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Comment on Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water

BeautifulMind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

This sounds fantastic on its face, but I seem to keep on hearing about how desalination will solve all kinds of problems and we still have this particular problem.

The missing piece, it seems, is the will for it to be used as infra at scale. Meanwhile selling bottled water taken for free from public lands for several dollars a liter in single-use bottles remains a multi-billion dollar industry. (an industry, I might add, that is aggressive about lobbying to protect its interests)

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batmangrundies@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Devices like this are a lifeline for communities in developing nations. Who are the first and worst affected by water shortages and salt water intrusions into their fresh water sources.

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- xenoclast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Also the poorest and least likely to get the help from the people with the resources to help.
  
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Astroturfed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Not to mention if we do this at enough scale it will raise the salinity of the ocean and, you know, kill everything.

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- ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  That’s pretty unlikely, given that the water systems are more of less closed, and the volume of water in the oceans is so massive that it wouldn’t make an appreciable difference at any reasonable scale.
  Keep in mind that this isn’t the creation of desalination, just making it cheaper. There are already plants that do this at a scale of 50 million gallons a day, or under 1 trillionth of the oceans.
  
  Localized salinity changes are more likely to be an issue, but for that I think they just mix that salt back in with processed waste water, making it roughly neutral.
  
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- BeautifulMind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  will raise the salinity of the ocean
  
  If care isn’t taken to avoid concentrating brine going back in just one spot, sure that could create localized problems. Buuut, you realize that the oceans constantly lose water to evaporation and their salinity is more or less stable, right? Every bit of rain or snow that falls on land (most of which returns to the ocean eventually) is water the ocean can be without and still not too salty for life.
  
  Speaking of salinity, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (which in normal conditions, is the deep/cold return current from the gulf stream -> North Atlantic) is running into a big damned problem because Greenland is melting and all that fresh water pouring off of it is disrupting the return flow of cold water to the tropics. That’s why the Gulf Stream has been so hot- it’s not getting return feed from its radiator in the North Atlantic, and meanwhile the North Atlantic is getting colder because it’s not cycling water back south, and that prevents hot Gulf Stream water from getting there.
  
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  - CosmicCleric@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    This sounds like an idea for a disaster movie!
    
    (Yes, I know.)
    
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- Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Which also prevents ice from forming compounding more problems(the big massive problem) which we’re trying to avoid talking about right now.
  
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- Tavarin@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The oceans have been collecting salt from runoff for billions of years, humans reintroducing some of that salt before the water will not affect ocean salinity.
  
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