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Ask Slashdot: What Happens If We Perfect Age Reversing?
ourlovecanlastforeve writes: With biologists getting closer and closer to reversing the aging process in human cells, the reality of greatly extended life draws closer. This brings up a very important conundrum: You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space. Even at our current growth rate there's not enough for everyone. Not enough food, not enough space, not enough medical care. If — no, when — age reversal becomes a reality, who gets to live? And if everyone gets to live, how will we provide for them?
Exodus from Earth. We need space ships to spread out in the galaxy!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space.
Sure we can. It might be morally reprehensible to do but it hasn't stopped people in power in the past as well as the present.
If it becomes necessary to tell people not to reproduce, the laws can be changed.
(More likely, though, it would be presented as a choice between being allowed to live indefinitely and being allowed to reproduce.)
The question is not what the people will do with all the extra people, but rather what the robots will do with all the people.
It seems like before we worry about the implications of reversing aging we should see how age reversal even effects mortality. Cancers, dementia, and many other age related diseases might not even significantly change from their current rates.
Citation, Please.
We grow plenty of food. The problem isn't the quantity of food. It's distribution. We have plenty of space, as well. We just need to change our (American) notion of what "space" is.
But I would whole-heartedly support a "stop making fucking babies" measure.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If everybody gets to live a very long time, then we run out of resources
If we figure out how to curb over-population and only the really old live, then we run out of viable sperm and eggs in a few generations
We will need to have people living 'normal' lifespans, unless we figure out how to dodge the who reproduction via sperm and eggs thing
The economics of the situation would probably lead to a self-selected wealthy group occupying the long-life slots and the rest of us toiling away as normal with our lifespans slightly adjusted from what we expect today in order to fill the breeders slot
It would probably make things easier all around if the breeders did not suspect that they could enjoy a long and healthy life
One thing that could potentially change this entire equation would be extending the range in which humans can live, whether it be orbital habitats, terraformed planets or cozy lintel asteroids. A that point ti would be really handy to have extremely long-lived humans taking the not quite as fast as light trips to our nearest stellar neighbors
But then, I tend to be an optimist
Wherever You Go, There You Are
I sincerely believe that is one bridge that is best to cross when you actually get to it... worrying about something like this is liable to only keep you from enjoying the life that you have, here and now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
When age reversing does happen (5-10 years), I promise you people will continue to die! Mother nature is very creative.
We're already starting to see population growth top out as more nations join the developed world. In Europe, we're below replacement rate. In Japan, it's stoking fears of a labor crisis. India and China are falling to near replacement levels in the urban areas, and rural will likely follow as prosperity is extended there.
We don't need to make this choice. Continue with the education of women, liberalization of labor laws, and growing market economies. People will naturally produce fewer children if a) they know the ones they produce will likely survive to adulthood and b) their own welfare increases based on the fewer number they bring to adulthood. Hell, tie Basic Income amounts to having a set number of kids -- you have 3, well you just had 25% of your UBI revoked. Sorry buddy.
The percentage of starving people in the world has halved over the last two decades, despite the increase in population. The idea that we're running out of resources is false. Our species is driven by economics. The more demand there is for something, past a certain threshold, the more that something gets produced. In the case of food and water, we have a convenience economy based mostly on luxury across the majority of the world. If we have to, we'd switch to a survival economy, in which only the most efficient and necessary crops are grown. We'll just go to treated sewage, GMO supercrops, and other things that cause people to turn up their noses.
You could comfortably house the entire population of the world in the state of Florida. You could use the state of Georgia to grow rice, soy, corn, and wheat to provide for the macronutrients needed. Then you could easily supplement the rest of the vitamins and minerals needed in a daily diet, through genetically modified yeast strains. The physical resources are there. The necessity is not.
The only reason there is starvation in the world is because efficiency is distasteful and unnecessary for the majority of the population. Charity, in the meantime, has dropped the overall number of people enduring starvation, according to a recent UN report.
Malthusian catastrophes rarely take into account Moore's law. Efficiency in population planning increases with the available computational resources.
