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Comment by eimrine | Hacker News Reader

Persian Gulf has 20% more salt in water because of the humans which are throwing the oversalinated waste back into the sea. Dehidrated salt may be a big deal for some areas because of no waste into input.

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>Persian Gulf has 20% more salt in water because of the humans

I would like to read more about this from an authoritative source.

Through the magic of Googling "Persian Gulf salinity" it seems like it's more that it's a shallow Gulf in a dry area so it has significant evaporation. Desalination does effect it but it's only a few percent of the total evaporation (which is still surprisingly big) and doesn't sound like the main driving factor or an imminent ecological concern.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14635...

I thought the HN-way was to be more charitable than just directly calling out obvious bullshit.

pardon my ignorance. But, all that salt was there already. right? Is it that we have less water there now ?

If salt and water flow in but only water flows out you will be left with salt. Same reason that concentrated brine comes out of a desalination plant, or that the dead sea is what it is.

Huh, looks like they process about 1/500 of the water in it every year. So enough to make a dent in the salinity eventually.

Look at a map. The Persian Gulf is a dead end, and all ocean water flow has to come through the Strait of Hormuz. There's some fresh water coming in from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but less each year as that fresh water is captured and used, and as global warming increases evaporation.

The San Francisco bay has to be actively managed for similar reasons. It's a large body of water with a narrow outlet, fed by a river system from which much water is captured. If too little water comes in from the Sacramento River, the delta will turn to salt water. Managing that is what the Bay Model, mentioned recently, is for.

The brine is waste, and the dehydrated salt is also waste. Maybe dry waste is better, but it's still waste.

Lavoisier’s “Traite elementaire de chimie” refers to water electrolysis.

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