Current Events > why dont they pre-emptively try to drain the ocean before climate change causes

(+) Yeah! (+)

sea levels to rise

just take gargantuan amounts of water and desalinate it. solve world drought. prevent coastal flooding

Drain it to where

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Antifar posted...

Drain it to where

Space

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Antifar posted...

Drain it to where

countries in drought like australia

Problems with being in a closed loop...

Also you make desalination sound trivial. I think desalinated water would have been much more common if it were that simple. Plus how would you adequately transport it?

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Kloe_Rinz posted...

sea levels to rise

just take gargantuan amounts of water and desalinate it. solve world drought. prevent coastal flooding

Desalination costs a shot ton of money and isn't good for the environment either as it consumes a bunch of energy and the only efficient way we have right now is greenhouse gases which are causing the problem you're trying to fix.

Antifar posted...

Drain it to where

The aquafers that we are currently draining.
The Midwest is on borrowed time, water wise. All the farmers have been pumping ground water out faster than nature can refill them.

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Solid Sonic posted...

Also you make desalination sound trivial.

its not but we should start now regardless

Solid Sonic posted...

Plus how would you adequately transport it?

trucks

Gather up homeless people and give them straws pay them per gallon. If they drink enough it'll pass the tipping point and it'll be safe to drink

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Solid Sonic posted...

how would you adequately transport it?

Pipelines. You know, like oil.

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Idea.
Make a huge solar powered pot still to boil the sea water. With mirrors focusing sun light on the boiler. Use the steam to power the plant and a few homes, before condensing it down to pure water. The process leaves the sea salt, which can be sold, behind in the still. Gives pure water for drinking AND produces clean energy.
I'll take my Nobel prize in crisp $100 bills please.


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We should take all the water and push it somewhere else!

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Kloe_Rinz posted...

countries in drought like australia

Its salt water.

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divot1338 posted...

Its salt water.

Kloe_Rinz posted...

desalinate

Kloe_Rinz posted...

desalinate

Flintlock_Staff posted...

Desalination costs a shot ton of money and isn't good for the environment either as it consumes a bunch of energy and the only efficient way we have right now is greenhouse gases which are causing the problem you're trying to fix.

Imit8m3 posted...

Antifar posted...

Drain it to where

The aquafers that we are currently draining.
The Midwest is on borrowed time, water wise. All the farmers have been pumping ground water out faster than nature can refill them.

Poisoning the aquifers with saltwater is not exactly the greatest strategy ever
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They could just drain the water to the earth's mantle or something

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Mr Hangman posted...

No, you can't do that. The mantle isn't an open cavity you can drop stuff into. It's magma. If you drill into it, the magma will erupt out. If you try to force the water down there, if you can get much volume of it in at all, best case is that you cause earthquakes like fracking does.

Oh my god

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Mr Hangman posted...

Based on some estimates I found searching: The energy to desalinate water is around 3-7 kWh per liter. Let's use 3. Lowering sea levels by 1 foot would require moving 26,445 cubic miles of water. That's 1.102*10^17 liters. Desalinating that would take 3.306*10^17 kWh of energy, or 330.6 million terrawatt hours (TWh). This is 2000 times the annual global energy production. Not to mention the energy cost of moving it up against gravity, which is sure to be wildly prohibitive as well.

To add onto this a lot of the countries in the middle east who rely on desalination have a good carbon footprint from energy usage. Desalination in Saudi Arabia is 10% of their total electrical usage over the year. Now imagine we start using this more like you suggest. In the UAE just Abu Dhabi's desalination accounts for over 20% of their CO2 emissions. And with the way thermodynamics work there is a limit to how energy efficient you can make the plants. Sure you can use renewable resources and ideally you should, but the technology isn't there to make it cost efficient right now to produce what you're asking for

Mr Hangman posted...

No, you can't do that. The mantle isn't an open cavity you can drop stuff into. It's magma. If you drill into it, the magma will erupt out. If you try to force the water down there, if you can get much volume of it in at all, best case is that you cause earthquakes like fracking does.

There are hydrothermal vents as well as underwater lava flows.

However, magma behaves almost exactly the same underwater as it does above.

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Dam up the rivers upstream. If we're all gonna flood anyway, may as well get some nice lakes out of the deal.

Mr Hangman posted...

Based on some estimates I found searching: The energy to desalinate water is around 3-7 kWh per liter. Let's use 3. Lowering sea levels by 1 foot would require moving 26,445 cubic miles of water. That's 1.102*10^17 liters. Desalinating that would take 3.306*10^17 kWh of energy, or 330.6 million terrawatt hours (TWh). This is 2000 times the annual global energy production. Not to mention the energy cost of moving it up against gravity, which is sure to be wildly prohibitive as well.

So if we do it over 2000 years then we only need to double our annual global energy production. Easy.

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Then in thirty years we have to drop it another foot.

Obviously this is a ridiculous solution to a problem that would be rendered moot by solving the initial issue of climate change.

The only question is how many people think its a legitimate idea and how many think its just funny?

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divot1338 posted...

Obviously this is a ridiculous solution to a problem that would be rendered moot by solving the initial issue of climate change.

Because, "solving" climate change requires going all Thanos-Stalin about it, or at the very least causing much pearl-clutching.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Because, "solving" climate change requires going all Thanos-Stalin about it, or at the very least causing much pearl-clutching.

Maybe.

But were all overlooking the solution that is staring us in the face.
https://youtu.be/OqVyRa1iuMc&t=72

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divot1338 posted...

But were all overlooking the solution that is staring us in the face.

Mr Hangman posted...

For example, can you move the Earth?

You cannot.

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divot1338 posted...

You cannot.

Yet.

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Southernfatman posted...

We should take all the water and push it somewhere else!

Punch that water right in the pussy!

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