It is the Star Trek universe. What you're missing is that this is not Earth. It is Ferenginar.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
All those who sign-up to live and work in orbiting colonies get age-reversal therapy for free. The primary economy will to be build more and better colony ships to handle the influx of long lived people. Within a generation or two the entire Earth will be most emptied and the federation of human colonies will declare Earth a "National Park" available to visit on vacation - just pick your continent.
Let's say an age cure is released tomorrow. It will be priced specifically for a certain percentage to afford. It probably won't even be publicly available, and instead be invite-only like certain cars already are. I honestly can't imagine the wealthy and elite opting to release that kind of cure to the general public, although it's a safe bet to assume politicians will grant themselves (and family) access.
I could easily see such a scenario causing mass riots and civil wars, however. And on the off chance that it did become something that just gets dumped in the public water system for the benefit of mankind, we'd just have more wars. Longer life spans would mean "reevaluating" things like term limits for politicians, prison sentence lengths, retirement, and pensions. I don't think food would even be on the radar for possible issues. I'd be way more worried about every day things that our societies are based on suddenly being rendered obsolete.
Even social changes would be pure chaos. Imagine your 90 year old grandmother suddenly regressing in age a bit, with a restored mental and physical agility. She may not be ready for SEAL training, but you can bet she wouldn't be happy sitting in the nursing home all day. How does she train for a job? Can she afford to stay "retired" for another 30 years when her savings were built with 10 in mind? And how would the rest of the family react to grandma Joanne becoming an equal again, rather than an elder?
You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space.
Well, with that kind of negative-nancy thinking, of course nothing's going to get done.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
But I would whole-heartedly support a "stop making fucking babies" measure.
I actually wonder if society will ever get around to regulating reproduction.
We regulate whether you're allowed to drive a car, but we don't regulate whether you're allowed to have a kid. I submit that you can do a LOT more damage with the latter than the former.
I think we really need a better social contract. We need to take better care of those who are alive, and do more to ensure that those who are born are more likely to be able to take care of themselves. If it takes a lot of work to be allowed to have a kid, you'll probably see parents invest a lot more in their kids. When somebody is born with autism or whatever, society can step in and lend a LOT more support. However, you won't just have masses of kids forced to take care of themselves because their parents were irresponsible.
There is no reason that cradle-to-grave can't be financially viable, as long as you exercise control over the cradle part.
Cry however you want over reproductive rights. I don't see how preventing somebody from trivially deciding to have kids is a greater injustice than much of what goes on as a result of humoring that urge.
As far as who gets to reproduce goes, I don't think it has to be that difficult. At the very least, mandate education and some general weed-out steps so that those who aren't reasonably committed don't bother. Then you can screen for stuff like serious genetic disorders (by all means allow surrogacy and adoption instead). At that point you have to earn some kind of right to reproduce (that might be trivial or difficult depending on demand for reproduction vs slots available). The wealthy might be able to pay into a trust fund to simply buy the right (it costs society money to clean up after your messes, so you can prepay if you want). Otherwise, it might be a bit like applying for a scholarship - what have you done to give back to society, etc. Then for the sake of diversity you could have a lottery for x% of the slots where everybody has an equal chance of being able to reproduce regardless of merit.
What makes you think this magical treatment (which doesn't exist, and may never exist) will be available to everyone? Life extension/immortality would easily become the most valuable thing on earth. It would sell for a fortune, be used for political and financial gain, and generally be restricted to the super rich.
There won't be a population problem because the majority would be allowed to die.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It's worse. At least the Ferengi didn't detonate thermal nuclear warheads within their atmosphere or knowingly cause harm to their body for pleasure.
Cause the Ferengi are wimps!
The assumption that people will reproduce if given the opportunity to live indefinitely is flawed.
For many people, the urge to reproduce is strongly motivated by the idea that we want something of ourselves to leave behind when we are gone: we want someone to care for us in our old age; someone to carry on our memory. For people in developing countries, having children is a way of having extra labor. If, however, we do not regard death as inevitable, then the motivation for reproduction is also reduced. The need for extra labor is also reduced, in that there will be more healthy adults of working age in the population.
