Posted on 06/22/2007 5:17:07 PM PDT by CedarDave
Making drinking water out of sea water is a growing trend, but the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says it is a potential threat to the environment that also could exacerbate climate change.
The global review of desalination plants worldwide: "Making water: Desalination -- option or distraction for a thirsty world?" -- states that some of the driest and thirstiest places are turning to desalination. These include regions where water problems affect large, populous areas -- Australia, the Middle East, Spain, the United Kingdom and United States, with India and China following suit.
"Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy-intensive and greenhouse-gas emitting way to get water," said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's Global Freshwater Program. "It may have a place in the world's future freshwater supplies, but regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment."
It is estimated that around 60 percent of freshwater needs in the Arabian Gulf are met through desalination, and the Australian city of Perth may be looking to source one-third of its freshwater the same way, WWF states. Spain is devoting an astonishing proportion of its desalinated water to agriculture -- at 22 percent, it is the highest level in the world -- as well as to holiday resorts in arid areas.
Impacts of desalination include brine build-up, increased greenhouse-gas emissions, destruction of prized coastal areas and reduced emphasis on conservation of rivers and wetlands. Many of the areas of most intensive desalination activity also have a history of damaging natural water resources, particularly groundwater, WWF states.
Managing water demand and assessing impacts of any large-scale engineering solution are needed early in order to avert irreversible damage to nature and the cost overruns, often paid by citizens over the long haul. Sustainable sources of water start with protecting natural assets such as rivers, floodplains and wetlands. These natural systems purify and provide water as well as protect against extreme or catastrophic events.
"Large desalination plants might rapidly become 'the new dams' and obscure the importance of real conservation of rivers and wetlands," Pittock stated. "As with any relatively new engineering such as large dams that grew up in the 50s, the negatives become known when it is too late or too expensive to fix. What we need most is a new attitude to water not unchecked expansion of water engineering."
Original WWF article found at: http://www.panda.org/index.cfm?uNewsID=106660
(I liked it better when WWF was the World Wrestling Federation -- at least we knew that the matches were fixed unlike this WWF, which pushes fantasy as fact.)
The WWF does have a point about the situation in Spain. The current water resources scheme is the result of politicized regionalism forces, and is one of the craziest things you will ever read about if you study up on it.
Do your part for carbon offsets...stop breathing!
You wanna bet if there was a plan to build a soilent green plant that would put out 12 billion tons of toxins a year but reduce the humans on earth by 90% in 10 years their would be dancing in the streets by the environmentalists?
Or build artificial reefs from old tires to Save The Fishes And Clams and Corals and Creatures Of The Deep...
Only to find it was a stupid farce, and they are being dismantled at scandalous costs.
BS
First: Most US desalters are planned to be built in conjunction with waste water treatment plants. The brine, which is actually highly filtered and cleaned sea water with a higher salt content, is mixed with the discharge of treated waste water, preferably in equal amounts. This then serves to dilute the salt content to match the salt content of the ocean.
Second: The ocean salt content varies from sea to sea, but 3.5% is the generally accepted average. The returned Brine will have a salt content of 5.0 to 7.0% depending on many factors. Thus the brine being returned although higher in salt is still not as high as one is lead to believe by reading some reports.
The ability of the ocean to absorb this amount of salt is very very high.
Three: Most table salt comes from sea water, if the salt content of the ocean becomes too high (very unlikely), we could simply make more salt and create salt disposal sites (Bonneville salt flats, for example)
Or build artificial reefs from old tires to Save The Fishes And Clams and Corals and Creatures Of The Deep...
Yes it is so much BS. The capacity of the sea to absorb this amount of salt is indeed very high. Natural salt flats exist all over the world where local increases in salinity due to evaporation do not have any adverse effect on the overall environment and localized ecosystems survive and thrive in the briny environment.
This is just another tactic by enviro-whackos who believe that anything man does is inherently bad for everything else in the world. And of course, their way of dealing with that view is to oppose all progress toward making our environment more sustainable using options less damaging than the alternatives (more dams, more pipelines, over pumping of groundwater, etc.). Their anti-human agenda is very much on display here.
We want you dead so we can have the whole planet to ourselves! What part of dead do you NOT understand?
Reminds me of how man is changing the balance of the atmospheric CO2 level by producing [at most] minute amounts of CO2 and thus altering the entire climate. By minute I mean as a percentage of the total.
Next we will hear how all of the people that pee while swimming in the ocean are altering the ecology there.
The end result of desalination is zero. The purified water thus formed will eventually (actually rather quickly) return to the sea. Energy gets used up, yes--which is why it's desirable to build such plants near nuclear reactors. But the net effect on salinity of seawater is nil.
First they make air into some kind of threat to the environment. Makes sense they’d target water next.
Yeah, the ocean needs our pee to dilute all of the fish poop, too.
See how the enviroTards turn any discussion into the absurd? You just can’t talk about their opinions [faith] without degenerating in satirical absurdity.
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