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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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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?
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!
I served (as an enlisted man) aboard the USS Nebraska.
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I'm just about to join up. My recruiter said only officers and above have to clean toilets. Is that true?
I totally know people that would kill their wives to go to an off world colony, prison or not.
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...
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
We need to address waste stimulation, but government can't do that.
People need to take personal responsibility for themselves and own this problem. My wife and I take a trash can to the dump once every 3 or 4 weeks. We have really worked hard to cut down our trash profile by reusing, recycling, composting, reducing, and conserving (for example we use empty dog food bags as trash bags).
Government can't successfully make people do this. They can tax noncompliance to kingdom come but it won't accomplish anything except to give government more money to spend on pork and take more money from hard-working Americans.
The solution to most of society's ills starts right at home, and requires desire and action at the individual level.
The root problem is that government has trained people from a very young age to be people who proclaim "Someone needs to do something!" rather than "What can I do!?" when a problem comes up. Government in its own thirst for power and control has raised a society of helpless dependents, and it really has zero interest in solving problems, because the problems are the source of their power.