That is not to say that nobody would choose to have children. There may be a period of adjustment where people would still have lots of kids out of habit and out of a desire to hedge one's bets, so to speak, but once people start hitting ages around 150 without signs of slowing down, most will quite likely start to realize they would be better off not reproducing.
But there's always the idea that the only way you can live forever is if you agree to not have children...I'd say there is no shortage of people who would take up that offer.
The whole premise is bull.
There is more than enough food to feed everyone. The problem is mostly just politics such as feeding a SUV enough corn to feed a family of 10 for a day to simply drive to the mall and back or letting relief supplies get resold on the black market.
space? Are you kidding me? Huge sections of the earth are completely barren, with existing technology the USA could easily accommodate a thousand or even a million times its population and not run out. Maybe some tiny countries have issues but not the world in general. We aren't even building floating cities yet.
medicine mostly has the same issue as food and the complex relationship between patents and rights and patients who need the medicine. Some is genuinely expensive and difficult to produce. But even today street bums get better medical care than kings just 300 years ago. It will only improve.
All the earth needs to support far far more humans is cheap clean energy and automation. Nuclear fusion, cheap solar and similar technologies will likely be a reality before humans living forever. Same with completely autonomous and self contained manufacturing. Combine the two and you could create hydroponic fields thousands of layers deep tended by robots and powered by light from a fusion reactor. You could build complex mega cities capable of housing a billion people.
We would have to legalize the blood sport known as the Autoduel.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>"You can't tell people not to reproduce "
Actually, yes you can. You can make it a requirement to have only X children or less if you want age extension... make it a choice. It is already illogical for people to think they have the "right" to make as many children as they want.
Exactly how many dozens of billions of people does this planet need?
Obviously, we will fight to the death over limited resources, until resources are no longer limited.
Please our women wear far too much clothing.
For thousands of years humanity has had a pretty comfortable relationship with death (even two hundred years ago there were 'wakes' held in the family home for several days in many developed nations). Historically, attempting immortality has tended to go hand in hand with delusion, disconnection from reality, and/or mental illness. It is only recently (in historic terms) that death has become stigmatised rather than accepted as inevitable, and even welcomed as a natural and positive progression.
Even presuming that age reversal techniques will one day do more than allow us to be decrepit old people for longer, I will choose to die in my natural course and leave the earth to my descendants. Death doesn't have to be scary, it can be a positive choice to improve the world by my eventual absence. I will live on through the ripples of all my actions in nurturing the new generations. Attempts at immortality are still for the delusional, disconnected, and mentally ill.
SO yes this is true. The biggest waste of resources is animal production for food. A single cow uses approx 2000 gallons of water for every pound of meat produced. The same pound of beans takes approx 100 gallons. The amount of beans grown per acre far exceeds the amount of space for cattle. Factory farming while evil has decreased prices so more people can eat meat but it is not sustainable. If we change the average diet to a plant based one and then taught all countrys that are starving how to grow it we would have more than enough food.
As far as space , sure one day it would get quite crowded. But I live in California. There is so much open land that could be used for people instead of grazing cattle. Of course we are limited by water but most of our country is unused land. and there are plenty of local resources. We just need to change our way of life from city based to more rural. It will be a thousand years before this planet has elbow to elbow people. By then I am sure we will have colonied Mars and the moon. perhaps even farther than that. If they can make is virtually immortal I would take the treatment. I would love to be like Lazerus Long and live to be 4000 yrs old. Maybe someday we all will.
Item number one on on my bucket list
When I'm 59 I'll hunt you down and kill you. Fair enough?
In other words, lots of people don't have enough food.
No, in other words, lots of people have more government corruption than they need.
Lots of food aid gets delivered to famine nations in Africa, and it either rots on the docks (what the corrupt government doesn't use itself or give to its soldiers), or the surplus that would otherwise go to people who are not corrupt government or soldiers gets sold off to other nations in order to raise money to buy weapons for the soldiers.
In other words, exactly as the GP said: a distribution problem, but one unrelated to the mechanics of distribution, rather the politics of distribution.
