Why can't we use the water out of the sea to stop droughts?

Question

I mean, the world is two thirds water, and we say we are running out. I am curious, there is oviously a good reason(s) or we would have used it by now. No d*ckhead responses please.

Answer 1

Sea water is saline (contains salt) and makes you more thirsty. It is possible to filter the salt out or boil the water off. Desalination plants have been established in some areas, but are extremely costly to run and maintain, and care has to be taken in disposal of the salts left as waste. See link: -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination_plant

"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink".
From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Answer 2

I believe it is the cost of converting salt water to clear potable water. I am not sure there is a facility available to do it...

There was also a thought one time back in the 70's or 80's about grabbing a chunk of an iceburg and floating it down the coast and then shipping it inland to drought areas, but the loss through melting and transportation cost was prohibitive to it being successful.

Answer 3

Now i agree with the question, we should be able to come up with a cheap and effective way to use and clean sea water!

Evaporation costs nothing and on a large scale it would work say in a big green house and catch the droplets?

Surely this makes sense!

Answer 4

Desalination is very costly, to build a plant, run it, man it etc. Plus there's the cost to the environment too.
What would be done with all the by-products - they'd be quite toxic.
I get your point though, but it was on Countryfile or some similar programme recently. Try bbc.co.uk for more info.

Answer 5

you can't use sea water because it's full of salt.
most of the freshwater on earth is stored in glaciers on the poles. some of those glaciers are melting but when they do that they mix with the salt water in the sea. besides this melting the glaciers would cause the whole world to flood, that's why we have to keep the freshwater we have unpolluted.
it's not that we are running out, it's that we are polluting the sources where the freshwater is stored.

Answer 6

because the water in the sea is salted and uncleen. it can be dangerous for some plants and life. it is possible to use water from the see if you let it evaporate or boil but it takes a long time and a lot of water!

Answer 7

Sea water contain a lot of impurities and high content of salt. You need desalination plants to process the sea water. These plants are very costly.

Answer 8

Its been successfully used in Gaddaffis Libya. Whats important is to first dissalinate the water. Any water engineer can design a system to achieve this. But its a wee bit expensive.

Answer 9

1) see water is ... salted... and the best way to make sure you can't grow anything on a field is to salt it (common pratice in the middle age wars, i've heard. to be checked)
Therefore, we can't use see water directly... We have to remove the salt first.

2) some arabic countries do EXACTLY that in order to have water: they pump it from the see and either boil it or remove the salt through other means (sending it through a filter at high pressure). But it is quite expensive...

Answer 10

If you look up 'seawater' on Wikipedia, you'll see that it has lots of stuff in it that make it undrinkable. In order to get that stuff out, the water has to be distilled. That takes a lot of energy.

We're not running out of fresh water, at least while there are still rivers running.