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Scientists Discover Huge Freshwater Reserves Beneath the Ocean
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have discovered huge freshwater reserves beneath the seabed on continental shelves off the coast of Australia, North America, China and South Africa. 'The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900. Fresh water on our planet is increasingly under stress and strain so the discovery of significant new stores off the coast is very exciting. It means that more options can be considered to help reduce the impact of droughts and continental water shortages' says Dr Vincent Post of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and the School of the Environment at Flinders University."
Presumably this water will need to be accessed via drilling and pumping the water. Imagine the horrors if there were a water spill, contaminating all that ocean water with its freshness!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Before we try and get and that additional freshwater - has anyone found another possible _deposit_ location for all the rubbish and toxic waste we're producing? ...even if we would get at that water, it would only be a stop-gap -- right now, most seem to think that there will always be some new source of whatever resource we need to keep our "unsustainable" pace going...
It's the same about what people say that the shale oil will give the US enough oil for 100 years -- it's _maybe_ 100 years _at the current pace of consumption. But if there is a 100 years worth of more energy - why even _try_ and save? Why not even indulge in even more energy-intensive enterprises?
The same goes for finding huge amounts of new fresh-water - we'll just find ways to consume it even faster, instead of trying to focus on limiting the damage we do to the planet, and treating any additional resources as 'emergency rations' that we won't touch unless there is no other way.
Latrines use seawater on various naval vessels. Using fresh water to catch poop, if an abundant supply of seawater is available, is just dumb.
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Latrines use seawater on various naval vessels. Using fresh water to catch poop, if an abundant supply of seawater is available, is just dumb.
You've never cleaned a naval vessel toilet before, I take it? (neither have I, I just thought I'd ask).
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I'm afraid that pumping this water will lead to the same phenomenon in Libya :
As they pump the fossil water of deep aquifers in the desert, the dwells all around get dry or have now a much lower water level.
See the GMMR project: huge pipe to provide fresh water to the coastal cities, pumped from deep fossil aquifers of the desert that may not get resplenish any time soon. This is maybe not as simple as communicating vessels, but the people think the dwells dry out are link to this project.
At the moment Australia is looking at desalination to support the growing population and as a backup for when floods and droughts cause problems with our existing dams. Desalination tends to take up a lot of energy so you have to wonder if pumping this fresh water is a better solution. We already run some large pipelines so what's a few more?
It would take trillions of years to colonize the known universe.
I'm not even very interested in the universe. Let's just take the damned moon, and Mars. Hell, the moon can become the new Australia. "Welcome to New Australia Penal Colony, Convict 4,107,239."
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
1) Find a new natural resource, a crown jewel of mother nature
2) Start immediately raping this resource and pumping it dry
3) ???
4) Profit!
has anyone found another possible _deposit_ location for all the rubbish and toxic waste we're producing?.
A huge amount of products and processes are just waste.
Economics, politics, etc try to stimulate, encourage, reward the production of more. More of whatever. Generally, more waste. In my view, we need to address this waste-stimulation.
As it is, generating waste is directly linked to generating product, profit, jobs, and taxes. That link needs to stop.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Almost a minute and a half of nonsense before the first frame of the "explosion".
It's hard to judge the scale, but all that's there, is a ruptured pipeline, shooting water maybe 75 feet into the air. Need more context - how and why is it characterized as an "explosion"?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I served (as an enlisted man) aboard the USS Nebraska.
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Forgot link! DUHH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIGZyaCJPuc
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'm just about to join up. My recruiter said only officers and above have to clean toilets. Is that true?
"There is water. . .at the bottom of the ocean. . ."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
For a minute there I thought we'd have to stop washing our shit away with drinking water.
POKE 36879,8
Was this not foretold by the Prophet David Byrne?
Water dissolving and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water, carry the water
Remove the water from the bottom of the ocean
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, into silent water
Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground
Letting the days go by, into silent water
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Scientists should stop discovering resources. Every newly discovered resource reduces the pressure to apply more reason to the usage of existing/known resources...
LOL!
Don't worry though, it's not the only lie the recruiter told you...
No sig today...
I think there was a recent article on Slashdot about osmotic energy... the interface between the fresh water and the salty water could be used to generate the electricity to do the pumping. http://mahb.stanford.edu/whats-happening/osmotic-energy/
That since 1900 is greater than a century right?