..or, here's an alternate theory: The research will look very promising, then either some fatal flaw that kills people will be discovered, (ostensibly) halting all further research, or it'll just disappear from the news completely and never be heard about again, and anyone inquiring into it will run into a brick wall, beyond which they can discover nothing. It will be assumed that nothing more was done about it. Meanwhile the research goes on in secret, where only the rich and powerful have access to it. The 1% will live indefinitely, while the 99% live a measly 70-90 years on average. Anyone stumbling on the secret and attempting to develop it themselves 'for the benefit of all mankind' will be quietly hushed up, bought out, or suffer a tragic accident.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
SO yes this is true. The biggest waste of resources is animal production for food. A single cow uses approx 2000 gallons of water for every pound of meat produced. The same pound of beans takes approx 100 gallons.
Who cares?
Build more nuclear plants, and use the power to operate the desalination plants you also build.
BONUS! By removing sea water from the oceans for the purpose of desalination, you mitigate the ocean level rise due to global warming!
DOUBLE BONUS! By building nuclear plants, you mitigate the production of greenhouse gasses, reducing global warming!
TRIPLE BONUS! By having an excess of water, you can grow more cattle and crops and increase the planets carrying capacity!
QUADRUPLE BONUS! Excess fresh water allows you to address ongoing desertification!
Ching ching ching ching ching ... -- human net prosperity slot machine paying out
If we can truly rejuvenate brain cells to the point where one could learn new skills like languages and instruments while remembering earlier life, then it's a wonderful concept and I have no doubt we'll find ways to adapt with improved food resources and economic energy consumption. We could harvest asteroids a la Greg Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson for space housing and interplanetary colonization.
If it's a way for the old to stay in power without any youthful change, then the development of the technology must be stopped. I'm speaking as someone in his forties who knows in my sixties that it will be time to let someone else drive the car.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
People will still die even if everyone gets the treatment. They'll die from war, accidents, and diseases. They'll still have heart attacks and get cancer. I suspect even if you completely "cured" aging at the cellular level the average life span would only go up by a few decades.
Consider cancer. The human body has multiple overlapping systems to detect cells that have gone bad. It doesn't cure them, though. It kills them. One of the reasons cancer normally (not always, but normally) strikes in old age is likely the systems which detect and kill cancer cells have been shot full of holes by... the systems that detect and kill cancer cells. That's not going to stop. Your odds of being a cancer victim (albeit more youthful looking) in your sixties and seventies probably won't change very much.
There are other problems that youthful cells won't help with. The heavy drinkers and drug users are still going to drop dead by age 50 or so. Women will probably become infertile about the same age they do today. Morbidly obese people might live a few extra years, but probably not as long as thin people today (statistically).
Actually extending human lifespan appreciably is going to require far, far more than addressing cell aging. So fear not! You're still all gonna die.
Or possibly, this already happened a long time ago, and that 1% is currently living in this manner, subject to some physical limitations, with the details of the longevity treatment coaxed into mythology to preserve the secret of its existence.
Two different longevity treatments were discovered independently and used by two different groups. The two groups are unaware of each other, and when presented with evidence, go so far as to vehemently deny the possibility of the other group's existence.
They were affected in physiologically similar ways; one notable exception was that one group cannot stand the sunlight, and members of the other sparkle when exposed to it.
I'm sorry to have to break this to you, but it isn't really wisdom so much as the ultimate in sour grapes.
It is only recently (in historic terms) that death has become stigmatised rather than accepted as inevitable, and even welcomed as a natural and positive progression.
I'm not sure if this is utter nonsense, or if you may have a point insofar as the Enlightenment was "historically recent" and has eaten away at some traditional sources of solace.
Attempts at immortality are still for the delusional, disconnected, and mentally ill.
Only if they are flawed attempts. If we eventually get some stuff that actually works, then (ignoring for a moment the larger social upheavals and eventual overpopulation issues--let's say we get plausible long term space travel, too) your choice to die at an arbitrary age of 80 or 90 becomes no different from a choice to die at 30. It is ultimately (and should always be) your choice, but it is not "mentally ill" for not wanting to check out on a timetable based solely on biology.
It's not hard to see who gets to live longer. The rich, for one. If "we" decide to select candidates on merit, there will most certainly be other places where the selection criteria are different or where the deciders can be bought, and those who can afford it will simply move there (or import the stuff from there).
