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Fresh water under the Oceans

a_majoor

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This will probably ring Maud Barlow's bell, but it science has discovered vast undersea aquifers of fresh water, which can potentially be reached and exploited using the same technology that is used for deep water oil drilling. While wholescale pillage of these reserves is only going to be a short stopgap, we should remember that the real problem isn't that there is a shortage of fresh water, it is that the fresh water isn't where people are.

Personally, I think it will probably be far cheaper in the long term to import water conservation technologies from places like Israel (which has a GDP similar to California, but uses 1/5 of the water per capita), and turn wastewater treatment into "recycling". Even today I suspect that about 1/3 of the wastewater could be successfully returned into the civic water supply using current technology. Other ideas like introducing genetically engineered crops that require less input in the form of water and fertilizer, different agricultural practices that reduce inputs further and looking very carefully at industrial processes to reduce water usage will also have a much greater long term impact:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2519911/Vast-freshwater-reserves-discovered-ocean-floor-supply-future-generations.html

Vast freshwater reserves discovered under the ocean floor which could supply future generations
Researchers make discovery on continental shelves off Australia, China, North America and South Africa
Discovery comes as UN estimates suggest water use has been growing at more than double the rate of population over the last century
By WILLIAM TURVILL

PUBLISHED: 17:54 GMT, 7 December 2013 | UPDATED: 23:34 GMT, 7 December 2013

Vast freshwater reserves have been discovered under the ocean floor which scientists believe could sustain future generations.

Australian researchers claim to have found 500,000 cubic kilometres (120,000 cubic miles) of freshwater buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.

The discovery comes as United Nations estimates suggest water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of the population of the world over the last century.


Australian researchers have discovered vast freshwater reserves beneath the seabed on continental shelves

Lead author Vincent Post, from Flinders University, said: ‘The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900.

‘Freshwater on our planet is increasingly under stress and strain so the discovery of significant new stores off the coast is very exciting.


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‘It means that more options can be considered to help reduce the impact of droughts and continental water shortages.’

According to UN Water estimates, water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population in the last century due to demands such as irrigated agriculture and meat production.

More than 40 per cent of the world's population already live in conditions of water scarcity. By 2030, UN Water estimates that 47 per cent of people will exist under high water stress.


Scientists hope the discovery will help reduce the impact of droughts and continental water shortages

Mr Post said his team's findings were drawn from a review of seafloor water studies done for scientific or oil and gas exploration purposes.

‘By combining all this information we've demonstrated that the freshwater below the seafloor is a common finding, and not some anomaly that only occurs under very special circumstances,’ he said.

The deposits were formed over hundreds of thousands of years in the past, when the sea level was much lower and areas now under the ocean were exposed to rainfall which was absorbed into the underlying water table.

When the polar icecaps started melting about 20,000 years ago these coastlines disappeared under water, but their aquifers remain intact - protected by layers of clay and sediment.

Post said the deposits were comparable with the bore basins currently relied upon by much of the world for drinking water and would cost much less than seawater to desalinate.

Drilling for the water would be expensive, and Post said great care would have to be taken not to contaminate the aquifers.

He warned that they were a precious resource.

‘We should use them carefully: once gone, they won't be replenished until the sea level drops again, which is not likely to happen for a very long time,’ Mr Post said.
 
I am going off on a tangent here but whatever happened to Libya's The Great Man-Made River...
 
Interesting.

However, wouldn't be better economically if we invested in more efficient sea water de-salinization?

After all, why search for the small pocket of fresh water, when the ocean covers the Earth?
 
ERR said:
I am going off on a tangent here but whatever happened to Libya's The Great Man-Made River...

AS far as I can tell, it is still operating, although at a much lower capacity. One of the plants that made the pipes for the pipelines was hit during tthe NATO phase of the civil war since it was also being used to store military equipment.

