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I love this comment :) Messing a bit with drops in the ocean is how we got here in the first place. Aggressive farming messes with the environment a bit. There

by tpxl 6y ago

I love this comment :) Messing a bit with drops in the ocean is how we got here in the first place. Aggressive farming messes with the environment a bit. There is just so much land, we can't possibly deplete all of it. Did you see how much air we have? Yeah burning dirty stuff pollutes it, but then the wind blows and it's clean again.

vkou 6y ago
> There is just so much land, we can't possibly deplete all of it. Given that we are currently using 40% of the world's land area for agriculture, and that we are using ~0.0003% of the world's water, I don't think this is a fair criticism of my post. Only a fool would think that former isn't something to keep an eye on. > I love this comment :) Messing a bit with drops in the ocean is how we got here in the first place. No, we got here in the first place by messing with carbon and water and nutrient cycles that take tens of millions and hundreds of thousands of years to cycle through. The atmospheric water cycle, on the other hand, operates on a scale of weeks. Seawater gets separated into brine and fresh water, fresh water irrigates crops, fresh water evaporates into clouds, clouds precipitate over the ocean. All of humanity's historic water consumption is quite literally a drop in the ocean. [1] The volume of the oceans is 1.3 * 10^18 m^3. Humanity's annual consumption of fresh water is 4 * 10^12 m^3. Annual worldwide precipitation is ~5 * 10^14 m^3. > Did you see how much air we have? Yeah burning dirty stuff pollutes it, but then the wind blows and it's clean again. [1] Meanwhile, all of humanity's carbon emissions dwarf the ability of natural carbon sinks to absorb - because in hundreds of years, we have released carbon that took tens of millions of years to accumulate. The atmospheric water cycle operates on an entirely different scale. [2] [2] The orders of magnitude between the unsustainability of <carbon use>, <land use>, <freshwater use>, and <seawater use> are each ~two orders of magnitude removed from eachother.
- tpxl 6y ago
  It's not the use of water that's the problem, it's the releasing of the brine. This will destroy the local ecosystem and historically we haven't been able to predict the consequences of that at all.

by tpxl 6y ago

vkou 6y ago

> There is just so much land, we can't possibly deplete all of it. Given that we are currently using 40% of the world's land area for agriculture, and that we are using ~0.0003% of the world's water, I don't think this is a fair criticism of my post. Only a fool would think that former isn't something to keep an eye on. > I love this comment :) Messing a bit with drops in the ocean is how we got here in the first place. No, we got here in the first place by messing with carbon and water and nutrient cycles that take tens of millions and hundreds of thousands of years to cycle through. The atmospheric water cycle, on the other hand, operates on a scale of weeks. Seawater gets separated into brine and fresh water, fresh water irrigates crops, fresh water evaporates into clouds, clouds precipitate over the ocean. All of humanity's historic water consumption is quite literally a drop in the ocean. [1] The volume of the oceans is 1.3 * 10^18 m^3. Humanity's annual consumption of fresh water is 4 * 10^12 m^3. Annual worldwide precipitation is ~5 * 10^14 m^3. > Did you see how much air we have? Yeah burning dirty stuff pollutes it, but then the wind blows and it's clean again. [1] Meanwhile, all of humanity's carbon emissions dwarf the ability of natural carbon sinks to absorb - because in hundreds of years, we have released carbon that took tens of millions of years to accumulate. The atmospheric water cycle operates on an entirely different scale. [2] [2] The orders of magnitude between the unsustainability of <carbon use>, <land use>, <freshwater use>, and <seawater use> are each ~two orders of magnitude removed from eachother.

tpxl 6y ago
It's not the use of water that's the problem, it's the releasing of the brine. This will destroy the local ecosystem and historically we haven't been able to predict the consequences of that at all.