🚀 go-pugleaf

Some time ago, I have made a posting on this subject, contesting
opinion of one professor that the reason for oceans being salty:
rivers bring salt to the oceans.  Several people responded in support
of this opinion.  One even suggested the following experiment.  If we
pour some water in a jar, and leave it for a long time, water will
evaporate, and some residue will appear.  We can continuously add
water to the jar, and after a long time, water will become salty.  The
writer referred to a professor from an Ivy League university.

I like this experiment.  I suggest to expand it as follows: to have
two jars, one kept always full, and the other kept half-full.  Since
the rate of evaporation is proportional to the area, it will be the
same for both jars, but the half-full jar will obviously become with
time more salty than the full one, because proportionally, greater
part of it will be evaporated.  If this model is applicable to an
ocean, it should be applicable to any lake fed by a river. Since lakes
on average are much more shallow, than the ocean, the lake water
should be much more salty than it is in the oceans, which we know to
be wrong: majority of lakes are not salty at all.  The only logical
conclusion: the jug experiment is not applicable to oceans.

We know that all rivers bring pollution to the oceans, and the ocean
pollution is much stronger close to the river delta, and is much less
far away from it.  The same should be true for salt, if it were rivers
bringing salt to the oceans: the water should be more salty close to
the river delta and less salty far away.  Again, we know, that quite
opposite is true.

Some arithmetic is useful.  If you compute the amount of water,
brought to the oceans by all rivers, and divide it by the total amount
of water in the oceans, you will get a number much smaller, than the
same quotient for a lake.  This is why lakes are usually more polluted
than oceans.  Again, if rivers bring salt to the oceans, they also
bring salt to the lakes, and lakes should have been much more salty,
than oceans, which is not true.  I rest my case.

Fabrikant

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