And if this is done by lottery, a lucky winner might well sell his ticket if the price is right... and would we even want to try and stop such transactions, like we prohibit people from selling their own organs now? If you (at, say, age 35) win the lottery and get to choose between a normal lifespan in sufficient wealth, or an extended lifespan that will be spent either working or worrying over money (or both)? Because your state or private pension scheme is most certainly not going to cover you for 300 years.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Too much of any good thing soon stops being a good thing.
I really enjoyed the fantasy novels of Anne Rice (e.g. "Interview with the Vampire") as she explored the topic of immortality in her characters to a philosophical degree. Vampires going out of their minds with the "burden" of immortality and looking for a way to die.
I believe what makes life special and precious is that it's finite.
You don't know how much you have in the bank and the happiest people you'll encounter are those who savour every moment they have like it was their last.
Turn that on it's head and life becomes valueless if you following my reasoning.
Soylent green is the answer
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Complex systems, such as human bodies, often have a "bathtub curve" of failure probabilities. Numerous potential flaws are most likely at the start of the system's existence, which is why infant mortality and miscarriage remain noticeable even with the most advanced medical support. And as bodies age, more and more smaller flaws accumulate to cause more and more profound system problems. These range from vascular problems, likely to cause strokes and aneurysms, to the wear and tear on joints causing motion problems, to accumulated heavy metal poisoning and debris in the lungs, to the ongoing risk of cancers.
Until complete prevention or cures exist for all of those issues, it seems nonsensical to discuss the population issues of eternal life. Population _growth_ from people living even a decade longer is a much more real and noticeable issue in our economy and resources. So is the cost of medical care for those older people. We're already seeing problems with Medicare funding and elderly care being real economic and political problems in the USA. This is partly because, as we reach the far end of that "bathtub" curve for human beings, addressing one factor that might have killed people far earlier, such as very successful heart surgery and antibiotics for infections that used to kill older people easily, end when more complex and difficult problems finally occur.
I am, myself, old enough to feel these effects. They do accumulate.
"2000 gallons of water for 1 pound" is an exaggeration of a worst-case scenario; even feedlots don't use this much water, and most cattle spend most of their lives on pasture.
I raise some dairy animals on grass, so I can help with a rough calculation based on real life.
I get a calf.
Calf walks around eating grass.
Every day I put out 10 gallons of fresh water, of which the steer drinks 5-7
20 months later, I get about a quarter ton of meat, a square yard or two of leather, and a lot of good fertilizer and dog treats.
So about 6000 gallons of water for 500 pounds of meat, roughly 12 gallons a pound.
Then there's the matter of the unused 3-5 gallons of water that I dump out when I clean the bucket each day, and the cow's urine...none of that water is 'gone,' it's feeding the pasture plants that feed the steer. And even the crappiest McDonald's beef probably spent most of its life on pasture; the feedlots are only for jacking up weight (with water mostly) at the end.
1. You're talking billions of gallons of sea water, far more than we could put a dent in, even with thousands of desalination plants. Furthermore the water would just find its way back to the ocean anyway, because the Earth is a closed ecosystem. ...or was this post meant to be funny?
2. It may reduce *future* global warming, but there is still the problem of all the carbon currently in the atmosphere, as well as seawater acidification.
3. The cost to desalinate 2000 gallons of water is far more than the average person would be willing to pay for a bound of beef.
4. There will be no excess fresh water. Because of the costs, every gallon produced will already be owned by someone. Even if all that desalinated water was used to combat desertification, it's still not even in the ballpark of what would be required.
Doctor to patient, after having given the injection: "I have good news and bad news for you:"
Patient: "The good news first please!"
Doctor: "After this injection, you're going to live for another 800 years."
Patient: 'Great! And the bad one!"
