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posted by martyb on Sunday January 20 2019, @02:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the "Sea-Salt"-is-already-a-thing dept.

Desalination pours more toxic brine into the ocean than previously thought

Technology meant to help solve the world's growing water shortage is producing a salty environmental dilemma.

Desalination facilities, which extract drinkable water from the ocean, discharge around 142 billion liters of extremely salty water called brine back into the environment every day, a study finds. That waste product of the desalination process can kill marine life and detrimentally alter the planet's oceans, researchers report January 14 in Science of the Total Environment.

"On the one hand, we are trying to provide populations — particularly in dry areas — with the needed amount of good quality water. But at the same time, we are also adding an environmental concern to the process," says study coauthor Manzoor Qadir, an environmental scientist at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Hamilton, Canada.

I would take some salt, but it probably contains microplastics.

The state of desalination and brine production: A global outlook (DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.076) (DX)


Original Submission

Related Stories

Microplastics Found in 90 Percent of Table Salt 24 comments

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microplastics were found in sea salt several years ago. But how extensively plastic bits are spread throughout the most commonly used seasoning remained unclear. Now, new research shows microplastics in 90 percent of the table salt brands sampled worldwide.

Of 39 salt brands tested, 36 had microplastics in them, according to a new analysis by researchers in South Korea and Greenpeace East Asia. Using prior salt studies, this new effort is the first of its scale to look at the geographical spread of microplastics in table salt and their correlation to where plastic pollution is found in the environment.

"The findings suggest that human ingestion of microplastics via marine products is strongly related to emissions in a given region," said Seung-Kyu Kim, a marine science professor at Incheon National University in South Korea.

[...] The new study, she says, "shows us that microplastics are ubiquitous. It's not a matter of if you are buying sea salt in England, you are safe."

The new study estimates that the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt. What that means remains a mystery.

A separate study by the University of York in Britain that sought to assess the risks of microplastics to the environment, published Wednesday, concluded not enough is known to determine if microplastics cause harm.

[...] That new study, funded by the Personal Care Products Council, an industry trade group, was published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Boxall added that the focus on microplastics may divert attention from worse environmental (and more easily identifiable) pollution problems, such as small particles released from car tires.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:09AM (12 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:09AM (#788880) Homepage

    The notion of a healthy environment and the notion of unlimited population growth are discordant with each other. You can choose one or the other, but not both. First principles: you cannot have a healthy environment without sacrificing unfettered population growth, and vise-versa. At least until we can manage to infest other class-M planets.

    Resolving such discord is the key to fighting political battles from the perspective of, heh, Climate Change: How can you fight "climate change" with unfettered and unnatural growth of third-world populations?

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:29AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:29AM (#788890)

      First TMB now you? Ok who ordered adulthood for EF???

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:40AM (1 child)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:40AM (#788893) Homepage

        I am a friendly to all of you. The rest of you just didn't get it yet.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:55AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:55AM (#788951)

          With friends like these..

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:57AM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:57AM (#788897)

      Like I said in another post earlier today, the really stupid people simply MUST be sterilized for the good of the rest of humanity.

      It's the stupid people who are breeding like rabbits, and they are going to drag the entire earth down with them if they are not stopped.

      The above ideas will upset some people, but we will sterilize them first.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:55AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:55AM (#788917)

        The above ideas will upset some people, but we will sterilize them first.

        Good luck with that, jenius.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:49AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:49AM (#788949)

        Didn't we already try that with the b ARC?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @09:06AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @09:06AM (#788996)

        MUST be sterilized

        You first.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:17PM (#789047)

        "stupid people simply MUST be sterilized"
        This is one reason no one wants to address population controls, far to easy to slip into eugenics, unfair practices. Thanks for confirming their fears.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @08:23PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @08:23PM (#789121)

        Who is going to decide who are stupid? An Anonymous Coward? I'm smarter than everyone in the world and you don't see me bitchin' about ya'!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:04AM (#788920)

      I agree. Barring the occasional asteroid impact, we live in a closed system which has limits that we're bound to bump up against. However, there may be ways to mitigate the harmful effects of desalination.

