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Why can't you just pour it back into the ocean? That's what's happening to the fresh water after it's used, it goes back to the ocean. It's a closed cycle. Th
by toomanybeersies 9y ago
Why can't you just pour it back into the ocean?
That's what's happening to the fresh water after it's used, it goes back to the ocean. It's a closed cycle.
The scale of human water consumption to the volume of the sea is miniscule.
Global fresh water consumption is a fraction of a percent of the volume of the ocean ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((total+water+consumption+*+1+year)+%2F+volume+of+the+sea)+to+percent https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((total+water+consumpt... )
There's no reason why we couldn't ship it into the middle of a desert if for some reason it couldn't go back into the sea, it wouldn't go very far once it was dumped. Conveniently, the places that rely/will rely on desalination the most happen to be desert countries.
- coenhyde 9y agoI'd imagine the problem is the concentration of salt where the dumping occurs. There would need to be a system in place to spread the salt out over a large geographical area at concentrations that is not harmful.
- jccooper 9y agoIt's not a global problem but a local one. Locally increased salinity and temperature can be a problem. You can drop a whole bunch of hot brine in the middle of the ocean to little effect, but the same is not true of a mangrove swamp or a bay.