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Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

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Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#171

Post by aurizon »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #65
aurizon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great lakes water is simply channelled to the Atlantic. It would take an engineering project to divert 10-20% to the west. No hard tasks, just the creation of a sloped canal. In desert areas you could cover it with solar cells - also land based ones, to provide the pump energy over hills/mountains etc. Tunnels can be drilled where mounts are high. This water added to the west would revive it from the death spiral…

When you say "No hard tasks" I assume you mean that the engineering is relatively straightforward. The surface of Lake Michigan is around 650 feet above sea level. Go 50 miles due west and you are at 800-900 feet elevation. The average elevation in Kansas is around 2000 feet above sea level! If you go southwest, it is naturally downhill - the existing rivers prove that - but you run into the problem that the water is…

We are familiar with pipes, pumps, siphons, canals. etc. It is engineering of a routine, but massive scale to perform a major shift like this. The question is cost? Water can be pumped with solar/wind energy. With major area on their way to become parched deserts - except for water. What is the Value of all California crops every year - that can go to zero every year versus the one time cost of a major water project = a spend once, plus maintain = get a permanent 'annual California crop every year' Water project, by their nature are long lived and low maintenance.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#172

Post by itslennysfault »

dncornholio wrote: post #9

I think to call it a sea it must be huge and salty. The arguments against this in the article is that Baltic sea is "pretty fresh", so it actually is salty. They also say the Dead sea is a lake, which is logical because it's tiny. If anyone can point to a sea that's not salty, I'd be happy to know. Until then, these are just lakes! Which is fine, because a sea is not better than a lake, and vice versa.

I think... you should've read the article.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#173

Post by Scoundreller »

Balero wrote: post #91
Scoundreller wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely only a little bit would actually be piped. You’d just stop water from entering one watershed and send it into another and let gravity do its work. You would lose more to evaporation; but that happens to water in pipes too if they’re above ground. Would love to see the numbers. It’s fun looking at rivers from the Rocky Mountains in California that don’t make it to the ocean anymore. I recently proposed a t…

Good point about the river re-direction. > I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable. Nordstream is 759 Miles. Newfoundland to Ireland is 1900 Miles!

Only problem is you gotta get the gas to the east coast on the americas, and that’s where a lot of the demand is already.

Though it makes you wonder what kind of gas fields might exist along the way. As it goes, we exploit the oil and flare the gas. Pffft.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#174

Post by cmrdporcupine »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #165
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, hi neighbour. I'm up north of Waterdown on 6 acres. Dundas is where we do most of our "town time." The archaeology dig I was talking about was @ Cootes on the RBG lands.

Go figure. Guess I'm preaching to the choir! How long have you lived in this part? I caught in another comment that you're into poetry. Do you frequent The Printed Word here in town? We only moved into Dundas a little over a year ago, and I finally made it into that shop and could easily lose a lot of money there. A recent haul of mine included a first edition of The Old Ways by Gary Snyder—and there are many more ge…

It will be 10 years this July. Printed Word is a place I need to frequent more often, though I have been there a couple... expensive... times. Unfortunately these days I tend to fall asleep when reading, I can't dig into anything intense. :-)

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#175

Post by aurizon »

bell-cot wrote: post #109
aurizon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great lakes water is simply channelled to the Atlantic. It would take an engineering project to divert 10-20% to the west. No hard tasks, just the creation of a sloped canal. In desert areas you could cover it with solar cells - also land based ones, to provide the pump energy over hills/mountains etc. Tunnels can be drilled where mounts are high. This water added to the west would revive it from the death spiral…

With how quickly, on-time, and within-budget California is managing to build the few-hundred miles of its touted High-Speed Rail system - that "no hard tasks" engineering project might take a century or few to become operational. Also, you note "water added to the west would revive it from the death spiral it is now in". Ah... 100% of the average discharge rate from the entire Great Lakes system - including Lake Onta…

I am not sure of your Hoover discharge figures. St Lawrence is about 17,000 cubic meters per second. Hoover is far far smaller about 3,300 cubic meters per second. St Lawrence is over 5 times as large. You may have mixed up cubic meters/feet?

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#176

Post by throw0101a »

unethical_ban wrote: post #81
throw0101a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"political hot takes" ? Even if I misinterpreted the article (oops), the USCG does operate in the Black Sea as evidenced by the linked article.

Why bring it up?

Because I find/found it surprising and was curious if the Hive Mind of HN may have an explanation.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#177

Post by danans »

I discovered while visiting Northern Germany that the word "See" (which is etymologically related to English "sea") can refer to either a lake or the sea, depending on the gender of the article that precedes it - masculine for lake: "der See", feminine for sea: "die See".

The result is a lake called the "Selenter See" that is a short distance from the Ostsee (the Baltic Sea).

Pretty confusing at first!

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#178

Post by Aeronwen »

renewiltord wrote: post #121
ham-sandwich wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many people who would oppose removal of water from the region with weaponry. People deeply care about them, more than outsiders know

We will desalinate in CA before we’ll come for the Great Lakes but if we came (and the United States must have ended) then that would be a petty resistance. Pipelines can’t be defended but canals are harder to break and then, once the pipeline is over friendly soil, breaking it will still only shed water into the West.

If you want to build the midwest a new sewer system, go ahead.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#179

Post by griffinkelly »

shotta wrote: post #2

I have always loved this song about a shipwreck on the Great Lakes. https://youtu.be/FuzTkGyxkYI

Some decent scuba-wreck diving in the Lakes. I've scuba dived a few, one right off of U Chicago is snorkel depth, and one about 20 ft off of Evanston, IL.

Regardless, the Naval Aviation Museum has pulled a lot of airplanes from Lake Michigan: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/underwater-archaeology...

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#180

Post by travisjungroth »

robbrown451 wrote: post #155

It is indeed mostly semantics. Interestingly (to me anyway) I was just following the news about Lake Powell being at a very low level, and noticed on a map just how "non-lake like" its shape is (even when at full capacity).... it just looks like a river and tributaries that are somewhat wider than they were before a dam was built. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Powell/@37.0518007,-1... Meanwhile, why is Green…

> You have to draw a line somewhere.

You don’t have to. We could just call them all islands. Greenland? Island. Eurasia? Island. Rhode Island? Not an island, strangely.

There are only between four and seven of these so called “continents” (we didn’t draw a line, we drew like five). They’re not popping up very quickly, either. I say we just forget the whole business came up.

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