I understand that it’s a problem that sometimes restricts the capacity of the canal. I just take issue with this incredulous “they dump fresh water into the ocean” phrasing. You make it sound like they’re depriving thirsty people of precious water so they can inefficiently float their boats.
> You make it sound like they’re depriving thirsty people of precious water so they can inefficiently float their boats.
I make it sound like that, or Le Monde?
There is so much conflicting information, all I care about is that while it's possible to operate a lock by consuming freshwater, it's only a marginal increase in knowledge to operate a lock without freshwater consumption... But for some reason every country with continent-bypassing canals is modulating traffic for flex...
The word "fresh" doesn't occur in the Le Monde article.
You're doing it again when you say "consuming freshwater." You make it sound like this is a precious resource that could be used to sustain human life but instead it's being dumped into the ocean because the canal is wasteful. It's not. It would go into the ocean regardless, as it has done since the river formed. The freshness of the water is irrelevant, the problem is only about the consequences to canal capacity.
Artificial lake water from rainfall is fresh water! now check for "rainfall"
I don't understand why people actively go out of their way to downvote and criticize people who merely point out its entirely unnecessary to waste fresh water ... to operate locks, nor is the alternative environmentally friendly: rerouting cargo ships around a whole continent instead of using an already existing shortcut.
We're not frogs slowly getting boiled,
we're frogs complaining we're getting boiled while suppressing a couple of helpful frogs who're trying to turn the heat down... all for what? saving face of the status quo?
I'm not interested in "vote number go up" just in "get basic logic to surface in the discussion" which is hard when your message is greyed out!
Yes, it is fresh water, but that's not what's interesting about it. If the canal wasn't there, then the river would flow straight into the ocean instead. It's not like they're pulling from an aquifer to feed these locks. You're looking at some infrastructure limitations and acting like it's an environmental problem.
Thats false, the rainwater never fell to the ground and teleported to the ocean.
Just consider the nearest rivers near you, now imagine someone diverting the river upstream to form an artificial lake (let's ignore the other environmental impacts of that for the sake of argument), to enable formation of something akin to the Panama Canal.
I'm sure you'd have certain reservations and complaints about the local loss of access to a now diverted river.
Then you come to understand that it's not even necessary for this canal to continue consuming fresh water for the operation of the locks, but hey there are some economic advantages of the shipping shortcut.
Then you learn shipping capacity will be throttled because the canal is not the only consumer of the rainwater, and El Nino threatens a big drought. The ships will take longer routes outside of your economy, and wasting fossil fuels, further exacerbating global warming.
All of this turns out to be a false dilemma, its perfectly feasible to have water locks operate and raise and lower ships without consuming fresh water.
It's orders of magnitude more expensive to desalinate sea water than it is to simply prevent fresh water from being needlessly wasted on operating water locks...
Even if you have a "surplus" of fresh water, its better to let it seep into continental ground and let water tension distribute it throughout the soil, so the soil can evaporatively cool during prolonged heat waves.
Is Panama actually desalinating to make up for water they could have been getting from Chagres River if not for the canal? Panama is a tropical country that gets a lot of rain and I couldn't find any mention of this. The article you posted doesn't say anything like that.
I never claimed they were? thats what you would have to do to recover the lost fresh water. In order to compare apples to apples, I compared the costs of allowing the fresh water to be lost to the ocean, and then desalinating an equivalent amount to the costs of simply not letting the fresh water get lost to operating water locks.
> that gets lots of rain
just like population / industry demand and renewable supply fluctuate, fresh water availability and demand fluctuate, its not that complicated.
scroll up the thread: someone posts a BBC video where it is claimed the water lock operators will allow fewer ships through because its costing too much fresh water, they are already suffering a strong deficit in rainfall this spring / summer and El Nino is coming. The article from Le Monde states effectively the same things. But here you come toting around the yearly average as if this potable statistic will make the country less thirsty.
“It's orders of magnitude more expensive to desalinate sea water than it is to simply prevent fresh water from being needlessly wasted on operating water locks...”
What is the point of this statement if desalination isn’t actually needed here?
I never claimed desalination (which is energetically expensive) is necessary, I claim both throttling of Panama Canal traffic and fresh water loss are unnecessary.
Is saving shipping fuel or saving freshwater during a drought that is expected to worsen significantly "(un)necessary"? Is human prosperity "(un)necessary"?
Why are you bending over backwards to defend wasting precious resources?
New commenter here, and I understand your arguments you've made in this thread, but it's like asking what is the waste of a waterfall? The math you're doing would say add up how much energy could have been extracted and compare it to equivalent generation in coal or similar. The water, even spent on the locks, goes to the ocean anyways.
It's not like the waste of a waterfall: the potential energy loss across a waterfall ignores the loss of freshwater.
Suppose you drink water from a river and piss in the river so the water ends up in the ocean, later someone diverts this river upstream straight to the ocean, would you really not care that the water no longer passes through your body?
Does the knowledge that the water has returned to the ocean quench your thirst?
The Panama Canal operators are throttling shipping capacity by about 10%.
May I inform your employer you are ready to swallow a 10% reduction in pay check?
They’re called rivers and they do that naturally.