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Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

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Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#111

Post by anigbrowl »

time_to_smile wrote: post #60
pier25 wrote: post #26

We're going to need a lot of desalination plants powered by clean energy.

Problem is that everything needs X powered by clean energy, which means we need both a lot more clean energy and, if we want to slow/stop climate change, to massively reduce our use of fossil fuels... which requires a lot more clean energy. We also, so far, globally have not shown any evidence of replacing fossil fuels with green energy, only supplementing them.

Tidal power is a thing. Tidal power for ocean desalination eliminates the need for transmission infrastructure. Desalination has so many obvious upsides that I'm increasingly suspicious of the people insisting it's too difficult to contemplate, none of whom contribute anything of value to the discussion.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#112

Post by otikik »

Dennip wrote: post #49
pier25 wrote: post #26

We're going to need a lot of desalination plants powered by clean energy.

IIRC These can have thier own host of problems because the 'brine' byproduct doesn't mix well back into the ocean and can settle/pool and create marine dead zones. Although suppose that will be less of a priority if people are thirsty.

That always looked like a no-problem to me. Can't the brine be put in a pool and let evaporate instead? You get drinking water from the desalination plant and salt.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#113

Post by dylan604 »

Dennip wrote: post #49
pier25 wrote: post #26

We're going to need a lot of desalination plants powered by clean energy.

IIRC These can have thier own host of problems because the 'brine' byproduct doesn't mix well back into the ocean and can settle/pool and create marine dead zones. Although suppose that will be less of a priority if people are thirsty.

Instead of pumping the brine into a pool, pump it into a ship. As the ship sails, it slowly releases the brine at a rate much more tolerable. When the tanks are 50% empty, turn around and come home. lather rinse repeat.

of course, a renewable powered ship

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#114

Post by MandieD »

nathan_compton wrote: post #22
phpisthebest wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>it's that is is staggeringly expensive to do so. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and with Necessity also comes scale, and with scale comes less cost... Desalination has been expensive because it is not necessary, the second it becomes necessary I bet you will see the costs drop.. If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick

I think many of us working in software can be overconfident about how easy it is to scale things, probably because of the peculiar progress in the improvement of integrated circuits and the commensurate increased availability of raw compute for not that much more energy. But many processes (including desalinization, as far as I understand it) are energy bound. It is really hard to make exponential progress when a pro…

I think many of us working in software can be overconfident about how easy it is to scale things, probably because of the peculiar progress in the improvement of integrated circuits and the commensurate increased availability of raw compute for not that much more energy.

You may have neatly (and politely) pinned down why we computer folks are so arrogant about how easy problems outside our direct field would be to solve, if only we were the ones “allowed” to solve them.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#115

Post by anigbrowl »

paiute wrote: post #38
_Microft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might be just because their comment is borderline useless - it is so condensed that one can hardly make any sense of it. So what did they want to say? Is it "Science, it works?" like in XKCD comic #54? Or are the quotes around science the actually important thing, casting doubt on it? It's hard to tell because they did not bother to spend a few seconds to actually write it out. Beside that there is more…

The intention was to get people to read the main thesis critically. That quote is sort of a tell about the quality of this paper, and the more I dig into this paper the more it confirms this is isn't good science.

Maybe if you had articulated your objections up front instead of posturing, your subthread wouldn't now be sitting at the bottom of the page.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#116

Post by ethbr0 »

sangnoir wrote: post #91
peteradio wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Netherlands bound to flood as ocean levels rise?

The Netherlands been claiming land from the sea for centuries and some areas are already well below sea level - I don't think they'll neglect their dykes any time soon.

Since the 1400s; ref polder: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_the_Neth...

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#117

Post by abracadaniel »

ooz16 wrote: post #106

Genuine question here. What would be the expected change over the same period? The abstract says 53% of lakes saw declines...does that mean 47% saw no change or gains? If so, that seems pretty close to net stable to me globally. Or frankly what we would expect to see (some gains, some losses) Also, this is stated later in the doc: "Between 1984 and 2015, a loss of 90,000 km2 of permanent water area was observed by sa…

That sounds reasonable. The water would have to go somewhere, but that alone could be catastrophic regionally. Cities are built around water sources, so having them move on timescales of human lifespans is worth worrying about.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#118

Post by RajT88 »

Dennip wrote: post #49
pier25 wrote: post #26

We're going to need a lot of desalination plants powered by clean energy.

IIRC These can have thier own host of problems because the 'brine' byproduct doesn't mix well back into the ocean and can settle/pool and create marine dead zones. Although suppose that will be less of a priority if people are thirsty.

There are commercial salt harvesting operations which use such brine. No need to flush it back in the ocean.

If you have ever flown into SFO you have seen the reddish pools. (By the way the red color comes from Brine Shrimp, which presumably there is also use for)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salt-ponds-san-francisco

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#119

Post by blacksmith_tb »

RajT88 wrote: post #118
Dennip wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC These can have thier own host of problems because the 'brine' byproduct doesn't mix well back into the ocean and can settle/pool and create marine dead zones. Although suppose that will be less of a priority if people are thirsty.

There are commercial salt harvesting operations which use such brine. No need to flush it back in the ocean. If you have ever flown into SFO you have seen the reddish pools. (By the way the red color comes from Brine Shrimp, which presumably there is also use for) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salt-ponds-san-francisco

Which is good, but may not potentially scale up - if we were desalinating 5X, 10X as much seawater, it seems unlikely we could make use of that much salt, and would have to bury it or dispose of it some other way.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#120

Post by RajT88 »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #119
RajT88 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are commercial salt harvesting operations which use such brine. No need to flush it back in the ocean. If you have ever flown into SFO you have seen the reddish pools. (By the way the red color comes from Brine Shrimp, which presumably there is also use for) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salt-ponds-san-francisco

Which is good, but may not potentially scale up - if we were desalinating 5X, 10X as much seawater, it seems unlikely we could make use of that much salt, and would have to bury it or dispose of it some other way.

People are considering using salt as a building material now:

https://www.archdaily.com/994769/could-salt-be-a-material-of...

When you have a practically free resource which is waste from a large scale industrial process, cottage industries to make use of the free waste sometimes pop up. It's a solvable problem.

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