[HN Gopher] Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake ... ___________________________________________________________________ Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage Author : _Microft Score : 253 points Date : 2023-05-19 08:56 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.science.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org) | seventytwo wrote: | If weather patterns shift, the infrastructure built to store | water will have to shift as well. | | Earth is a closed system, so we should expect to see water | storage decline in some areas and flooding increase in some | areas. | | It's all climate change stuff. | eimrine wrote: | > Earth is a closed system, so we should expect to see water | storage decline in some areas and flooding increase in some | areas. | | Of course, Earth is a closed system, but I am not sure it is | _that_ closed. | [deleted] | smeej wrote: | I don't mean this to sound snarky. I'm genuinely curious | where you think the water will go, if not to other places on | earth. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | It's easy to overlook the effects of transpiration, which | is a result of photosynthesis, which is impacted by | biodiversity loss. It short circuits water's path back to | the ocean and puts it back into the air above land where it | can precipitate into lakes a second time. | | Without it, snowmelt-fed rivers dry out earlier. | | As more ice melts there might be more liquid water | available, but the ecosystems that would process that water | into vapor are struggling. So you end up with a situation | where the only source of water vapor in the air is the | oceans. | | As temperatures increase that'll again be a net increase in | ocean-driven evaporation, but it'll be less evenly | distributed than evaporation+transpiration was. | | So the concern is that the only available water will be too | salty to drink, or too destructive to capture. | SkyPuncher wrote: | The earth as a whole is roughly a closed system, but | "usable water" is not. | | Most resource problems are not about the quantity of some | thing changing as a percentage of earth's matter. Most | resources are about density and composition. | | If all of the (non-ice) freshwater on earth was suddenly | dumped into the ocean, we'd have the same amount of overall | water - but little to no drinkable water. | | Likewise, we're not really creating new carbon by burning | fossil fuels. We're moving and re-distributing it. Compared | to being deep underground, the form we create by burning | captures much more heat, causing many problems. | eimrine wrote: | > where you think the water will go, if not to other places | on earth | | I afraid that a lot of fresh water is going to become an | ocean water. Flooding theory creates the impression of | transferring fresh water from one place to another where it | will remain just as fresh. It is incredibly hard to create | a fresh water from salty one. | helge9210 wrote: | > It is incredibly hard to create a fresh water from | salty one. | | Fresh water is created from the salty water by | evaporation all the time. | fpesce wrote: | Indeed, and it's interesting to note that this natural | desalination process also incorporates long-term storage | mechanisms. Historically, vast quantities of freshwater | have been stored in the form of snow packs and glaciers. | However, in our changing climate, this storage is not | occurring at the same scale as it used to. This could | potentially exacerbate future water scarcity issues, | making man-made desalination techniques even more | crucial. As challenging as creating freshwater from | saltwater may be, it's a puzzle we need to solve with | urgency. | flavius29663 wrote: | on the other hand, global warming will pump much more | water in the atmosphere, and we will have more | precipitation. In fact, global warming would not be a | problem at all if what I said above was not true. CO2 | alone could only raise the temperature by 1C no matter | how much we would put in the air (by year 2100). The | water vapor creates a positive feedback loop that warms | it far beyond what CO2 can do alone. | mrguyorama wrote: | But that's not actually helpful. Occasional massive rains | don't refill aquifers very well. There needs to be a | buffer to allow water to slowly make it's way into the | system in a manageable way. Currently that is mountain | snow melting over the warm season. | mynameisvlad wrote: | I mean, sure, but never in enough volumes to be actually | usable by us. It's not like we can capture every single | evaporated water droplet before it cools to form fresh | water. | | So while technically it happens all the time, practically | it's as if it isn't happening at all when it comes to the | concerns talked about here, specifically the quantity of | available fresh water declining. | NotYourLawyer wrote: | This is where essentially all freshwater comes from. | mynameisvlad wrote: | That's great and all but how does that help with the | issue of that freshwater being depleted? _Which is the | topic at hand._ | NotYourLawyer wrote: | I was responding to the "never in enough volumes to be | actually usable by us" comment. Which is just completely | wrong. | mynameisvlad wrote: | It's far from "completely wrong". Sure technically you | are correct in that the rain _sometimes might_ land in a | place that is usable by people, but practically speaking | it 's nowhere near predictable or scalable enough to | actually rely on, which is, once again, what is really | being discussed here. | | As I said in another comment, talking about farmers using | rainwater for their crops: | | > Rain is not predictable at the scale of a crop season. | Rain is not scalable, it's extremely localized. | | > Rain happens, and when it does your crops get watered, | but you can't in any way shape or form rely on that. | | So, congrats on being pedantic enough to miss the forest | for the trees, I guess. | NotYourLawyer wrote: | >say something that's obviously false | | >someone points it out | | >"you're a pedant!" | spenczar5 wrote: | I think you are quite wrong about that. The evaporated | ocean water becomes rain. Evaporated ocean water is the | source of over 80% of all rain on earth. | mynameisvlad wrote: | And most of that rain is going to go into the ocean | again. Or be distributed in a large area. Neither of | which can really be captured in any sort of predictable | and scalable manner. | | You know, unless we build a massive "roof" of devices to | capture all that rain. Literally covering the entire | planet. At that point yeah it would dev a reasonable | thing to bring up in the context of fresh water reserves | falling. | | So I very much stand by the point that while, sure, it | happens all the time, that does nothing to actually help | with the topic at hand. | 1234letshaveatw wrote: | The rain can be captured by farms. | mynameisvlad wrote: | > in any sort of predictable and scalable manner. | | How? | | Rain is not predictable at the scale of a crop season. | Rain is not scalable, it's extremely localized. | | Rain happens, and when it does your crops get watered, | but you can't in any way shape or form rely on that. | NineStarPoint wrote: | About 80% of that rain happens back over the ocean, and | then about 25% of the rain that happens over land | actually gets captured as ground water. Even that isn't | the main point though, the issue is we're currently using | water faster than rain replenishes it in many places. At | worst as I understand it, in some places they've | collapsed their aquifers by over-pulling from them, and | that means less of the rainfall in those areas will be | recoverable in the future. At some point we have to enter | a mode where we only pull water in a way that is | sustainable or we'll suddenly find that we do indeed need | desalinization to keep up with our use. | vermilingua wrote: | Higher global average temperatures means higher global | average specific humidity. As the air warms it can hold | more water vapour, which means less condensation. I don't | know _how much_ difference this makes, but I expect it's | not insignificant. | ericd wrote: | It also means a higher rate of evaporation from the | oceans. | vermilingua wrote: | True, but oceans only evaporate from the surface while | the air retains moisture by volume. There is | _considerably_ more low, warm air than there is ocean | surface. | XorNot wrote: | Into the ocean. | | The ocean covers the majority of the Earth's surface. The | ocean is full of salt. | | Water which rains out over the oceans is unusable as | drinking or irrigation water without expensive processing | (desalination). | | If historic rainfall patterns change, there is absolutely | no requirement that the rain land anywhere _useful_ for our | existing infrastructure or human habitation. | | Yes, the water won't disappear, but if the effect is | rainfall hits the ocean, or say, flood-prone regions even | harder then it normally does, it's still going to be coming | down somewhere not useful to us. | | The problem is not that we _can 't_ solve these problems, | it's that is is _staggeringly expensive_ to do so. | HPsquared wrote: | Not staggeringly expensive, about 38 cents per day per | person, apparently: | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs | | Although that doesn't include irrigation.. | | EDIT: can even be economical for irrigation in some | circumstances: https://www.fluencecorp.com/desalination- | and-agriculture-les... | PeterisP wrote: | Something like 600 million people live below the poverty | line, which with current inflation is at $2.15 per day; | so for them a 38 cent per day rate means diverting almost | 20% of their income just on water. For comparison, that's | a much larger share than what USA residents spend on food | (~13% of their income). | HPsquared wrote: | The figures assume a US citizen level of water | consumption, someone on $2 a day would use much less than | this. | XorNot wrote: | Kind of leaving out the main point there. People don't | use a lot of water. Industry and Farming do. We depend on | both of those for...pretty much our entire society. | bombcar wrote: | People use water directly and indirectly. And water is | "used" and "used" - it's not as simple as measuring a | pipe, you need to know where it goes. | HPsquared wrote: | Water-intensive industrial processes can move to where | the water is. Farming is more of a challenge but some | crops need more water than others; there's a lot of scope | for substitution. | mrguyorama wrote: | Yeah maybe someday we can stop growing all our produce in | the damn desert just because the weather was slightly | more profitable. | phpisthebest wrote: | >>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 | nathan_compton wrote: | 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 process is bound by how much energy you can muster | up to put into it. That is why rockets haven't had an | exponential increase in the amount of weight they can get | into orbit in the last 100 years. With gravity you must | pay the piper. | | I doubt scaling desalinization is as hard as hurling | stuff into space, but it may not be easy to scale either. | There are plenty of places on earth