Hacker News Reader

Comment by wat10000 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com