      Instead of discharging brine into the ocean, maybe we could get it to the right salinity level by mixing it with a stream of treated waste water. Since there'd never be enough waste water reclaimed to desalinate all (or even most) of the brine to ocean levels, we could create an artificial lake somewhere nearby and store the excess. Many of the places where desalination is needed are quite arid, so there ought to be lots of uninhabitable land available to make something like that.

      An arid climate would also help control the water level through evaporation, such that the salty waste would be kept under water, and the expansion of the lake would be gradual enough to be viable for a while. That would give us time to invent uses for the brine lake sediment, which perhaps could be chemically altered into a less dangerous state. Wouldn't want it to go the way of the Aral Sea if it ever dried out, leaving behind toxic dust. Or the Salton Sea. But done right, it might be possible. Still, all the extra handling of brine would exacerbate the energy cost of desalination, and compound the issue of global warming driving the need for desalination. Unless those arid places were all about solar power, which they're currently not.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @12:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @12:04PM (#789009)

      The idea is that as porch monkeys get dat educayshun they will opt to have fewer children just like white folk. Of course our current system of dem benefits significantly incentivizes breeding more future democrats.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @01:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @01:00PM (#789016)

      Not to mention the unlimited economic growth that the financial system needs not to collapse.

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:11AM (11 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:11AM (#788881) Homepage Journal

    The Ocean is becoming very salty. Because people are taking out the water. And leaving the salt. They don't leave it, they take it out. And put it back in. There's a taking out and there's a putting in. According to "science." You told us on Wednesday. Now it's Saturday night, some of us (me) had to work today. And maybe want some very special time. But it's "oh no, the Ocean is still too salty!" Give it a rest maybe? Trust me, I'll have my guys look into this one very carefully. We'll take a very close look at it.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by qzm on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:03AM (7 children)

      by qzm (3260) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:03AM (#788900)

      Removing fresh water from salt water makes the remaining water more salty.

      Shocking! Who would have guessed!
      I am pleased researches managed to discover this for us, I had always assumed that the only byproducts were rainbows and unicorns.

      Now, for a moment of reality.
      The oceans contain around 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters of water.
      They are claiming people are dumping 142,000,000,000 liters of 'extreemely salty' water per day
      Given some simple rounding, thats 1/10,000,000,000th of the oceans per day (anyone find that a little unlikely? I sure as hell do..)
      So, if they did that for 100 years (3600 days) that would be 1/30,000th of the ocean.
      Assuming the brine was 10 times as salty as the existing sea water (from what I read its usually less than double) thats 1/3000th increase in salinity approximately.
      so, after 100 years they would increase the salinity by 0.04% or so.

      Shocked I tell you, shocked.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:23AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:23AM (#788912)

        You missed an assumption. That the water taken out never goes back.

        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:08AM (2 children)

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:08AM (#788922) Journal

          Where does it go? Into outer space?

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
          • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:48AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:48AM (#789004)

            everbody knows that water can only return SALTY to the ocean because we PEE it out and there's salt in PEE!
            the rain you see is acctually water vapor falling from mars on earth. there's less and less water on mars everyday!
            soon, with all the PEEing, earth will turn into a lump of SALT!
            the only good part is that planet SALT will attract SPACE COWS that living in between planets to give it a good lick!

          • (Score: 2) by Rich26189 on Sunday January 20 2019, @02:25PM

            by Rich26189 (1377) on Sunday January 20 2019, @02:25PM (#789029)

            Where does it go? Into outer space?

            No, it's stored in ugly bags of water.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Nuke on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:49AM

          by Nuke (3162) on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:49AM (#789006)

          So the water never goes back? What are they doing with it, making gold out of it?

          What is missing is that this is a local problem with increased local salinity, not global.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:30AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:30AM (#788930)

        I agree with everything you said, this is tempest-in-teapot level bullshit from a long-term point of view.