Doctor: "You'll have to stay at your shitty job for another 780 years"
We've reccently radically extended human life span 2.5x what it was for all human history and the result has actually been population decline due to falling birth rate in the parts of the world that people live longer. Countries like Japan and Germany were first to having aging and shrinking populations and the rest of the world is playing catch up. So I think we need to see evidence this is going to cause a population problem because so far the outcome has been counter intuitive. If we can eventually stall and reverse aging, we may have the problem of not enough babies and declining human population. Immortality will be upon us before we know it and before we've had a chance to debate the ethical issues. Like a lot of technological achievement it is a long chain of small advances that pass quietly until we are at that level. Quite simply when the pace of progress out paces the rate at which we age, we can live long enough to receive the next ever better treatment. Long term the politics of immortality self-reinfocing because people who aren't supportive of it will tend to die out. It'll be the best thing to happen to humanity. But we'll sure miss children.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Trying to force more people to live in the absence of resources? You're basically still killing people, you're simply distancing yourselves from the act and washing your hands of the responsibility. Maybe the person who dies will not be the one who can afford longevity treatments; more likely it will be some poor bastard with a different skin color and hat in some distant foreign land. This doesn't seem to worry the people who believe that bearded men live in the sky.
On the whole, it would probably be more humane to just have everyone in the world play Russian Roulette once a year and thin the herd by 1/6th annually. Oh, wait, that would offend the people who believe that bearded men live in the sky.
Better yet, don't kill anyone, and incentivize population control. Oh, wait, that would offend the people who believe that bearded men live in the sky.
Maybe the best strategy is not to play the game (i.e. let people die naturally)? Even now we can prolong life medically for people that are effectively invalids and/or in chronic pain, but to what advantage? Many of them would be happy to be allowed to pass away. When medical care rises to the level that these people actually want to continue living, then maybe we can talk about longevity.
Death is not a bad option, really.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yea, just keep breeding here on Earth and shoot the occasional capsule full of people off into space.
Do you have any clue what it would take to keep up with a population increasing by billions of people? Do you want me to Godwin this thread?
Judging by Dick Cheney's attitudes and continued existence, they already do.
It's called "being married for more than 10 years".
So many of our modern problems come down to the fact that we mitigate our expanding ability to provide food and other resources by reproducing at faster and faster rates. Solving world hunger would be trivial at this point, if we could slow the growth of our population. You see declining birth rates in developed countries, but it's not even close to enough.
We also actively exacerbate these problems with aid. The standard of living in parts of Africa has been an ongoing tragedy, but rather than finding a sustainable way to provide resources for a population that is stabilized, we just keep putting more and more bandaids on the problem that, in the end, just make the situation worse. This is another area where we've made some progress, with better charities popping up, but it's not even close to enough.
Humans just have this sense of entitlement when it comes to breeding and the consumption of resources. It's a primal urge that we just don't seem to be able to manage/overcome. Add in longer lifespans and, oh my god...age reversal...and you have a recipe for disaster. We need our social norms to start catching up with the technology we have.
Earth has perfected organ transplant technology, so someone with access to transplants can live for centuries. The transplants are provided by disassembling criminals, because almost every crime is capital, and execution is by disassembly for transplant stock. Because every citizen considers himself or herself law-abiding, they believe they benefit from more transplant material... and would never become transplant material themselves. They think, "I'll never murder, or embezzle, or repeatedly violate traffic laws, so make 'em all capital crimes. Get rid of the undesirables, and a longer life for me."
Earth has a unified government and a world paramilitary police force: the ARM.
The ARM has three major duties: "mother hunts" (enforcing mandatory parenthood licensing, designed so that each normal adult is allowed to be the parent of two children only -- replacement rate reproduction only), suppressing dangerous technologies (in the hands of anyone but the ARM), and combating organlegging -- black market transplant providers who source their material by kidnapping and murder.
So, the presumption that you can't deny reproductive rights is just silly. You have reproductive rights, but if you're hunted down and killed for attempting to exercise them outside the constraints of a violently enforced law, what good are they?
Oddly, 22nd Century Earth of Niven's milieu isn't generally portrayed internally as a dystopia, because humanity has been conditioned into obedience and pacifism anyway. Most Earth citizens consider the status quo wonderful.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
No. When.
To.Hold.'Em.
(your turn)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Although I am a proponent of nuclear power (and wind and solar and geothermal etc), you'd have to be REALLY bad at math to believe that the amount of water pulled from the oceans for desalination would have any meaningful impact on ocean levels.