this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it seems that the sheer amount of salt we accumulate when desalinating for scale consumption is so large that there's no easy way to spread it. yeah, the ocean will take care of it eventually, but we aren't gonna ferry salt across a large body of water to dump it gently into the ocean. we'll pipe it somewhere, and wherever it is it will create a pocket of dead ocean water. it's a matter of choice and water regulation, really.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah just looked this up. So the numbers ay not be perfect.

But at 3.5% salt in sea water. 6l of water will produce 210g of salt.

6g is the max recommended per day intake. So let's round down to 200g a day. X 365

76kg of salt per person per year. A small sea side village (1000) would be a dead-sea side village in a few years.

Also worth noting. While the dead sea is about 33% salt so 10x most living seas.

It would take well under 2x the salt level for fish to start dying in large numbers. So making the sea dead. Just as a fresh water fish would dehydrate due to excess salt drawing water from its cells in sea water. It would only take a small increase in the salt water vs cell salt content for sea fish to die.

PS 2l worth or 70g of salt will kill most humans without drastic care.

Just found looking that up interesting so thought id share.