Skip to main content

Egypt Part II

So it seems that my criticism of Egypt hit a cord of sorts among my thousands of readers (no not really not even remotely true).  Egypt's fundamental problem is that they are cramming a 111 million population in a habitable land mass the size of Switzerland.   

There is a solution, as usual, that involves using other people's money, but it's not entirely insane, it would be to build a 100-kilometre canal between the Mediterranean Sea and something called the Qattara Depression.  The depression sits about 60 meters below sea level. The project would create a large water mass and evaporation, which could fall back as rain, would provide arable land in which to settle some of Egypt's population.   

While not entirely crazy it has never been done.  It is unclear how long it would take for rainfall to create arable land, and even if the arable land would be near the lake.  The cost is anywhere between 100 and 150 billion dollars.   

Is it a crazy idea, yes and no.   Elon  Musk's boring company with two machines could dig out a 100-kilometre tunnel in less than 10 years (The boring company's longest tunnel is 3 kilometres long).   The problem is the money. Egypt is already broke, and no one knows if flooding the Qattara depression would work (Note:  In 2023 the Egyptian government asked an engineering firm to ascertain the possibility).  The engineering is not really the issue.  The problem is the cost and return.   

This is the world's dilemma now.   Like Japan, China has a population aging problem.  Not only are children not born, older people stick around longer, and need care.   Japan is rich and is increasingly relying on robots (eg to turn patients).  China is poor.   This is an extreme version of a common challenge for the entire planet (except Africa).   

Like China, Egypt doesn't have the resources for the project, more importantly with an average birth rate of 2.67, it would only delay the inevitable.  An unsolvable tragedy, there will be food riots within the next two years.   





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more