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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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According to this article, a longer loop of Henle in the kidney could be the secret to what allows some mammals to drink sea water.
For reference on why we didn’t evolve this naturally, this Stack Exchange answer suggests that most land animals live near fresh water.
This is the best answer.
Also, we need a lot of freshwater for our food (plants and animals). The amount we personally use for drinking is neglible.
It would solve nothing.
Now, if we could grow something like corn or soy with salt water... That would be a game changer.
On the other hand, we already have the technology to desalinate water. It's mostly a cost and energy issue, not a technology issue.
If we grow some crop with salt water, we will be literally salting the earth, so unless we are talking about hydroponics/aquaponics, that would be very damaging for the soil and environment. That needs to be consider as well.
hmm how about making a seaweed that grows meat tumors then.
Or just eat the seaweed. Tons of nutrients in there. Plus it tastes great as a salad!
"Nah, we had seaweed last night. Let's have meat-tumors."
Good point. Another reason to favor desalination.
It's a good point, but desalination has the same issue. Whenever you use seawater to produce something with almost no salt in it (be it desalinated water or crops), that means the salt has to go somewhere else. Probably in concentrated form.
Desalination may not salt the earth, but brine can create dead zones in the water. There are solutions like diluting it, and there are cases of operators who don't care. Either way, salt is an issue if you use salt water. Has to go somewhere.
Diluting it is just undoing the desalination on the water used to dilute it.
There are better ways to do this. Examples:
In theory, this could give and take the same amount of salt water to and from the ocean, while still providing desalinated water for use.
Another way to dilute brine is to add it to the ocean in small bits in multiple locations, so neither location exceeds a certain salt concentration.
If you're growing salt-tolerant crops and only ever intend to use that land as farmland, that could arguably be a benefit, don't have to use as many chemicals to control weeds and pests if the weeds and pests can't tolerate the salt
Probably need to make sure that the salt is being contained to the farm area, and I'd imagine you would need to periodically flush it with fresh water or something if too much salt begins to accumulate in the soil for even your salt tolerant crops.
That seems hard to manage. And there is also the risk of that salt to reach underground water. I would say that it's feasible to do it right, but at a high cost.
Hydroponics seems more manageable IMO.
There are some plants that already grow in seawater, perhaps one way to achieve that effect might be to go about it the other way round, and try to breed or engineer one of these plants into something that can be used as a staple crop? Some quick wiki searching suggests to me that a few species of such plants are edible, though most I could find are so as vegetable type plants and not used like corn or potatoes or such. I did find reference to a salt tolerant plant that can be grown for cooking oil though.
And start farming the seabed to devastate even more ecosystems? I don't think so. The best solution is actually to have less people. Better use the CRISPR to create some fun viruses.
I wasn't referring to seaweed on the seabed, I was referring to land plants that grow in seawater. I figure that these kind of plants could be relevant in places like coastal deserts, since seawater is more available than fresh in such places, or in areas that have suffered from severe saltwater intrusion or which become partially flooded by seawater due to sea level rise.
Thanks for answering the question instead of jumping on a soapbox to preach.