this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
397 points (98.1% liked)

News

23259 readers
3067 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

So far, desalination has not been a useful solution to the problem. Companies have been trying to create useful desalination plants for decades. The current process is expensive, inefficient, slow and creates toxic residuals. For these reasons, the current technology does not scale up very well at all.

[–] soEZ@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This a really bad take. Seawater deal with RO is a marvel of efficiency, only 2-3 times above the thermodynamic limit of demixing water from salt. It does not really generate toxic waste like coal fired power plants, but does produce lots of brine with various organics (antiscalants, surfactants etc.) that are not that great. The key issue is water is very cheap from traditional sources (surface water and groundwater) and requires rather crude treatment to be usable, resulting in very low cost. Hence why desal is used in areas where they have no choice. If you don't have surface/ground water source or brackish water source you are doing seawater deal or leave the area....not many choices. At least RO is electrified so it can use renewables but that does not really solve the much higher cost...or issue of brine generation, with zld have a set of it's own issues costs....

[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Very good to know. Thank you for the updated education.

[–] grue@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does not really generate toxic waste like coal fired power plants

It generates all the waste associated with the electricity it uses, which is often from coal fired power plants...

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Considering the area a desalination plant requires, fitting it with wind and solar would not pose a challenge.

[–] grue@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By the same argument, replacing the coal fired power plant with wind and solar wouldn't pose a challenge either.

The point is, you've got to compare apples to apples: either coal power vs. desalinization powered by coal, or renewables vs. desalinization powered by renewables. In every case, the pollution produced by the desalinization process (i.e., the brine etc.) is simply added to the pollution produced by whatever means was used to generate the power for it, which means @soEZ's attempt to compare desalinization to power generation doesn't make much sense.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A coal burning plant has a comparisable smaller base of implantation; deactivating the coal plant to have it replaced by a solar or a wind (if even possible) would hardly output the same energy.

By comparison, a desalination plant takes a large area, by the shore, where wind and solar are plentiful, so it can be fitted with such energy source from the start.

The brines can and should be channeled to harvest the salts in it. The salt is raw matter for chemical industry.

It's amazing how quick we are to find problems to a promising solution but the moment extracting water from surface or underground sources becomes impossible or unfeaseable we will resort to those solutions.

[–] money_loo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, you’re just clearly too stupid in history and geology to know that when the groundwater runs out, so does tomorrow. /S

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Are we resorting to basic insult, now?

The situation is dire - for us - but the planet is not going to spontaneously combust with us on the surface.

sigh

I am fucking fed up with all the fucking doom and gloom every half shit media outlet burps ou, tailored to stirr panic into everyone and their grandmother.

Everybody is a genius but nobody really has an answer to actually fucking solve anything. Everybody is acting on a pin's head trying to discover what is going to happen next and in the meanwhile nobody can be bothered to actually do something proactively to enact change, like perhaps voting!

Like it or not, at some point, even for preservation purposes, we will source more of our water from the oceans because it will be that or death.

My country has already transitioned into a fully sustainable power grid, using hydroeletric, solar and wind, and plans to implement more sustainable energy sources is under way. We are also converting a refinery to produce green hydrogen and we've already phased out coal, with only a couple of fossil gas plants still in operation. Meanwhile, every sane person is trying their best to make their homes more efficient and even trying to be self reliant on energy, through solar and wind.

We are facing constant droughts and dry spells and public pressure is being put on the government, regardless of color, to implement desalination plants regardless of cost so we can maintain our country alive.

I am fed up with everyone spelling doom and gloom left and right but nobody cares to recognize the small things being done now!

Have nice one and piss off!

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With enough demand, enough money for R&D will show up to improve the technology.

But regardless the current costs, that did not stop Israel to source all their water from the sea from very early, as well as other countries have for regions where there isn't enough drinking water available.

In my country, it's used to supply our islands territories and even by some hotels for pool water.

And the problem with the brine has me scratching my head, as I've read sources where the process required chemical treatment of the water and others where it's stated the process is entirely physical.

[–] set_secret@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

and how much fossil fuel does Israel use to achieve this?

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think they went nuclear on their power grifld.

[–] set_secret@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that's better than coal for sure

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

No argument on that

[–] BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I am not using any form of AI or other assistance. I am just old and have a lot of experience writing. Have a look at my post history to see the consistency in my writing style, even when I'm ripping a conservative apart.

I realize I copy/pasted my last line to the beginning instead of cut/paste, so it looks absurd now that I look at it again. I will fix that now.

[–] BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay fair, just flagged my brain for the repeated phrase at the beginning and end

[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When I re-read it after your comment, I could see why you thought that!

[–] Omniraptor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Would actually be kinda cool if the prevalence of chatgpt forced everyone to write in a more varied and interesting style to dodge the accusations :)