Installing gray water systems to catch the water from laundry machines and using them to flush toilets is not a bad idea. The day is not far off, the fresh water price goes up so high, people voluntarily install such systems to cut their water bills down.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I don't speak English you insensitive clod!
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Lol.. that is a bit humorous but likely true to some degree. Even if it isn't something that killed off the dinos, there could be life in it that has evolved completely in isolation to the rest of the world and that could create issues on a similar scale if it isn't purified safely.
But hey, at least we have a weapon in reserve should the dinos become a problem again.
Sea water is a lot more damaging to pipes, and piping sea water in as well as freshwater would require two sets of incoming pipes to residences. So I assume you're talking about a very limited context.
They'll start fracking now, to get every last drop.
I always saw him and Squidward finding some river or something below the ocean.
There is water at the bottom of the ocean Remove the water, carry the water Remove the water from the bottom of the ocean Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down Letting the days go by, water flowing underground Into the blue again, after the money's gone Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground Into the blue again, into silent water Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Yes, all our fresh water, once drunk, is lost forever to space. Some say water you pee into the toilet or behind a tree runs to the sea, evaporates into clouds, falls to the ground as rain, and flows as rivers and springs back to the great intake pipes that lead to your faucet in the great hydrological cycle, but I call that junk science. Mumbo-jumbo about conservation of mass and energy aside, once you've used something. IT. IS. GONE. FOREVER.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The rubbish will largely degrade. The rubbish that won't degrade (plastics, etc.) will be a resource for future generations.
Interesting take - I envy future generations, which will have amazing resources like, say, debts the level we can't even dream of yet.
You think they might be able to just climb up to the moon on the pile of IOUs from the US, Japan and other western democracies?
Another valuable resource, no doubt will be the dead oceans - from overfishing and animals killed from plastic rubbish; if only they could find something else to eat.
potable water
According to the article, this is "portable" water.
When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.
[citation needed]
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How does one propose transport the fresh water? In Tankers?
people voluntarily install such systems to cut their water bills down.
Which is illegal in most of the US (building codes)
Military guys in control room: "Who is this guy, what does he want"
Dennis Quaid: "I'm a paleo-climatologist...."
**dramatic pause**
Quaid: "I believe we've reached a critical de-salination point"
**gasps**
Thank you Dave Raggett
That is true. Gray water systems are illegal in almost all the building codes. But if it saves money people would push for code changes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Isn't there any way we could just filter salt water and drink that? Or is something like that to expensive or even possible? Just curious, I would think that we could just filter the salt out of salt water along with everything else so that we can drink it.
Is that likely to give us an insight of were Mars' water has gone?
Latrines, or toilets if you prefer, are found in the head. You might want to see a doctor about getting that foot removed from your mouth, shipmate.
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The actual article does mention that - in some detail as you'd expect. But it's pay-walled and the summary and press releases that are linked to don't have the details. I had to go down to the library to photocopy the original to read.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of different techniques were used in different areas (the original article is a review, not a report of original research itself). Some are direct observation - submarine fresh water springs have been reported since time immemorial. Some are the results of petrophysical logging of oil wells - the resistivity of pore fluids can be measured by propagation of radio waves. Some are the result of actually coring the sediments and extracting the pore fluids - if you're planning on setting concrete pilings into the seabed to support a construction for example, the freshness or otherwise of the pore fluids can have a large effect on the setting time of your cement grout.
Volumetrics are mostly from seismic. Which is entirely routine. From the seismic reflection profile you can invert a velocity profile ; the speed of sound in a rock is closely related to it's porosity, so if you know the lithology (from coring ; from onshore comparison and correlation), then from the seismic you can estimate the porosity. Then by calculating up the volume of your rock body from dozens to thousands of seismic lines and your porosities, you can get an estimate of the pore fluid volume. We've been doing this in the oilfield (and accepting 50% uncertainty on the results) for decades - it's application to hydrogeology isn't even new, as use of shallow wells for disposal of undesired fluids (e.g. produced water) has been routine for decades too.
It's an interesting review article - if you're into hydrogeology, which I'm not. But not as spectacular as the press releases are puffing it up to be.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"