        However, framing it in whole-ocean terms glosses over the fact that at the point of entry, high levels of brine are going to devastate whatever happens to be living in that water. Dilution takes time.

        Or, to put it another way: Stipulate that a beach bonfire raises the global temperature by 1e-39 kelvins and you probably won't give a shit... unless it's your ass that happens to be in the bonfire as it burns.

        • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:00PM

          by exaeta (6957) on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:00PM (#789184) Homepage Journal

          Personally, I'm of the opinion that minimal temporary damage to a local habitat is acceptable when it doesn't cause permanent plant-scale damage.
          Every time we cut down trees to make room for a new subdivision, we are causing destruction of a local habitat. The damage isn't permanent, animals can move somewhere else, as long as a sufficient amount of barrier forest is in the area. But some area (where we put buildings) is no longer suitable for wildlife. I'd think of this salinification of the ocean coast the same way. Temporary localized removal of an animal habitat that would be restored if humans decided to move out.
          Granted, some fish might die, but the same can be said of each incident where you go fishing and decide to cook the catch. This is just part of nature, and unless it presents a threat to the overall ecosystem we are best not worrying too much about it.

          --
          The Government is a Bird
    • (Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:22AM (1 child)

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:22AM (#788911) Homepage Journal

      (cont) By the way, the Micro Plastics. I signed, very proudly and very beautifully, the Save Our Seas Act of 2018. Every year, over 8 million tons of garbage is dumped into our beautiful Oceans by many countries of the world. That includes China, that includes Japan, and that includes many, many countries.

      This waste, trash, and debris harms not only marine life, but also fishermen, coastal economies along America's vast stretches. The bad news is it floats toward us. I've seen pictures recently, and some of you have seen them, where there's a vast, tremendous, unthinkable amount of garbage floating right into our coast, in particular along the West Coast. I'm talking about Washington, Oregon and California. Very blue, right?

      And we're charged with removing it, which is a very unfair situation. It comes from other countries very far away. It takes 6 months and a year to float over, but it gets here, and it's a very unfair situation. It's also unbelievably bad for the Oceans. Otherwise known as Seas.

      Every year, over 8 million tons of garbage is dumped into our big beautiful Oceans. And when you think of that number. I mean, to think 8 million tons, and I would say it's probably, I think it's probably more than that, based on what I've seen and based on the kind of work that I've seen being done.

      This dumping has happened for years and even for decades. Previous administrations did absolutely NOTHING to take on the foreign countries responsible. We've already notified most of them and we've notified them very strongly.

      The Save Our Seas Act will help address this problem by extending the Marine Debris Program for five additional years. We also are strengthening that up to improve waste management overseas and clean up our nation's water. We will boost the federal government's response to ocean waste by authorizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare severe marine debris events, which happen all the time. It's incredible. It's incredible when you look at it. People don't realize it, but all the time we're being inundated by debris from other countries.

      This legislation will release funds to states for cleanup and for response efforts. And we will be responding and very strongly.

      The legislation also encourages the executive branch to engage with those nations responsible for dumping garbage into our Oceans. My administration is doing exactly that. For example, the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is the first U.S. trade agreement ever to include commitments by the parties to cooperate to address land- and sea-based pollution and improve waste management.

      The Save Our Seas Act was a tough one, but it had great bipartisan support. Something you don't see too often, we had a unanimous vote for that one in the Senate. Bipartisan. 100%. Something you'd think we'd see for Border Security. All Americans agree we need much better Border Security.

      And I can tell you that Senators Dan Sullivan and Sheldon Whitehouse -- he's called Whitehouse but I don't see him at the White House as much as I'd like -- were very insistent on trying to get that into the USMCA, the new agreement that we have with Canada and Mexico. And we'll be putting it into other agreements also.

      Hey, Sheldon is a Dem, I'm not going to hire him. But I have a lot of respect. Actually I might hire him, who knows? We have great jobs opening up here all the time. Probably not. But he's very welcome to visit the White House. Frankly it's been like a ghost town here lately.