which are very dry, | adjacent to salt water, and extremely rich and yet no | great desalinization technologies have come from them. | MandieD wrote: | _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. | excalibur wrote: | > If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I | bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick | | Make it so. | dghlsakjg wrote: | There's the rules of physics to consider. | | There are more than a few places where desalination is | necessary, and we still haven't come up with a way to | make it cheap. | | The current issue is that there is just no way that we | know of to reliably desalinate that isn't super energy | intensive, so it comes down to trading energy for water. | That's why desalination is expensive. | XorNot wrote: | > If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I | bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick | | Why? Nestle just passes the cost on to the consumer, | because where else are they gonna go? | xwdv wrote: | We lose atmosphere to space everyday. | seventytwo wrote: | I'm sorry my model didn't account for your 8th order | effects. You're technically correct. | chmod775 wrote: | And we also gain water from space through meteorites | every day. | neom wrote: | The mesosphere has very little water in it. | | http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2 | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary- | sci... | gonzo41 wrote: | Earth isn't a closed system, we take in energy from the sun. | jakswa wrote: | Also we slowly lose upper atmosphere to the solar winds, when | the magnetic fields fail to deflect it enough. | _Microft wrote: | That's not a problem. Closed systems can do that. If they | additionally do not exchange energy with their environment | they are called _isolated systems_. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_system | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_system | neom wrote: | https://www.unicef.org/emergencies/devastating-floods-pakist... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Pakistan_floods | | "in the recorded history [of the area] that we have since 1918, | we have never had this much rain." | paiute wrote: | [flagged] | lostmsu wrote: | Can somebody explain why is this downvoted? If 53% decline, | what do the other 47% do? How about total storage? | fahadkhan wrote: | Probably because it's ignoring the start of very next | sentence in an attempt at sarcastic wit. > | The net volume loss in natural lakes... | paiute wrote: | ... then they start talking about km^2 of lost surface | area. Which if you read the paper they cite, it says | "Between 1984 and 2015 permanent surface water has | disappeared from an area of almost 90,000 square | kilometres, roughly equivalent to that of Lake Superior, | though new permanent bodies of surface water covering | 184,000 square kilometres have formed elsewhere." On top of | that, shallow lakes fluctuate wildly in surface area. The | great Salt Lake for example. VS Lake Tahoe which can drop | 10 ft and the surface area loss is tiny. | dahart wrote: | Yes of course the relationship between volume and area | depends on the lake depth, are you suggesting the paper | implied anything else? The Great Salt Lake has dropped | rather dramatically in the last ten years, so much so | that it has already changed pretty much all recreation | and commercial activity on the lake - the primary boat | dock closed because the marina was completely dry and by | last year the shores had moved inward, by kilometers in | some cases. Unusual precipitation this year has brought | levels up a little, but this might only be a blip in the | downward trend. The known reasons include drought | conditions, unusually high temperatures, and greater | upstream use. The Great Salt Lake's recent history very | much backs up the claims of this paper, no? | [deleted] | _Microft wrote: | 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 to papers than just their abstract. | If you are curious, you can check section "Global LWS trends | and drivers" for the answers to your questions. | paiute wrote: | 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. | anigbrowl wrote: | 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. | dahart wrote: | Your comments seem more skeptical than critical. Are you | saying you believe lakes aren't losing volume? | showdeadplease wrote: | [dead] | paiute wrote: | This, and why 1992-2020? How many of these large lakes are | distributed in say, Midwest America/Canada. What were the | precipitation levels in that region just a few years prior? | Why did they need to involve climate models when we have | observable data? | sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: | Given the significant use of satellite data, I imagine the | start point was chosen based on when some classes of data | became available from recently launched satellites. An | earlier time may not have sufficiently comparable data. | | There's a map linked in the paper if you want to see where | the lakes are: https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science. | abo2812/asset/ab... | bjornlouser wrote: | They used a technique for water segmentation described in | an earlier paper [1]. The validation dataset for that | method goes back to 1992... | | "All applied images have 30-m spatial resolution and were | acquired during October 1, 1992 to October 31, 2018. The | period was set with regard to the availability of the | validation dataset" | | [1] Yao, J. Wang, C. Wang, J.