alt Hacker NewsThis reads like hyperbole:
> The brine byproduct wreaks havoc on sea life when it’s deposited back into the ocean by raising the salt level and lowering oxygen in the water.
Managing return of concentrated brine should be entirely tractable in the literal ocean.
Replies
The brine thing is just a way to shut down conversation and let people feel superior for claiming there are no solutions to our problems except to reduce our standard of living.
It’s obvious you can safely put salt back into the ocean with enough dilution. I bet a middle schooler could design a system to do it.
It kinda depends where it's deposited, right? The expected AMOC collapse is fundamentally about salt imbalance.
depends of course, how easy does the brine dissolve, how long does it take that it is so diluted that it can't do any harm, without that information it's not easy to tell
I mean.. we really want to permanently desalinate the ocean somewhat too so putting the brine back seems kinda stupid. Put it on land, let it dry, sell some as table salt and dump the rest into abandoned mines.
Sure, but typically desalination plants are located in a single physical place, so a discharge pipe dumping brine 24x7 is bad for all of the things around it, as the local concentration is extremely high.