
Scientists have discovered a sea of fresh water under the ocean - bushido
https://qz.com/1650613/scientists-discover-sea-of-fresh-water-under-the-ocean/
======
jsilence
"Oh cool, a new natural resource! Let's exploit it!"

~~~
nightwing
Do you suggest that leaving it as is until it is destroyed by tectonic plate
movement or sun exploding is better than using it to support lives of more
people?

~~~
jplayer01
Depending on the potential environmental impacts of exploiting said resource,
of course. I don't understand why this mindset of exploiting anything and
everything without regard for human life and environment is allowed to
persist.

~~~
nightwing
Sure if in the process of using a resource you destroy more important things
it is bad. Most of the time using library for heating is a stupid thing, and
unfortunately that's a good analogy for what we do with rainforests now.

But the sentiment of "do not touch any resource!" is irrational, and brings
more harm than good, to the cause of using the resources we have wisely.

~~~
jplayer01
> But the sentiment of "do not touch any resource!" is irrational, and brings
> more harm than good, to the cause of using the resources we have wisely.

The point is that we should be assessing the impacts _before_ we blindly use
it and then later figure out "oh, this is bad". It's fucking 2019. We need to
evolve as a species, not keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over.
We're garbage creating garbage. How about we make a measured analysis first
before running in and wrecking everything? And why am I being downvoted for
not wanting to turn our world into shit?

In any case, fuck all of you who think it's okay to ruin our environment just
because.

~~~
ramblerman
> We're garbage creating garbage

There I disagree. I think intelligent life capable of reflecting on it's being
here is not garbage. We want to live in harmony with nature, but seeing us as
the disease, and just trying to save nature for the sake of nature is equally
idiotic imo.

If there is no one there to witness it, that would be pretty pointless.

------
tomglynch
And what are the consequences to the environment from doing this? Sounds
similar enough to fracking.

~~~
foobar1962
Not fracking, more like the draining of the terrestrial mineral water
resources. Impacts include the failure of natural springs, land subsidence,
and huge profits to the companies that get to them first.

~~~
nightwing
> failure of natural springs

this can't happen if aquifer is already under the sea.

> land subsidence

in this case it will be seafloor subsidence, which will have much smaller
impact than land subsidence has.

> huge profits to the companies that get to them first

also huge profits for the governments taxing these companies, and for people
buying the resource cheaper.

~~~
schiffern
We haven't even _studied_ what damaging side-effects could occur, yet already
we're trying to talk ourselves into Drill Baby Drill. No time to understand
its role in the global biogeochemical cycling of Earth... there's money to be
made!

This seems like transparently unwise behavior for people such as we —
residents of a fragile spaceship — to engage in.

>this can't happen if aquifer is already under the sea.

Sure it can: a fresh[er]water spring venting into salt water is still a
spring. These types of fresh/salt transitions are seen by divers all the time.

These springs and "meetings of the waters" are often hot beds of life
underwater, and shutting them down will have unknown hydrological and
biological consequences.

>in this case it will be seafloor subsidence, which will have much smaller
impact than land subsidence has.

How do we know that? Just because the impact is less obvious or "more distant"
doesn't mean it's less costly.

>also huge profits for the governments taxing these companies, and for people
buying the resource cheaper.

Taxes? Lower prices? Sounds like _someone 's_ not optimizing for Shareholder
Value, citizen. :-\

[Un]fortunately, real businesses do. They use regulatory capture to dodge
taxes or otherwise avoid contributing back to the public coffer (see the
numerous stories of aquifers given away "for a song" to private companies) and
they use anticompetitive monopolistic/oligopolistic practices to avoid
lowering prices. These practices are economically inefficient (ie they make
the society poorer overall, and by utilitarianism reduce the society's overall
happiness), yet they are common.

So I question your claim of automatic huge profits for governments and
consumers. It could be that all the profits go to the companies, and any
economic profits for third parties get cancelled out by the economic losses
incurred by additional income inequality.