-F. Cretaux, Constructing | long-term high-frequency time series of global lake and | reservoir areas using Landsat imagery. Remote Sens. | Environ.232, 111210 (2019). | Mbioguy wrote: | History may not repeat but it does rhyme. Harappan civ thought to | have declined due to less water. Petra once thrived due to a | system of dams, cisterns, and water conduits, but never-repaired | damage after an earthquake and increasing aridity meant it less | and less supported urbanism and so declined. The Soviets | overexploited the Aral Sea which has yet to (and will likely | never) recover. It is now spoiling the surrounding region with | dust storms carrying with them pollutants from industry that | settled in the drying lakebed. Owens Lake in California once fed | LA, but when it dried up it too caused polluting dust storms. | Gov't has not learned from this history. The western US's water | rights are outdated to the point of creating utterly backwards | incentives. For example, Utah has use-it-or-lose-it water rights | and the lion's share of water in the Great Salt Lake's watershed | gets used to grow alfalfa. Alfalfa itself isn't necessarily a bad | choice if you're going to grow stuff in an arid region, the issue | is more how much of it is grown and in a wasteful way (little to | no drip irrigation and no incentive to start using it, instead | farmers are incentivized to flood areas during times of heavy | rainfall or risk losing water rights). However even city and | residential water use (a much smaller %) is still per capita | wasteful compared to nearby Vegas which has done a much better | job of becoming efficient in its water use. Utah got lucky this | year in its snowpack, potentially buying some time to change, but | is that gonna happen? No, they're praying for moisture and | thinking their prayers got answered. Any guesses how long it'll | be before the Great Salt Lake becomes the US/capitalism's Aral | Sea? 5 years, 10, 15? Any techies wanting to move out here might | think twice, homes without water and with seasonal arsenic-laden | dust clouds probably won't have much resale value. | juujian wrote: | Damn, and that is with all the glaciers melting, which fills | water reservoirs. Once they are completely gone, it is going to | get so much worse. | nathancahill wrote: | Dam indeed. | briantakita wrote: | Where did the water go? The air? The biosphere? Lost to space? | Underground oceans? | wombarly wrote: | Here in the Netherlands they decided to increase the water level | of our lakes by 5cm to handle the drought season this year. Since | the amount of snowfall in the Alps was lower than normal. | | https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/nieuws/archief/2023/04/hoger-... | hbarka wrote: | Do you have any news how Swiss lakes are affected? | wombarly wrote: | No, I only really know this because it was in the local news | a while ago and though it was interesting / related to the | OP. | mywittyname wrote: | It must be nice to live in a country that manages their natural | resources with an eye towards long-term sustainability. | TremendousJudge wrote: | I live in a country with one of the richest water tables in | the world. Due to (a forecasted!) drought and lack of | planning we're literally running out of water to drink. It's | like Saudi Arabia running out of oil, absolutely shameful. | peteradio wrote: | Isn't Netherlands bound to flood as ocean levels rise? | hollander wrote: | Maybe next century, but not anywhere soon. | sangnoir wrote: | 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. | Scarblac wrote: | But we're also a river delta, we will run into problems | long term because we'd have to pump entire rivers over | the dykes. | | Also salification and other problems with only pumping | out all the time. | ethbr0 wrote: | Since the 1400s; ref polder: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder and https://en.m.w | ikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_the_Neth... | avisser wrote: | The Afsluitdijk just got heightened and reinforced. As | someone who's biked across it, I'm psyched because now | you can bike on the North Sea side - previously, there | was only 1 bike path on the Zuiderzee side. | | https://theafsluitdijk.com/projects/dike- | reinforcement/how/ | 908B64B197 wrote: | It's a conscious choice the citizens made every day for the | last century, just like America chose freedom. | | What's the other countries excuses? | avgcorrection wrote: | Freedom from what? Britain? | kyralis wrote: | Freedom from facts. | lovemenot wrote: | Freedom Fries | davidktr wrote: | If they wouldn't, the Netherlands would literally not exist. | Not only are large parts of the country below sea level, | there is also the constant threat of flooding via Maas | (Meuse) and Rhine. Raising levees is not enough, water | management in the Netherlands must always look at the whole | country. | throw_pm23 wrote: | With all due respect, the Netherlands is perhaps the furthest | a place can be from long-term sustainability. The place is a | mix of monoculture + concrete. | gymbeaux wrote: | It won't be nice when the country is invaded by another | country for its water reserves. See: the Middle East | pier25 wrote: | We're going to need a lot of desalination plants powered by clean | energy. | wahnfrieden wrote: | Like saying we need to recycle more to fix the landfill | problem. Recycling fixes nothing with over consumption. | linuxlizard wrote: | When water gets in short enough supply, we will burn coal, | garbage, tires, anything to power desalination plants. | tppiotrowski wrote: | Desalination cones should work in tropical climates. | | [1] http://www.watercone.com/product.html | pier25 wrote: | This is