries around them, it would not be like dancing on a powder keg, but dancing on a nuclear bomb.

Faced with such a huge crisis, it is no wonder that India no longer talks about the new generation of the world's factory. If it cannot overcome it, let alone becoming the world's factory, it is more likely to become the world's graveyard.

(End of this chapter)