Not all profit is profitable. If I give an extra dollar to the local warlord,
have I made the society richer? Happier? Free-er? Does it make any difference
if the local warlord calls itself "Nestle?" (actually that's not quite fair:
Nestle has a body count most warlords would give their left arm for, but
that's a separate issue)

~~~
nightwing
If we do not talk about usefulness of a resource how would we know if it is
worth to study what happens when it is removed?

> Taxes? Lower prices? Sounds like someone's not optimizing for the almighty
> Shareholder Value, citizen

Sure, sometimes people in governments take money and create anti-competitive
regulations, but don't you agree that in such cases the problem is not "our
desire to exploit resources" but the corrupt government. Even with that
companies still pay lots of taxes, and there is often competition lowering the
prices. Particularly in this case they have to make the price cheaper than the
other methods of getting water.

> If I give an extra dollar to the local warlord, have I made the society
> richer? Happier? Free-er? Does it make any difference if the local warlord
> calls itself "Nestle?"

Do you argue against all taxes?

As far as i can understand your arguments would apply equally against any
human endeavor other than suicide. Whatever we do is going to change the
environment somehow, of course the attitude of "dig up everything" is stupid,
but "do not touch anything, it will have unknown consequences" is not better.

~~~
schiffern
>don't you agree that in such cases the problem is not "our desire to exploit
resources" but the corrupt government

No I do not agree, but probably not for the reason you think.

The all-too-human temptation to identify " _the_ (singular) problem" (or _the_
person/group 'to blame') isn't educational here. Regulatory capture is a
whole-system problem, not a failure of a single component.

If you remove all the people from the government and replace them with new
people, that won't somehow fix it. The new people will be constrained to act
in the same way as the old people, by the same economic and societal forces.

>of course the attitude of "dig up everything" is stupid, but "do not touch
anything, it will have unknown consequences" is not better.

Indeed, who would disagree? No need to exclude the reasonable middle ground
though.

Precaution should not limitless ("do not touch anything"), but it should not
be zero either. If we haven't studied the unknown consequences _at all_ ,
maybe we should do that first.

~~~
nightwing
I agree that there is a systematic problem, as far as i could understand your
previous comment was suggesting that the issue is entirely in existence of
private companies, but judging by previous attempts of eliminating them i
think changing the way government works is a more promising route.

> Fortunately no-one's arguing that. You're excluding the (reasonable) middle.

Your previous comment doesn't look like a reasonable middle to me. The
reasonable attitude would be "yay, new resource, we need to find a way to use
it without breaking anything".

~~~
schiffern
>Your previous comment doesn't look like a reasonable middle to me. The
reasonable attitude would be "yay, new resource, we need to find a way to use
it without breaking anything".

"we need to... use it" \-- so your idea of a 'reasonable attitude' is to beg
the question? Conclusion first, evidence later? :-\

Again precaution should not limitless ("do not touch anything"), but it should
not be zero either. If we haven't studied these "unknown consequences" at all,
maybe we should do that first.

~~~
nightwing
The part you chose to not quote is rather important "we need to _find a way_
to use it _without breaking anything_ ". So i don't think the precaution
should be zero.

Maybe the thing we disagree about is the order of concerns, i believe the
needs of people come first, then comes requirement to be cautious because not
being cautious can cause harm to people.

~~~
schiffern
Yes it seems we agree on that. :)

> The part you chose to not quote is rather important "we need to find a way
> to use it without breaking anything". So i don't think the precaution should
> be zero.

To clarify: my point was by saying "we need to find a way to use it," you've
already ruled out the possibility that further scientific study will rule out
its use entirely. I'm not saying this is the most likely outcome, just that
this outcome was conspicuously and unexplainedly excluded from consideration.

------
lambdasquirrel
If the source was glacial run-off, not sure if there’d be any in the places
where it’s warmest and driest. Still a pretty nifty discovery though.

------
bsenftner
Call me a cynical anti-capitalist, but this turns the recent wealth fad of
buying up the world's fresh water aquifers into a poor investment, as that
resource is not nearly as rare as it was before this discovery.
[https://agorafinancial.com/2015/04/24/why-did-george-bush-
bu...](https://agorafinancial.com/2015/04/24/why-did-george-bush-buy-
nearly-300000-acres-in-paraguay/) [https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-
water-barons-wall-stre...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-
wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/5383274)

------
xfactor973
Fossil water

------
baybal2
What about nuclear desalination?