brilliant. | | The same designer made this Terracooler which is also a | fascinating idea. | | http://www.terracooler.org/ | timerol wrote: | Does this exist? The product page mentions that the planned | price is "below EUR 20", but the news page doesn't have | anything newer than 2007 | RC_ITR wrote: | Or (at least in the US), we will simply stop doing things | like growing alfalfa in the desert to feed cows being raised | in Texas. Sure beef will be a little more expensive but... | | You're actually right. We'll probably burn garbage and radio | hosts will call people against burning garbage effeminate | names. | bombcar wrote: | Burning garbage may be one of the best things you can do | with garbage - | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/sweden-garbage- | us... | | As you can set it up to burn very hot and have all sorts of | scrubbers on the outcomes. | RC_ITR wrote: | Burning _anything_ is never the right answer in a world | of climate change. | | We are scrambling to find ways to capture atmospheric | carbon and store it underground and burning garbage is | literally the opposite of that. | bombcar wrote: | If handling waste and burying it costs X carbon, and | burning it creates Y carbon, and Y is less than X, then | burning is better than burying. | | You'd have to do the math, it's not manifestly obvious | that it's not the case (especially once you consider all | the transportation involved in sending waste around the | country and across the ocean). | RC_ITR wrote: | On first principles, there's no reason that the cost of | transporting trash to the incinerator is any less carbon | intensive than transporting trash to a landfill. | | _Maybe_ people prefer incinerators in their community | over landfills in their community (unclear), but if that | 's the case, that's a policy decision and not one that | seeks to minimize carbon emissions. | bombcar wrote: | Lots of recycling (has) been transported across the ocean | to China. | | It's likely that landfill are the way to go in many | cases, but people don't like them. | [deleted] | kzrdude wrote: | That's a damn good argument for making sure we don't go into | overpopulation. | time_to_smile wrote: | 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. | acidburnNSA wrote: | Direct carbon capture, electric vehicles, electric building | heat, electric industrial process heat, and desalination are | all massive new sectors that need to be powered that are | barely on the radar of the existing electric grid. | | And we need more power to let emerging economies rise out of | poverty, where having electric pumps and washing are truely | life-changing from a quality of life perspective. | | So we need about 5x more total energy while also shifting | from 80% fossil to 0% fossil. | | This is why I advocate for nuclear while most people advocate | for wind and solar. We need advocates for all clean energy. | Nuclear can actually use its own direct low-carbon heat to | help with buildings (district heat) and industry, and that | heat can also help in desal in some cases, though RO is the | preference these days and doesn't really need that much heat | input. | anigbrowl wrote: | 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. | Dennip wrote: | 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. | otikik wrote: | 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. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | The ocean is way too big for removing some drinking water | (which is going to end up back in the ocean anyway) to have a | material effect on the salt concentration. | | The problem is strictly local: if the brine produced by the | plant is dumped in an area with low flow, it can hang around | and affect sea life. | | If you use a big discharge pipe and put it a decent distance | offshore in a current where it can mix effectively, there's | very little effect. | | This is not a reason to shoot down desalination plants as a | concept, it's a design constraint to take into account when | building them. | adgjlsfhk1 wrote: | the hard part is what water of different salinity doesn't | mix the way you think it should | [deleted] | dylan604 wrote: | 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 | RajT88 wrote: | 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 | blacksmith_tb wrote: | 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. | RajT88 wrote: | 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. | Izikiel43 wrote: | Then your house melts with the rain | RajT88 wrote: | Article talks about that kinda. You have to read at least | halfway through it. | p1mrx wrote: | Look what you've done! I'm dissolving, dissolving! Ohh, | what a world. | wasm123 wrote: | We had the same problem with power plants dumping hot | untreated water back in the environment. This is why cooling | towers are synonymous with nuclear power plants. This is an | easy solution to fix, but like all engineering it costs | extra. For power plants it was fixed through legislation. You | literally have an entire oceans worth of water to | reconstitute the brine. This was more problematic of older | system using distillation. | gonzo41 wrote: | We pump brine inland to a large flat expendabe plain and | flood it to allow the water to evaporate off and the salt to | sette. 