Good, now we can put off thinking about conservation yet again! Our great-grandchildren will have plenty of time to think of something.
Carbon credits today, water credits tomorrow.
Soon to be followed by shale fracking for water.
Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
21–30 of 41 posts
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#22hmmm, the ocean's pretty heavy. i wonder what extracting an incompressible fluid from the seafloor's support structure will do to weaken it. will they fill it with saltwater instead? i guess it shouldnt be much different than oil drilling :\
> will they fill it with saltwater instead? Push CO2, get back carbonated water? Then it is $1/liter + carbon credits for what doesn't come back up. :)
Bizarrely, that could be immensely dangerous. There have been a few lakes with large quantities of dissolved co2 that have critically released that gas when jostled, either by vibration or temperature shock (of a couple degrees leading to mixing). There's no telling if it would happen in the ocean, but if currents are slow, a cascade of gas rushing to the surface could be pretty bad.
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#23I guess there really is water at the bottom of the ocean.
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#24Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground.
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#25Regarding criticism that this isn't renewable and delays the move to renewable resources: At the rate we are damming rivers, we will destroy many river ecosystems. This new potable water source seems less harmful than dams and could be a bridge until the energy costs of desalination are low enough. If this discovery spurs investment in desalination (since this is simply cheaper desalination due to the lower salinity)…
We're already on the path to extremely cheap energy with solar and wind. Shouldn't we continue to drive down the cost of power by ramping up more investment in these energy source? Nuclear as well, as long as its managed properly.
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#26hmmm, the ocean's pretty heavy. i wonder what extracting an incompressible fluid from the seafloor's support structure will do to weaken it. will they fill it with saltwater instead? i guess it shouldnt be much different than oil drilling :\
Upon reading the headline I too immediately wondered, if the fresh water is sucked out, wouldn't the ocean collapse the roof of the space?
Other posters here are saying, replace it with salt water or CO2. The CO2 idea was answered. As for the "swap seawater for fresh" idea, as soon as you put a significant amount of sea water in there, you no longer have fresh water coming out! The only way to get a freshwater supply from this would be to take all it out before replacing, but then you have the "supporting the ocean bottom" problem in the interim.
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#27Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#28Regarding criticism that this isn't renewable and delays the move to renewable resources: At the rate we are damming rivers, we will destroy many river ecosystems. This new potable water source seems less harmful than dams and could be a bridge until the energy costs of desalination are low enough. If this discovery spurs investment in desalination (since this is simply cheaper desalination due to the lower salinity)…
>until the energy costs of desalination are low enough.
Really? You think desalination is the ultimate goal? I much prefer free, ecosystem-provided desalination (aka rooftop rain-water harvesting).
As for agricultural water use, I highly suggest picking up a copy of P.A. Yeoman's classic Water For Every Farm. It details how proper runoff management, evaporation control, and correctly-scaled earthworks can provide reliable water availability with near-zero energy inputs [other than the sun, of course].
As for dams, it's not as simple as "all dams are bad". Oversized dams that are out of scale with the local hydrology are the problem.
But, I guess some people would prefer to re-invent the Earth's water cycle!
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#29Well, this is about the time we see crazy theories about some crazy civilizations living inside the planet with all this fresh water and heat freely available to them....
Re: Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans
#30Regarding criticism that this isn't renewable and delays the move to renewable resources: At the rate we are damming rivers, we will destroy many river ecosystems. This new potable water source seems less harmful than dams and could be a bridge until the energy costs of desalination are low enough. If this discovery spurs investment in desalination (since this is simply cheaper desalination due to the lower salinity)…
>until the energy costs of desalination are low enough. Really? You think desalination is the ultimate goal? I much prefer free, ecosystem-provided desalination (aka rooftop rain-water harvesting). As for agricultural water use, I highly suggest picking up a copy of P.A. Yeoman's classic Water For Every Farm . It details how proper runoff management, evaporation control, and correctly-scaled earthworks can provide re…
I agree that not all dams are bad. The real issue with dams is the scale. We are on track to dam the majority of the world's rivers over the next 50 years, and this will have significant effects on river and coastal ecosystems.
>> I much prefer free, ecosystem-provided desalination (aka rooftop rain-water harvesting).
I agree; however, this is not an infinite supply. Taking water from rivers is effectively a form of this and it is lower cost than many other "free, ecosystem-provided desalination" since the water has already been collected into a river due to gravity and land contours. As we remove water from these 'free' sources, we are depriving an ecosystem of that water.
The worst case scenario is something like the Aral Sea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea