[HN Gopher] The Anthropogenic Salt Cycle
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The Anthropogenic Salt Cycle
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 76 points
Date : 2023-11-03 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Well, I can't read this because of the academic publishing
| hegemony. But it reminds me of something interesting I learned
| recently which is probably related - the concept of saltwater
| intrusion into aquifers as a result of groundwater pumping in
| coastal areas.
|
| The density of saline water relative to fresh water makes this a
| somewhat interesting phenomenon (though of course not for the
| people who depend on fresh water in their aquifer).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_intrusion
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Looks like it's not on scihub yet: https://sci-
| hub.hkvisa.net/https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-02...
| tingletech wrote:
| one could request a copy from the authors https://www.researc
| hgate.net/publication/375160099_The_anthr...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My bad. I thought it was open access. Here is the
| popularization
|
| https://phys.org/news/2023-10-humans-disrupting-natural-
| salt...
|
| Gotta teach YOShInOn (my RSS reader and agent) to filter by
| open access or not.
| gwern wrote:
| It probably won't be for a long time because SH does this
| weird thing where they shut down uploads/new papers for a
| while during some Indian court case, apparently. If you are
| looking for a paper within the past year and it's not there
| in SH, don't bother checking back for a while.
| walleeee wrote:
| Saltwater intrusion is a serious problem and likely to get more
| serious with time, as water demand continues to rise with
| population and residential/commercial/industrial use
| euroderf wrote:
| Long Island stopped dumping all wastewater to sea and started
| injecting it into the ground. This was decades ago IIRC.
| samus wrote:
| Like the Pink Panther in "Pink of the Litter"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XENAqUBGJao
| nrml_amnt wrote:
| This is only done by small tertiary plants. Long Island sound
| receives up to 1000mgd (1 billion gallons per day) of
| wastewater plant effluent.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| The residents of the Adirondacks have been SCREAMING about this
| for years, and no one listens. The marshes and streams there are
| being destroyed by road salt use, by a DOT that does not care.
|
| You move to the Dacks because you are OK with a few feet of snow,
| and a few days of travel restrictions. Destroying that on the
| alter of the automobile is such a stupidly American thing to do.
| username135 wrote:
| Ive been a semi regular resident of the Adirondacks my whole
| life and never have heard or read of it being referenced as
| "Dacks"
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| That's how you can tell the semi regulars from the regulars.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Don't know what to tell you, that's weird but it's your life.
| The North Country is also common.
|
| https://www.adirondack.net/about/nicknames/
| macNchz wrote:
| The amount of salt many places in the Northeast US use is unreal.
| It's at least partially part of a cycle of dysfunctional
| political incentives, wherein many of the states that dump
| millions of tons of salt on the roads _should_ have requirements
| that vehicles be equipped with winter tires, but adding
| additional costs and barriers to driving is considered unfair
| because we 've designed so much of our built environment to
| simply require a car to go anywhere.
|
| So, we have people out there driving around year round on bald
| summer tires, and to make sure they don't kill themselves or
| cause major issues, turning the roads "black and wet" with loads
| of salt becomes the solution.
|
| It's totally unsurprising that the salt is harmful to the
| environment. I imagine that saving people the expense of winter
| tires in this way may actually be a false economy, given that the
| salt rapidly accelerates the destruction of cars themselves and
| the concrete infrastructure it's applied to.
|
| Politicians largely don't want to touch this issue, I think,
| because they're often the target of blame when the roads are
| insufficiently cleared and people have trouble getting around.
|
| As an example: several years ago in NYC, a sudden snowstorm
| caused devastating gridlock around the city and the mayor was
| dragged over the coals. In response, for the rest of that winter,
| whenever there was even a hint of a chance of snow, the city
| would preemptively put down an extraordinary amount of salt. At
| one point that winter, I stepped out of my office and the street
| was completely covered thick layer of salt, which was being
| pulverized by traffic into a dense cloud that looked like heavy
| fog. Just walking around the air tasted strongly salty. It never
| snowed, or even rained, so all of that salt just sat there for
| days.
| mikestew wrote:
| _given that the salt rapidly accelerates the destruction of
| cars themselves..._
|
| Moving from Indiana to the Pacific Northwest illustrated an
| amazing difference between salted roads and not. Indiana: right
| after you buy your car, take it to a "rust-proofing" place to
| have tar oil sprayed underneath, and inside door panels. Your
| Toyota will still rust out, but at least it will take a good
| ten years.
|
| PNW? "How does that late-70s Datsun B210 not have holes in the
| quarter panels? What's with all these pristine cars from 20
| years ago? They should have rusted to the frame by now." And
| our going-on-20-years-old Toyota/Scion xB doesn't have a flake
| of rust on it, despite us not taking the best car of the
| exterior finish.
|
| Now, granted, it could have been in the intervening time that
| galvanized coatings or whatever have gotten better. But you'll
| have a hard time convincing me that it isn't the road salt that
| makes the difference.
| mattpallissard wrote:
| That may have been true in the past, but they brine a lot of
| the roads in PNW now
| monknomo wrote:
| I used to live in a place that switched from salt to brine,
| and brine is much, much gentler on cars. They used to last
| maybe 5 years, and now 10-15 before the rust gets them is
| much more common
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| But brine is just water with a lot of salt ??
| monknomo wrote:
| I know, right? I don't really understand it, but my guess
| is that the salt crystals (big, pea sized rocks) are more
| readily stuck into cavities in the body and frames and
| they sit there forever, where the brine washes off.
|
| I also wonder if the brine is more efficient and uses
| less salt? No knowledge, just anecdata here
| NortySpock wrote:
| Might be easier running the connectors for water sprayers
| rather than gravel coming out of a chute with a spinning
| disk to scatter the grains of salt?
|
| Not an expert either :)
| nerdponx wrote:
| Is it different in Indiana from in the Northeast? I've never
| heard of someone actually getting a rust proofing treatment
| on their car. I know that I'm supposed to get a couple car
| washes during and after the winter season to get the salt
| off, but that's as much as (or more than) most people do
| here.
|
| That said, unless it's a particularly snowy or icy winter,
| the roads themselves are usually clear on any given day (in
| part due to aggressive plowing and salting during and after
| storms). So maybe if the difference between consistent
| precipitation and intermittent big dumpings of snow or
| freezing rain.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Is it different in Indiana from in the Northeast? I 've
| never heard of someone actually getting a rust proofing
| treatment on their car._
|
| The difference could also be the nearly 30 years since I've
| lived in Indiana. :-) Most people I knew got their new cars
| rust-proofed. But, again, it is my understanding that
| factory body panels have improved. I don't know the exact
| difference, but I know that new cars get their panels
| galvanized in some manner. Perhaps old cars didn't get that
| treatment (and I'd have to go look up whether that's true
| or not, 'cuz hell if I know). But what I do recall is that
| if you didn't get your car rust-proofed, there were some
| cars that would suffer more greatly than others. Chryslers
| would rust their rear quarter panels until you couldn't put
| anything in the trunk (though I think _that_ particular
| issue might have been water intrusion). Japanese cars would
| just rust to the frame (exaggerated to illustrate the
| point).
|
| But these guys (https://www.ziebart.com) are still in
| business, so it's either inertia from old people like me
| (because that's just what you do) or body panel rust is
| still an issue. I do notice that when I enter my Washington
| zip code into the Zeibart "find a local shop" page, it says
| there aren't any close to me, so make of it what you will.
| porknubbins wrote:
| As someone into vintage restoration its insane to me that
| historically having an undercoating on body and frame was
| considered a luxury feature that companies like Porsche did.
| US big 3 were like who drives a car more than 10 years
| anyway? So half our cars are rusted out and unsalvageable
| even though the engine is fine.
| ellisd wrote:
| > ... TruCoat. You don't get it, you get oxidation problems.
| It'll cost you a heck of a lot more than $500.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2LLB9CGfLs
| gs17 wrote:
| >given that the salt rapidly accelerates the destruction of
| cars themselves
|
| It's bad, I genuinely may have to drive my car back up to
| Michigan to get work done because the dealers in the south
| don't understand that my car really isn't so rusty for having
| been through multiple Detroit winters.
| slabity wrote:
| > Politicians largely don't want to touch this issue, I think,
| because they're often the target of blame when the roads are
| insufficiently cleared and people have trouble getting around.
|
| I think they don't want to touch this issue because it's
| _really hard to solve_.
|
| You can write a law saying all vehicles need winterized tires
| during that time of year. But how exactly would you enforce it?
| We already struggle to enforce something as simple as an
| outdated inspection sticker which can be determined at a glance
| on the road. How exactly would you enforce something that can't
| be determined as easily?
|
| Without the ability to enforce this sort of law, reducing or
| eliminating road salt would result in far more traffic,
| accidents, injuries, and deaths.
| krger wrote:
| >You can write a law saying all vehicles need winterized
| tires during that time of year.
|
| As a matter of fact, Quebec already has one[1].
|
| >But how exactly would you enforce it?
|
| The easiest way is probably similar to inspection sticker
| enforcement: by having the responding officer check the tires
| whenever a driver goes off the road, gets in an accident, or
| is otherwise pulled over. No winter tires? Enjoy a fat fine.
|
| Will some drivers get away with it? Of course. You're never
| going to get 100% compliance. There are still people who live
| in states other than New Hampshire that still don't wear
| their seat belts.
|
| [1]: https://www.quebec.ca/en/transports/traffic-road-
| safety/driv...
| macNchz wrote:
| As the other poster pointed out, compliance with winter tire
| rules is a solved problem, as it is done in Quebec and
| various parts of Europe. That said, what I was trying to say
| there is that politicians don't want to touch the "too much
| salt" issue-not the tires issue-because at least so far, it's
| been like buying IBM: "nobody gets fired for telling the DOT
| to go hogwild with the salt". They only get bad press if
| they're not perceived to have done enough to get the roads
| clear.
| oivey wrote:
| I think in some sense requiring winter tires is optimal, but I
| think the heavily car centric transportation introduces other
| issues. Say you require winter tires, someone loses their job,
| and now they can't afford to get the tires or the maintenance
| to swap them on. Now being poor additionally means they can't
| travel very well during the winter, which may even prevent them
| from finding new employment.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| This problem exists now but with rust instead of tires.
| vivekd wrote:
| There are cheap winter tires available for 90 bucks a tire in
| Canada, probably cheaper in the states. There are places that
| offer financing on tires.
|
| We require insurance which is expensive. There's no excuse not
| to require winter tires, it's a basic safety requirement.
| Driving without winter tires is just dangerous.
|
| It doesn't matter how much salt they put on the roads. The
| issue is that winter tires are made of a material that grips
| better in cold temperatures where ordinary tires don't grip as
| well when temperatures drop.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Too many people on the planet. Global warming, the myriad
| problems caused by global agriculture, marine fisheries collapses
| worldwide, and now this shit. Too. Many. People.
| digging wrote:
| The problem is not the number of people, it is the amount of
| externalities. What has to happen is a reduction in absolute
| pollution - that can happen either by lowering the number of
| people (read: genocide) or by reducing the pollution per
| person. The latter is possible and sustainable. The former is
| very stupid, because even a "clean" Thanos-style genocide would
| have essentially no effect; populations would rise again and
| since we did nothing to solve the problem (pollution-per-
| person), we'd be back in the same place within a generation or
| two.
| acdanger wrote:
| How can lowering the population == genocide ? Surely, there
| are many other ways of decreasing the number of the planet
| other than extermination.
| digging wrote:
| Within a few decades? I'm listening if you have any ideas.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| "The problem is not the number of people" Bullshit. None (not
| one) of the systems/industries we have in place to support
| our current population operates at anything even close to
| sustainable. CLothes, food, shelter, whatever, if it's on
| tier 1 of Maslow's hierarchy the shit we do to service it has
| overwhelmed or is in the process of overwhelming available
| global natural resources (renewable and otherwise), with no
| obvious path to sustainability. It's trivially agreed upon
| that there are natural carry limits for every other species
| on the planet. The notion that this also applies to our
| species shouldn't be controversial, especially in the face of
| overwhelming evidence that that carry limit has been
| exceeded.
| oivey wrote:
| Other species don't build technology. Technology changes
| the carrying capacity. Humans also have environmental
| impact that varies far more than animals. A bird in Africa
| and a bird in America probably have similar environmental
| impact, but a person in Africa uses far fewer resources
| than a person in America.
|
| Your position should be controversial because it is
| incorrect. The ecosystem dynamics of humans are nothing
| like that of other animals.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| You're right. Birds haven't managed to cause a global
| mass extinction event. Meanwhile the technology you're
| touting has permitted our species to very nearly
| eradicate every marine fishery on the planet, fuck up CO2
| levels badly enough to alter the climate globally, pump
| more water out of aquifers than can be recharged through
| natural processes, and has driven unrecoverable topsoil
| loss globally in all major agricultural areas. Your claim
| that carry capacity has been altered significantly
| doesn't mesh well with the facts on the ground. Available
| evidence suggests all we're really accomplishing is a
| temporary increase in humans on the planet in exchange
| for a bricked ecosystem. That ain't carry.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| A small freshwater fern bricked the Earth's climate for a
| while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
|
| It is possible that the evolution of a fungus that could
| degrade lignin is what brought about the end of the
| Carboniferous, with an associated extinction event:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Fungi
|
| And, of course, probably the biggest one of the all, the
| Great Oxidation Event:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
|
| //
|
| None of this is to downplay humanity's role in our
| current climate catastrophe. But we are the first of a
| long line of organisms that have the ability to do
| something about it, which is not nothing.
| riversflow wrote:
| It's taught that the Green revolution was what broke
| Malthus, but so far we haven't solved the core
| problem(finite natural resources), only kicked the can
| down the road(we can turn crude oil into extra food).
|
| I hate to be so grim, but your position is, "technology
| has allowed humans to dominate the planet and push up our
| carry capacity. Externalities are building up as a result
| of those technologies and they make our enviroment less
| hospitable. We have yet figured out how to not do that,
| despite the problem being significantly more difficult
| now that we are locked in to supporting more people. But
| we will do it, for sure. "
|
| Is the last part saying that because their are have nots
| we are fine? You completely ignore the "we don't know how
| to make basic stuff at the quantities needed in a
| sustainable way" bit. I don't think banking on the
| discovery of new technology and having enough
| coordination as a species to implement that tech in a
| timely enough fashion is so safe that doubting it should
| be controversial.
| digging wrote:
| > None (not one) of the systems/industries we have in place
| to support our current population operates at anything even
| close to sustainable.
|
| ...In other words, the problem is the rate of externalities
| per person. By replacing those systems with sustainable
| ones, we win.
|
| And we don't do genocide.
| tristor wrote:
| As someone who has lived in the Midwest and now in Colorado, and
| has driven all over the US in all seasons, as well as overseas in
| various other countries, I /really/ /really/ wish we would stop
| salting roads and people would instead do proper vehicle
| maintenance, including swapping to winter tires during winter.
| There's no nice way to say this, but the big elephant in the room
| is that in the US cars are essential to daily living to millions
| of people literally too poor to buy a set of winter tires, and as
| far as the government is concerned salting the roads is massively
| cheaper than having proper public transport.
|
| I don't think owning a car should be a luxury item, but there's
| some midpoint here that we as a society aren't grasping where we
| not only expect, but nearly enforce, that people too poor to
| change their oil or have proper tires should still own a car. In
| societies with good public transport, /everyone/ uses it, not
| just those of lower economic circumstances, and cars become a
| less necessary piece of infrastructure that can be treated more
| as a middle class convenience than a bare necessity, which is
| basically what it should be.
|
| It regularly blows my mind seeing shit heaps that are clearly
| unsafe rolling down the highway with paper tags that expired 2
| years ago on them, that have clearly never been properly
| registered or inspected. That should be made untenable in our
| society, but we cannot do that without also providing a pathway
| for people to get from where they live to where they work and to
| community resources. We've painted ourselves into a corner by
| building car-centric cities, not investing in public transport,
| and creating a social condition where a small but prevalent
| portion of society can't maintain what little possession they
| manage to own.
|
| Salting the roads is only a benefit to folks who don't have a
| properly maintained vehicle suitable for the environment they are
| living in. And it's a detriment to everyone else. Salt absolutely
| destroys cars, it destroys the roads, and it destroys the
| ecosystem as well.
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