      The United States has some of the most beautiful beaches and Oceans in the world, and the coastlines are incredible. As President, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills. That's why I'm pleased -- very pleased, I must say -- to have put my perfect signature on this important legislation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:22AM (#788960)
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by schusselig on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:06AM (3 children)

    by schusselig (6771) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:06AM (#788902)
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:16AM (2 children)

      by RS3 (6367) on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:16AM (#788941)

      I also noticed that but didn't post. But to be fair to the amazing editors, the source articles are different and cover some different angles of the problem.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:53AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:53AM (#788950)

        Let's do the green site thing and copy / paste the +5 comments from there to here

        • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 20 2019, @09:12PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Sunday January 20 2019, @09:12PM (#789135)

          Which begs the question: is there such a thing?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:19AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:19AM (#788908)

    Can they extract some sea salt next to the brine pipe and call it even?

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:11PM (3 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:11PM (#789062)

      Sort of by definition: the salt content of the water is too high for human kidneys to process, so... there's more salt coming out of the water than the humans (and similar animals) consuming the water could ever use. Maybe industrial applications like road salt could use it, but road salt is evil stuff, and in very low demand in most places that run major desalination plants.

      Think of it like a square mile salt landfill, growing 10 feet taller every day.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:04PM (2 children)

        by exaeta (6957) on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:04PM (#789187) Homepage Journal
        Sea Salt is pretty useful. It's a great source of magnesium, calcium, sodium, and other ions we could refine into metals and then do stuff with. We just need to move the people trying to extract gold and uranium from seawater near this "desalinated" water instead, and have them refine the super extra salty water instead which would presumably have higher concentrations of the target metals.
        --
        The Government is a Bird
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 21 2019, @12:34AM (1 child)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday January 21 2019, @12:34AM (#789252)

          presumably have higher concentrations of the target metals.

          Nice thought, if it were economically viable it would be happening.

          One problem: if you refine industrial quantities of Magnesium Chloride for the Magnesium, what do you do with the industrial quantities of Chlorine? Even in the Middle East they don't use that much mustard gas... (yes, bleach and friends, but the current needs for bleach and friends are already met by other already cheap methods...)

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:48AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:48AM (#789493)

            Couldn't you get Sodium from some other source(Sodium sesquicarbonate?) and make NaCl? (or make Potassium chloride or whatever.)

  • (Score: 0, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:22AM (6 children)

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:22AM (#788910)

    apparently the science in "Sciencenews.org" is like the "democratic" in north korea. Removing water from salt water leaves saltier water! OMG Ponies!!

    the ocean is a billion and a half cubic kilometers. 142 billion liters per day. Let's see.. we need 10e12 liters for 1 cubic kilometer. This journalist is talking about the danger of spitting into a lake, and giving the size of the spit as his reason. Fish can't swim in spit. He also believes water gets destroyed by us drinking it, and does not go back into the ecosystem.

    Someone needs to tell this guy fat metabolizes into water and carbon dioxide in his body. Watch him publish an article about how humans are flooding the oceans by eating unhealthy.

    I got a better title: hipster journalist writes an article pointing out his lack of middle school education. Holy shit, this doesn't have an author. It just says "written by staff." Awesome. Sounds like a bunch of dead wood wrote this.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:31AM (#788914)

      The problem is the brine should not be dumped right back in. They are adding 2 things to make the process easier, chlorine and copper. Those two have a nasty habit of killing everything around it. If it was just salinity the solution is fairly 'easy'. Just have another pipe where you mix in salt water and treated exit water with the brine. The brine needs to be treated again to remove those two then it is just a dilution problem.

    • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:05AM (1 child)

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:05AM (#788921) Homepage Journal

      Did they change it? They must have changed it. Because it doesn't say staff anymore. It says "By Jeremy Rehm." And, it says Jeremy's the intern. Otherwise known as the Apprentice. That's one of our great traditions. Remember Monica Lewinsky? She did her job and she did it well. According to my friend Bill. And, Jeremy's doing fine. He's in the Magazine business. Very tough business. Every issue they have so many Column Inches they need to fill. And they can fill it with a story about me signing the Save our Seas Act. Working very hard to keep the Garbage Plastics away from Hawaii, from Wash., Ore. & Calif. Or they can fill it with "oh, our Oceans are dieing from too much Salt!" They wanted the Salt story. And that's not Jeremy's fault. Any more than it was Monica's fault that her boss wanted a Knob Polishing. She did as she was told. And he does, I assume, as he's told.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:00PM (1 child)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:00PM (#789057)

      As I pointed out the last time this was posted, it can become a problem when a place with basically unlimited energy (e.g. Saudi Arabia) desalinates lots of water from/to a relatively small body, like the Persian Gulf.

      Even the Mediterranean has salt-density currents from natural evaporation, the Strait of Hormuz is a relatively small mixing opening, they're going to be able to upset the salt balance in the Gulf sufficiently to rearrange the ecosystems. Usually this involves lots of unattractive death and putrification of the existing species, and if they don't keep the salt flow constant for thousands of years, it's not going to be replaced with anything diverse or productive.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Sunday January 20 2019, @09:28PM

        by fakefuck39 (6620) on Sunday January 20 2019, @09:28PM (#789138)

        Yes, completely agree, however that was not my point. What you mention is nowhere in the article. The article claims that desalination apparently removes a lot of H2O from the water - water that apparently does not go back into the ecosystem. I'd guess by destroying the molecule of water, but I doubt the people who wrote it know what a chemical reaction is, so I think they think drinking water is what destroys water. Once inside the body, it's gone my friends. Magic. And magnets - how the fuck does that work?!

        What you state is a bunch of people living in a toilet shitting into that toilet, making it more of a toilet. This is actually the perfect result one would want from desalination. Sandniggers in the persian gulf destroying their own little toilet bowl, and their shit staying there, not leaving the gulf? Awesome. As a bonus, we kill off Israel (and I say that as a jew).

        The article claims desalination is destroying the world's oceans. They're using "big numbers" of salty water with chemicals like "omg copper" and "omg chlorine" which actually evaporates. They fail to mention any percentages - a super small number. Completely false.

        That's like saying 36mil people die from hunger. Huge number. Half a percent? Small number. No one dies from hunger in the world. It's like those anti-smoking commercials that list chemicals in the cig filter to convince idiots how bad cigs are, then say your chance of lung cancer increases 10x so you'll surely get it if you smoke. Yeah, it does increase it 10x. From 1% to 10% - apparently 10% is "sure death."

        There are malicious people w/ an agenda, and complete retards who fail basic logic. This article was written by the second group. Idiot "journalists" who major in liberal arts, and can't even get a job writing for a local newspaper so they post their idiocy online while paying rent making me my coffee.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:05PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:05PM (#789089) Journal

      Agreed. This story drops the ball on many basic points. It reminds me once more of the story that sobbing friends were emailing each other a couple years ago about how fukushima was poisoning the pacific. I replied with some quick math showing how a thousand fukushimas could leak into the pacific from japan and seattle would barely feel it, that body of water is so huge.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:47AM (10 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:47AM (#788915)

    Doesn't matter what percentage of the ocean the salty residue is. The issue is this very salty stuff is being dumped locally, so for x kilometers around everything dies.

    To be honest, the guy that brought up population is 100% correct. The planet can't support this many humans, and it's telling us so. Climate change, mass extinctions, and hell, the price of housing where anyone would want to live are all indicative of too damned many people.

    / why do I see a troll mod in my future?

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:25AM

      by RS3 (6367) on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:25AM (#788942)

      > / why do I see a troll mod in my future?

      Because SNers are a generous sharing crowd!

      I think you're spot-on and I've felt that way for many years. But I'll qualify it: the planet won't support this many humans being so wasteful and abusive.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:57AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:57AM (#788952)

      but but Japan has a shrinking population so it is going full on gungho to get more people !
      wtf?

      • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:28AM

        by Nuke (3162) on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:28AM (#789001)

        That is because it is still mainstream economic teaching that populations must keep on increasing exponentially or else profits will not be maintained. The process should only finish when all the matter in the universe has been turned into human biomass - the economists trust that science will find a way to do that, and solve all the other problems on the way too.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:15AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:15AM (#788957)

      >>>/ why do I see a troll mod in my future?

      Because of your poor English?

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:33AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:33AM (#788965)

        Or maybe it is the projection of what other people think and being a jerk? Nah. IT HAS TO BE 'those other people'.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:37AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:37AM (#788967)

      The planet can't support this many humans, and it's telling us so.
      Then you path is clear. Build a rocket and fly to the moon. You should not have to live around the rest of the filthy humans who are polluting your precious bodily juices.

      • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:44AM (1 child)

        by Nuke (3162) on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:44AM (#789002)

        He did not say he cannot stand other humans, he said the planet cannot sustain this number of humans. Given the rate of expansion of the human population, his going to the moon will make little difference. In fact hundreds of millions of people re-locating to the Moon* will make little difference to the problem which I don't think people like yourself (or most people) even begin to grasp.

        By the time Earth is completely covered in, say, 20-storey accommodation, which would not be long if present rates are maintained, settling on the moon in the same way will only allow the human race about one generation's worth more time. World population has doubled since about 1970 and does not look like slowing up.

        * And Mars if you like - Moon and Mars are the only two candidate additional living areas until near-light-speed travel is a thing.
        for us

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:06PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:06PM (#789039)

          Then periodically deflat said airships.

          Do it fast enough and it will have no problem solving your population crises :)

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:03PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:03PM (#789058)

      I agree on all points but this one:

      the price of housing where anyone would want to live are all indicative of too damned many people.

      If you look in places like SouthEast Alaska, there aren't too many people, not by a longshot, but the pretty towns like Sitka are ultra-expensive. Supply and demand. Supply is restricted there by the national parks, demand from retirees and others who don't need any income is higher than the supply.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @02:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @02:07PM (#789577)

      This is the theory which has been said and restated for literally hundreds of years. See Malthusian Catastrophe [wikipedia.org], when the world population was something like 1/100th of what we have now. I'll fully agree there is some limit to the number of people the world can support, but why are any of the things you cited clear evidence of this?

      If somebody were to grab an axe and kill everybody else in their house, is that evidence that having 5 people in a house is just too many? Or is it evidence that something went wrong situationally?

      We may or may not have too many people in the world. However, one thing I was surprised to learn is that you can fit the entire world population in the US state of Texas, and still have enough space to give each family quarter acre lot of land. Obviously people couldn't live in such a situation, but the point still stands... there is a LOT of land and resources out there.

      Take this political website link with a grain of salt, but there are some thought provoking ideas here: https://overpopulationisamyth.com/ [overpopulationisamyth.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:12AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:12AM (#788955)

    A common way to reduce or eliminate this problem is to dilute the brine with the effluent of sewage treatment plants that is already being discharged into the ocean.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:05PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:05PM (#789059)

      effluent of sewage treatment plants

      Baiting a shitstorm, I will not play.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:01PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:01PM (#789088) Journal

    Because if you're on some kind of medication it could come out in your urine, and then the urine will mix with water that fish swim in, and one day one of those fish might be caught in a net off taiwan, and it will be eaten by a small child for lunch*. WHY DO YOU HATE CHILDREN?!!

    *the child will not be harmed in any way by the one-part-in-quintillion amount of the compound.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @02:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @02:31PM (#790600)

      You're spot-on. Damn environmental idiots complaining about running industrial sludge pipes next to public swimming areas. What are they bitching about? The ocean is big enough to dilute all that. So why the hell do they not want to swim there?

      Hmmmm, there IS an idiot here, but I'm starting to think that it isn't the environmentalists in this example.

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