The GMMR project is the same idea on a smaller scale. Water is being pulled from an ancient aquifer that was filled during the last ice age and is not being replenished. It is suggested that the cost of this water is only 10% of the cost of desalination, but estimates as to how long this can be used range from 60 to 1000 years. So long as there is such a huge cost differential, pulling water from aquifers will be more cost effective than desalination.
 
Who cares?

Canada has most of the fresh water anyway.

Push comes to shove, we can sell it for $130.00 a barrel like the Saudis sell oil.

You can live without oil, but you can't live without water. ;)
 
Canada has about 7% of the land mass and about 8% of known fresh water.  Russia has the same ratio of land to fresh water.  We both have the highest ratios of land to fresh water but the overall amount is not dramatic.  Excluding this new find, fresh water is evenly spread across the Northern Hemisphere.  It would be interesting to know how much there is under the oceans across the planet as it could change some future balances of power.
 
Aside from the environmental ninnies who vocally oppose all forms of resource extraction, the real killer for water exports is the fact that water is heavy and inert. Oil is energy rich, and moving it costs far less than the energy extracted to run pipelines, tankers etc. Water, OTOH costs energy to move, energy to desalinate, energy to treat for drinking or disposal as wastewater. While you can't live without it, you also can't live where you can't afford to get any (or bring any to) either.

Diverting enough Canadian water to actually be useful would require geoengineering on the sacle of the proposed North American Water and Power Alliance mega engineering project proposal from the 1960's; reversing the rivers that drain into the Arctic ocean and using the water to power North America and irrigate the praries and American Southwest. To give you an idea of the scale and scope of this, one of the sub projects would have diverted water into the interior of BC. To fill the interior of BC wold take about 30 years.... Some historical background and a map here

Even less dramatic Soviet era projects have essentially runined vast tracts of Central Asia by salinating the soil, and drying the Aral sea, with massive long term consequences for the region. Far better to access local sources, use them efficiently and recycle the water from the waste and reuse it.

edit to fix link
 
Flooding the interior of BC, LOL, sell that one to Idle No More!  What a massive project, wow, that is some incredible thinking.  And a canal across the prairies with access to the sea for Alberta and Saskchewan, again, wow.
 
Lightguns said:
Flooding the interior of BC, LOL, sell that one to Idle No More!  What a massive project, wow, that is some incredible thinking.  And a canal across the prairies with access to the sea for Alberta and Saskchewan, again, wow.

In, I think, the 1970s when Hydro Quebec was developing the hydro potential of Northern Quebec, there was a proposal to dam James Bay to turn it into a massive fresh water reservoir to supply the American southwest. I don't think the project got much beyond the artist's concept stage but there may have been a book published on the project.

Edit: The plan originated in the 1950s but finally petered out in the seventies.

http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/2008/03/canada-to-usa-w.html
 
The cost/benefit ratio for any of these projects is completely out to lunch, unless some sort of Fascist State arises in North America I doubt any of these projects will ever come to pass.

Incidentally, a similar project was proposed for Africa; placing dams across the Congo and turning much of the nation of the Congo into an inland sea, and while the Soviets have passed into history, the Chinese have built some mega projects like the "Three Gorges" that come close in scale and scope.
 
Thucydides said:
The cost/benefit ratio for any of these projects is completely out to lunch, unless some sort of Fascist State arises in North America I doubt any of these projects will ever come to pass.

Incidentally, a similar project was proposed for Africa; placing dams across the Congo and turning much of the nation of the Congo into an inland sea, and while the Soviets have passed into history, the Chinese have built some mega projects like the "Three Gorges" that come close in scale and scope.


But, I can assure from some direct, personal contact, that these two guys were looking seriously at those kinds of projects and the politics necessary to get them:

Process.aspx
 
lamarre.jpg

Robert Bourassa              Bernard Lamarre
Premier of Quebec            President of SNC-Lavalin
1970-76 & 85-94              1972-1999

 
While it is true many people have looked into ideas like this, the market forces work against this. Only a Fascist or similar state can "afford" to ignore the forces of the market (at least for a while), which is why these projects will not come to pass here in North America.
 
From NBF, a taste of some of the technologies that can dramatically reduce water usage in agriculture. US agriculture in particular is very wasteful and water intensive due to the heavy subsidization of agricultural water (without this, no one in their right mind would be growing lettuce and alfalfa in the California desert!), ending these sorts of subsidies could be done, saving billions of dollars/year to the taxpayer without much disruption of the food supply at all:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/limits-to-growth-model-used-for-2052.html

Limits to Growth Model used for 2052 forecast and takes global collapse off the table

Note- Nextbigfuture does not believe that the Limits to Growth Models are correct. Improvements in technology can radically increase the capacity of the planet. There is a great deal of emphasis on CO2, yet human created CO2 is a side effect of technological industrialization.

Business as usual improvements to agriculture (better crops with genetically guided plant breeding, precision agriculture and other measures) we can reduce water usage in half and increase crop yields by double over 2-3 decades.

Greenhouses can use 1/6th the water and 1/10th the land to produce the same amount of crop.

Hydroponics can use 1/20th the water. Aeroponics used 65% less water than hydroponics. NASA also concluded that aeroponically grown plants requires ¼ the nutrient input compared to hydroponics

There have been proposals for large scale hydroponics adoption.

Mass produced skyscraper technology is already being deployed in China and the tallest building in the world is in progress and could be completed next year. It will have 930,000 square feet of indoor vertical farm. As a greenhouse it would produce the equivalent of 200 acres of farmland. It has a footprint of about 4 acres.
 
I agree that we could be much more economical with the water that we already have access to. In North America (especially Canada) we have been quite spoiled, which has led us over the last two centuries to some horribly wasteful and destructive uses of water, some of which we are still recovering from.

On exercise in Norway back in the early 90's, I remember thinking how odd it was that the Norgie barracks had water saving showers, toilets, and washing machines. In Canada we just poured it all over the place, however we wanted to. The fact that in Canada we could always get water for relatively low cost through municipally or provincially subsidized water systems probably didn't help.

While I don't hold with some of the more loony types in the fringes of the eco movements, I see responsible care of the environment as a civic responsibility, not a left-wing fetish. I don't know about you, but I can't drink poisonous water, and I don't like breathing polluted air. (Does that make me a "tree hugger?") How we take care of our water strikes me as being pretty important: we should be careful not to tar responsible concern with the brush of extremism.

As Thucydides rightly points out, one of the biggest despoilers of water in North America has been agriculture. Fertilizer and pesticide runoff in rivers and lakes, water table depletion, and massive production of animal waste have all had their effects on water sources. Industry is not the only worry.

When people dismiss the concern by saying "what the hell-we got a country full of water, right?" they might want to think a bit harder.
 
It doesn't make any economic sense to take measures* to abate profligate fresh water use in areas where fresh water is ubiquitous and plentiful.  The available resources need to be targeted correctly.  It does make sense to avoid and mitigate contamination.

One of my grandmothers thought two of the greatest innovations in her lifetime were running (potable) water coming into the house and running water going out - the latter being the more useful.  The problem and convenience of grey water and sewage disposal are both highly underrated, and are both concerned with larger volumes of water than drinking and cooking.

Much of humanity is clustered along ocean coastlines, and sewage doesn't care whether it is carried in a flow of fresh or salt water.

*barring trivial, extremely low-cost ones
 
Very true, I just took the opportunity of a pipe replacement near my house to educate the kids on what lies under the streets. It boggles my mind how little people think about the web of infrastructure that surrounds them. In the infrastructure business we say "If we do our jobs well nobody will notice"
 
Brad Sallows said:
... The problem and convenience of grey water and sewage disposal are both highly underrated, and are both concerned with larger volumes of water than drinking and cooking...

Yes. Just imagine (if you can :p) a city of apartment dwellers, hundreds in each building, block after block of buildings, in July, unable to flush their toilets....
 
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