20-50 years later, pod racing on the salt flat. | Dennip wrote: | I think this causes its own host of issues as there are a | load of other nasties such as arsenic etc in seawater which | would build up there. | djbusby wrote: | Arsenic in Pod fuel too. | _puk wrote: | How does that work for e.g. small scale salt farming in | many European countries that flood areas with sea water, | then harvest the salt after the water has evaporated [0]? | | Is it just a case of the scale making it safe? | | 0: https://www.timeout.com/croatia/things-to-do/ston- | salt-works | aziaziazi wrote: | I think so, yes. One person salt consumption seems wayyy | less than the brime that would be created by desalination | of the freshwater he needs. | aziaziazi wrote: | The desalination plan provide water when the groundwater | reservoirs are too low to fulfill freshwater demand. | | The brine slowly go down through geological layers. After 5 | years it reaches groundwater reservoir. | | 20-50 years later, the regions become famous for its fun | pod racing and for its numerous ghost cities around the old | plain. | piyh wrote: | Put them down stream of farm runoff so everything is already | dead | dghlsakjg wrote: | Farm runoff normally has the opposite effect, providing too | many nutrients causing things like algal blooms. | TeMPOraL wrote: | So the brine and the farm runoff will cancel out and the | result will be just right for nature. Right? _Right?_ | EvanAnderson wrote: | Always a good time for[0]: | | Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend. | | Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens | when we're overrun by lizards? | | Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of | Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. | | Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse? | | Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up | a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. | | Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas! | | Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime | rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death. | | [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc | swayvil wrote: | Build cities from stabilized salt. Bricks, grout, pourable | slabs. | mistrial9 wrote: | there is a second side to this systems-diagram, which is | roughly.. conservation, efficiency, waste-reduction | pier25 wrote: | Yes but when glaciers melt completely and water deposits are | empty we will struggle even with extremely efficient water | systems. | mattwest wrote: | spoken like a true idealist | jms703 wrote: | Almond farmers. Am I right? | | /s | Slava_Propanei wrote: | [dead] | hsuduebc2 wrote: | It fascinates me how things have obvious consequences but human | race just ignore them till literally everything is burning. As it | is with water shortages, climate change or Hitler. | mrtesthah wrote: | A sizable majority (including in the US) recognize the danger | of global warming, but are politically blocked from taking | action by the actions of a small group of extremely wealthy | individuals and corporations working to maintain the status quo | to their benefit. | myshpa wrote: | The vital role of vegetation is often overlooked - we've | significantly reduced forest cover over the past centuries. | | Global forest cover loss between 1990 and 2020 was estimated to | be around 178 million hectares, representing a reduction of | approximately 10% in the total global forest area. | | To restore water resources we should prioritize aforestation. | | https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#how-has-global-land-use-... | | 1700 ... 1 billion ha for agriculture | | 1800 ... 1.35 billion ha | | 1900 ... 2.54 billion ha | | 2016 ... 4.93 billion ha (=cca 50% of all habitable lands) | | https://ourworldindata.org/land-use | | Animal agriculture taking 75% of that. | | https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets | | "Beef is the leading driver of deforestation" | | https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation | | As Ernst Gotsch says: water is planted ('Agua se planta!') | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_G%C3%B6tsch | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump | | - Evapotranspiration: Vegetation influences the water cycle by | releasing moisture into the atmosphere through transpiration, | affecting cloud formation and regional rainfall patterns. | | - Surface runoff and infiltration: Vegetation intercepts | rainfall, slowing down surface runoff and promoting better water | infiltration into the soil, which helps mitigate drought | conditions. | | - Shade and temperature regulation: Vegetation provides shade, | lowers surface temperatures, and reduces evaporation rates, | potentially alleviating drought intensity. | | - Feedback loops: Healthy vegetation enhances soil moisture | levels, maintains humidity, and supports water resources, while | stressed or absent vegetation can worsen drought conditions. | | - Forests and rainfall patterns: Forests contribute to local and | regional rainfall by releasing moisture through transpiration, | and their removal or degradation can disrupt precipitation, | potentially contributing to drought. | ooz16 wrote: | 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 satellites--an area equivalent to the | surface of Lake Superior, whereas 184,000 km2 of new water | bodies, primarily reservoirs, were formed elsewhere (14)" | | My first impression was that this means there has been a growth | in total permanent water area from 1984-2015. Am I just reading | this wrong? | neves wrote: | I just think that if it was the case, Science Magazine would | have changed the headline. | explaininjs wrote: | The article also states "climate change and human activities | increasingly threaten lakes that store 87% of Earth's liquid | surface fresh water", but neglects to mention that only 0.3% of | freshwater is liquid surface water