Scientists have discovered a sea of fresh water under the ocean
qz.com
qz.com
But the sentiment of "do not touch any resource!" is irrational, and brings more harm than good, to the cause of using the resources we have wisely.
The point is that we should be assessing the impacts before we blindly use it and then later figure out "oh, this is bad". It's fucking 2019. We need to evolve as a species, not keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over. We're garbage creating garbage. How about we make a measured analysis first before running in and wrecking everything? And why am I being downvoted for not wanting to turn our world into shit?
In any case, fuck all of you who think it's okay to ruin our environment just because.
There I disagree. I think intelligent life capable of reflecting on it's being here is not garbage. We want to live in harmony with nature, but seeing us as the disease, and just trying to save nature for the sake of nature is equally idiotic imo.
If there is no one there to witness it, that would be pretty pointless.
No one suggests to destroy environment just because. As said above, i agree that we should be assessing the impacts before doing things, but here people are simply suggesting to use water, and you are falling into inadequate emotional insults.
this can't happen if aquifer is already under the sea.
> land subsidence
in this case it will be seafloor subsidence, which will have much smaller impact than land subsidence has.
> huge profits to the companies that get to them first
also huge profits for the governments taxing these companies, and for people buying the resource cheaper.
So seafloor subsidence should be great, let have more of it!
(yes, I realize it likely won't be much)
I wonder however if moving water into aquifers of deserts would help.
Obviously there's direct pumping, but moreso land use changes that stop groundwater infiltration: losing wetlands and forests to pavement, roofs, poorly-designed agricultural drainage, and even regularly-mowed grass which develops subsoil hardpan. Any would-be groundwater is diverted into flash flood runoff and overloaded storm sewer systems.
The ultimate end to this poor land/hydrology management is desertification, where ~zero water is stored on the land and all water immediately drains off in a torrent.
But likely we won't be pumping out enough water to make a measurable difference so it's not a "real" suggestion.
But (and getting even more ridiculous here) the water need not necessarily be returned to the ocean. It could be used for instance to water crops inland or recharge inland aquifers that had previously been depleted.
Re-forestation would solve the problem (deep rooted plants lower the groundwater level) but because the soil is salty, nothing can or will grow there. The areas are now wastelands, good only for salt mining.
I remember some research was put into developing salt-tolerant trees specifically to solve the problem, not sure how successful it was.
This seems like transparently unwise behavior for people such as we — residents of a fragile spaceship — to engage in.
>this can't happen if aquifer is already under the sea.
Sure it can: a fresh[er]water spring venting into salt water is still a spring. These types of fresh/salt transitions are seen by divers all the time.
These springs and "meetings of the waters" are often hot beds of life underwater, and shutting them down will have unknown hydrological and biological consequences.
>in this case it will be seafloor subsidence, which will have much smaller impact than land subsidence has.
How do we know that? Just because the impact is less obvious or "more distant" doesn't mean it's less costly.
>also huge profits for the governments taxing these companies, and for people buying the resource cheaper.
Taxes? Lower prices? Sounds like someone's not optimizing for Shareholder Value, citizen. :-\
[Un]fortunately, real businesses do. They use regulatory capture to dodge taxes or otherwise avoid contributing back to the public coffer (see the numerous stories of aquifers given away "for a song" to private companies) and they use anticompetitive monopolistic/oligopolistic practices to avoid lowering prices. These practices are economically inefficient (ie they make the society poorer overall, and by utilitarianism reduce the society's overall happiness), yet they are common.
So I question your claim of automatic huge profits for governments and consumers. It could be that all the profits go to the companies, and any economic profits for third parties get cancelled out by the economic losses incurred by additional income inequality.
Not all profit is profitable. If I give an extra dollar to the local warlord, have I made the society richer? Happier? Free-er? Does it make any difference if the local warlord calls itself "Nestle?" (actually that's not quite fair: Nestle has a body count most warlords would give their left arm for, but that's a separate issue)
> Taxes? Lower prices? Sounds like someone's not optimizing for the almighty Shareholder Value, citizen
Sure, sometimes people in governments take money and create anti-competitive regulations, but don't you agree that in such cases the problem is not "our desire to exploit resources" but the corrupt government. Even with that companies still pay lots of taxes, and there is often competition lowering the prices. Particularly in this case they have to make the price cheaper than the other methods of getting water.
> If I give an extra dollar to the local warlord, have I made the society richer? Happier? Free-er? Does it make any difference if the local warlord calls itself "Nestle?"
Do you argue against all taxes?
As far as i can understand your arguments would apply equally against any human endeavor other than suicide. Whatever we do is going to change the environment somehow, of course the attitude of "dig up everything" is stupid, but "do not touch anything, it will have unknown consequences" is not better.
No I do not agree, but probably not for the reason you think.
The all-too-human temptation to identify "the (singular) problem" (or the person/group 'to blame') isn't educational here. Regulatory capture is a whole-system problem, not a failure of a single component.
If you remove all the people from the government and replace them with new people, that won't somehow fix it. The new people will be constrained to act in the same way as the old people, by the same economic and societal forces.
>of course the attitude of "dig up everything" is stupid, but "do not touch anything, it will have unknown consequences" is not better.
Indeed, who would disagree? No need to exclude the reasonable middle ground though.
Precaution should not limitless ("do not touch anything"), but it should not be zero either. If we haven't studied the unknown consequences at all, maybe we should do that first.
> Fortunately no-one's arguing that. You're excluding the (reasonable) middle.
Your previous comment doesn't look like a reasonable middle to me. The reasonable attitude would be "yay, new resource, we need to find a way to use it without breaking anything".
"we need to... use it" -- so your idea of a 'reasonable attitude' is to beg the question? Conclusion first, evidence later? :-\
Again precaution should not limitless ("do not touch anything"), but it should not be zero either. If we haven't studied these "unknown consequences" at all, maybe we should do that first.
Maybe the thing we disagree about is the order of concerns, i believe the needs of people come first, then comes requirement to be cautious because not being cautious can cause harm to people.
> The part you chose to not quote is rather important "we need to find a way to use it without breaking anything". So i don't think the precaution should be zero.
To clarify: my point was by saying "we need to find a way to use it," you've already ruled out the possibility that further scientific study will rule out its use entirely. I'm not saying this is the most likely outcome, just that this outcome was conspicuously and unexplainedly excluded from consideration.