The sea is under attack from both ends. To the north, the once mighty Jordan, on which it depends for replenishment, has shrunk to a polluted trickle, carrying only one fiftieth of the water it did 70 years ago: after gushing spectacularly out of the side of Mt Hermon far to the north, the river is almost entirely depleted by domestic and agricultural use. And to the south, big industrial concerns deliberately evaporate the sea’s waters to gain valuable minerals.
Eh? Deliberately evaporate?
Friends of the Earth groups in Israel, Jordan and Palestine have long argued for an alternative plan, based on persuading the industries to adopt new technologies that do not evaporate water,
What?
Look, the evaporation simply happens. You\’ve got open water in a hot place: evaporation. The industries are not increasing this one iota. They are, rather, taking advantage of it. The hugely salty water contains, you\’ll not be all that surprised to note, salts. As the water evaporates these salts are left behind and they can be harvested. And they are, for, among other things, the magnesium content.
The tonnage of water that rises up into the skies is not changed by this practice. It\’s just made useful. So WTF are Lean and FoE on about here?
Are you sure?
Don’t they increase the surface area of evaporation?
I think what FoE are complaining about in the “deliberate” evaporation is the process of filling shallow pools which ease the process of extracting the salts and minerals. Water in shallow pools does evaporate a bit faster than in a deep lake, but not much.
Hmmm… I’m not a scientist, but if evaporation is increased, wouldn’t that mean that rainfall would also increase by a corresponding amount?
Which, from a green perspective, I’d have thought was quite a good thing.
Not necessarily anywhere near where the evaporation occurred.
But as what they are fundamentally complaining about here is human extraction further up river, then it doesn’t matter because people are clearly evil and must be eradicated for the good of Gaia.
These guys create shallow, large surface area pools – in effect increasing the surface area of the sea and increasing the both the total evaporation rate and the rate in their industry area.
Pffff, these are the people that announced that they want to ban Chlorine, a naturally occurring element. How are we supposed to take anything they say seriously?