in the first place. All in | all a giant nothing burger, as with so many climate change | alarmist "science" nowadays. | | https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci... | MattGaiser wrote: | > but neglects to mention that only 0.3% of freshwater is | liquid surface water in the first place. | | But what percentage of the water we can actually use? The | Arctic and Antarctic are far away from most of us, and | groundwater is limited and probably spread out quite a bit. | Water vapour is hard to extract from the air. | | You are trivializing it by saying it is just a tiny | percentage of freshwater, but it is actually where most of | our used water currently comes from. | explaininjs wrote: | > But what percentage of the water we can actually use? | | What percentage of lake water could we use prior to literal | millennia of engineering effort was put into moving it | where we need? | | > most of our used water currently comes from | | This is technically true today, but barely. Nationwide | roughly twice as much water comes from surface as the | ground, but it varies dramatically by region. If you live | in NY, 90% of your water already comes from the ground. | It's certainly not the case that we're "locked in" to | lakes, rather we are very capable of adapting to local | conditions. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > What percentage of lake water could we use prior to | literal millennia of engineering effort was put into | moving it where we need | | All of it, people built settlements on lakes and rivers | for this very reason | | > It's certainly not the case that we're "locked in" to | lakes, rather we are very capable of adapting to local | conditions. | | No, we are locked in to rivers and lakes because thats | the only big source of renewable fresh water. The | underground aquifiers under midwest and under much of | middle east will be gone in 50 years and will never | return | | You should not incorrect people here without basic facts | at your disposal | explaininjs wrote: | And yet they built aqueducts and wells too. Local surface | water has been insufficient for civilization for at least | 2000 years. | | > The underground aquifiers under midwest and under much | of middle east will be gone in 50 years and will never | return | | > You should not incorrect people here without basic | facts at your disposal | | Nothing quite as HN as someone making bold alarmist | unsupported assertions about the future of climate for | all of time, then following it up with a sentence | demanding an appreciation for "basic facts". | wittenbunk wrote: | Because obviously the amount of surface water is completely | independent of the amount of subsurface water in aquifers. /s | explaininjs wrote: | What do you think the "obvious" correlation coefficient is | between the two? Or even its sign? I suppose it'd be far | too much to ask for the R value too. | | Science is supposed to answer these questions, instead this | article carefully withholds information to make molehills | into mountains. | throwaway290 wrote: | it sounds like new water bodies are man-made reservoirs, not | permanent, e.g. the thing goes out into the ocean when the dam | breaks. | [deleted] | abracadaniel wrote: | 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. | goatlover wrote: | True, but we're rather capable of building long pipelines to | ship liquids across large distances. | MattGaiser wrote: | It would require a lot of expansion for the required | volume. | | A barrel of oil has about 159 litres in it. The Keystone | Pipeline would have transported 1.1 million barrels if it | were fully expanded. 174,900,000 million litres per day. | The City of Phoenix by itself uses about 1 billion litres | per day. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | I was going to say "but that probably double-counts | recycled water" and then I looked it up and recycled | water is only 8% of Phoenix's water usage, and it's 10% | nationally in the US. | _3u10 wrote: | Water isn't toxic though, aqueducts aren't built to | anywhere near the standards of oil pipelines. | LesZedCB wrote: | > Globally, natural lake volume declined at a net rate of | -26.38 +- 1.59 Gt year | | the phrase you read said "Over half (53 +- 2%) of the large | lakes experienced _significant_ water losses " (emphasis mine) | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Is 26.38 Gt a lot? | | There's 91k cubic kilometers of fresh water in lakes | according to: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water- | science-school/sci... | | And a cubic kilometer is basically a Gt, right? .98 Gt? | | So 26 / 91,000 = ~0.02% ? | | Is that a lot? If it's really 0.02% - wouldn't you expect | _something_ to be random noise? How do we know it 's not | random noise? | time_to_smile wrote: | > How do we know it's not random noise? | | A great place to start answering this question is _the | article itself_. And if that doesn 't satisfy you, then the | article also links to citations for all the claims it | makes. | | It's great to not just blindly accept the claims of even | experts in an area, but this reads more like someone who is | working to not believe what they are being told. | lovemenot wrote: | I didn't read the parent's comment as you did. To me it | looked like someone just trying to get a handle on the | relative amounts and variability. They provided some | relevant data and appeared open-minded. | | Your response to that added little to the discussion. You | might have selected the parts of the article that | answered those questions, but instead opted to shut down | further discussion on a valid question. Which, may or may | not be addressed in the sources. | PM_me_your_math wrote: | So we should have 100% faith in what we're being told in | the article? If the author was trying to deceive then | they wouldn't cite data that provided contradiction. | Seems more like a religious approach than a logical one. | There are papers, that were well cited, claiming there | would be no sea ice by 2010, which never occurred. | makz wrote: | Dumb question: where did the water go? | swayvil wrote: | Global warming. Warmer air holds more water. | djfobbz wrote: | Midwest still holding winter temps in May...where's the | warming part? Please refrain from posting "fact checker" | links as we all know nothing comes free and they have their | own vested interest in fact-checking. | ROTMetro wrote: | So you point to a change in your local normal climate as | showing there isn't... climate change? Just trying to | clarify what you are trying to say here? | djfobbz wrote: | Climate has always changed...it's a feature of the earth, | not a bug...you being born is part of the climate change. | When you decompose, that will also be part of the climate | change. The magnitude of your so called calculations is | minuscule compared to the life of earth and merely | speculation just like stocks on Wall Street. Don't try to | control something you did not invent. You're welcome! | xen2xen1 wrote: | We're changing the weather with greenhouse gases and whatnot, | and we regularly pump it out to go to our homes, or even use it | to make electricity with dams. | flavius29663 wrote: | Global warming means generally more water in the air and more | rain, not less. Think of Jurassic Park, not Mad Max | ajmurmann wrote: | Yes, more total rain. A steady steam from the mountains is | a much better source of water though to keep lakes, rivers | and our water supply going. The rain isn't evenly | distributed through both space and time. We might get a | drought for years and then torrential rainfalls. We are | already seeing this. It's happened in California and | Germany. Both places I'm most tide to. So maybe it's | sampling bias. At my parent's in Germany, most fir trees | are dead from the multi-year drought and then in June 2021 | half the village was destroyed by a flood. | edu wrote: | All over Europe, for sure. | https://apnews.com/article/italy-floods- | drought-59db3225a5d4... | dghlsakjg wrote: | I think it's pretty likely that the main cause is it's being | diverted for agricultural use. | | Things like diversions into cities will also contribute, but | generally gets dwarfed by agricultural use. | | The Colorado river flow for example is 80% agricultural. 20% | for all other uses, including the bare trickle that actually | makes it to the ocean | aSockPuppeteer wrote: | Depends how close farmers are to water sources. They run high | speed pumps at night or camouflage them in streams to get by | water restrictions. | | There's the famous California telephone pole picture too. | https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/themarinpost/emimg/1249/S... | peteradio wrote: | I don't understand that telephone pole picture, the ground | did not move around the telephone pole surely. I don't | understand the graphics either. 1ft/year generally, but | slower than that in the most extreme? | croes wrote: | They pump ground water that keads to sinking land, 1 foot | per year. | | The pole is from 1977 or later but shows the historical | land level of 1955 and 1925 | voakbasda wrote: | When you remove the water from the ground, the drained soil | compacts. The topmost sign on the pole pole shows where the | ground level was 50 years earlier, caused by excessive | taking of groundwater. | [deleted] | ajmurmann wrote: | It's about sweet water. If it "goes away" it typically ends up | in the ocean. | | Previously it was in lakes, groundwater it glaciers. Glaciers | which ultimately kept rivers flowing all year around even when | not much snow falls in a given winter. Once all the glaciers | are melted, the rivers can dry up completely. The glacier water | has already made it to the ocean and doesn't need to travel | there anymore via river. With groundwater depleted, we cannot | use that anymore to substitute and some sources of creeks will | dry up. | briantakita wrote: | Are there any studies on waterflow to/from underground | oceans? It's difficult to understand how comprehensive a | claim is without knowing the entire system. | | > The subducting slabs also carry deep-sea sediments | piggyback into the Earth's interior. These sediments can hold | large quantities of water and CO2. But until now it was | unclear just how much enters the transition zone in the form | of more stable, hydrous minerals and carbonates - and it was | therefore also unclear whether large quantities of water | really are stored there. | | > The answer has now been provided by an international study. | The research team analyzed a diamond from Botswana, Africa. | It originated at a depth of 660 kilometers, directly at the | interface between the transition zone and the lower mantle, | where the dominant mineral is ringwoodite. Diamonds from this | location are very rare, even among the extremely rare | diamonds of super-deep origin, which account for just 1% of | all diamonds. The studies found that the stone had a high | water content due to the presence of many ringwoodite | inclusions. The study team was also able to establish the | chemical composition of the stone. | | https://scitechdaily.com/an-underground-ocean-scientists- | dis... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-19 23:01 UTC)