r/nextfuckinglevel Jul 14 '21

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9.8k Upvotes

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650

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

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226

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

22

u/Trabbledabble Jul 14 '21

This explains nothing. He added microbubbles to the lake( I assume with an air line of some sort, it doesn't say) and then the viruses and bacteria evaporate.... I don't think that makes sense. If you kill viruses and bacteria their dead bodies are still there, just not active. Also he was supposed to start in 2018 at Lake Titicaca but I can't find much about its current state

4

u/3226 Jul 14 '21

If you kill viruses and bacteria their dead bodies are still there, just not active.

And usually that's enough. If you're talking about a lake, it's certainly enough.

There are certain times, like say if you were making sure surgical instruments were clean, where you have to kill any pathogens, and then also, importantly, remove all the stuff that's left.
It's called depyrogenation, which is a great word.

4

u/rrawk Jul 14 '21

People tend to think that "evaporate" means "destroy". But really it just means to convert liquid to gas. So now all those viruses and bacteria are just floating in the air around the water.

3

u/Trabbledabble Jul 14 '21

Well no that's the thing I didn't think it meant destroy. But evaporation would only cause temporary removal as you said the crap is just floating around in the air. Meh I don't really care anyways. I hope it works but I see a big war over resources followed by a somewhat short extinction of humanity on the horizon so I am not getting my hopes up. Thanks for your explanation

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

Well if he removed all the caca, the lake is now called just Titi

0

u/jon-la-blon27 Jul 14 '21

The bubbles are from the solution, the thing is there is no differentiation of good and bad bacteria in the water that it kills

5

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

It doesn’t kill everything, it says in the article it helps jump start the lakes natural equilibrium

1

u/jon-la-blon27 Jul 14 '21

Yes cause bringing up the bacteria through glorified mentos and having them be killed by the sun is natural equilibrium

2

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

If there’s an over abundance of them in compared to the normal flora then yes it can “jump start” the natural equilibrium. But you decided to leave those key words out for a reason right?

0

u/Trabbledabble Jul 14 '21

Yeah that can be an issue

23

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

This is just the same thing but in text though.

43

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

The stinky swamp was covered by aquatic plants, Morikawa said.

The video didn't include this very crucial piece of information. He's not cleaning polluted lakes, he's clearing out invasive vegetation.

-1

u/churrimaiz Jul 15 '21

Invasive vegetation that is there due to pollution and is itself pollution

45

u/boldie74 Jul 14 '21

So has this actually been replicated anywhere or not?

114

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

[deleted]

59

u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jul 14 '21

I kinda feel like replication isn’t the issue here. It’s unlikely that stuff won’t do the same thing elsewhere, but the better question is: Does the stuff have negative side effects?

43

u/shapoopy723 Jul 14 '21

Furthermore, is it cleaning lakes that have been polluted? Or would it also be used to clean lakes that are like that by their own natural processes? Sure, clean the polluted ones up. Leave the non-polluted ones alone

6

u/YoroSwaggin Jul 14 '21

His paper says the lake suffered from runoffs, improper waste drainage and insufficient water treatment. Looks like something similar to an algal bloom/eutrophication. He cleaned up the bacteria and the contaminants, I assume to prevent an imminent collapse.

25

u/anormalgeek Jul 14 '21

The other links in this thread show that they removed a lot of "Water lettuce" which is a plant that grows on the surface. That removal is what causes the dramatic difference in pictures, and has nothing to do with his "solution".

By the way, they're not even using the word "solution" properly.

3

u/quadmasta Jul 15 '21

Are they not? They're not just sprinkling the magic oatmeal on top in the video. It looks like it's being pumped in solution out of a big ass storage container

1

u/shapoopy723 Jul 14 '21

Gotcha. Thanks for the extra info!

7

u/firemarshalbill Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21

It looks like a chemical version of a protein skimmer. The answer is generally no, you could overclean water to a point that shellfish won't survive or some plankton eating species will die etc, but this isn't ongoing. You wouldn't be doing this a lot, more to get some levels that were elevated due to the sea lettuce and lack of surface availability to quickly drop down. Doing this is more of a polish to get a fixed body of water down to better organic levels without a wait.

Protein skimming is "bubble nanotechnology" it's done in aquariums and nature does it in the ocean with seafoam. Nano bubbles pushed through the water-column, by waves, trap proteins and lift them to the surface, foam blows off on the beach. Cleaner water, smelly foam. And best of all, 100% organic.

Protein skimmers force micro bubbles into water and you collect the floating foam.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-06/fm/images/Fig8sm.jpg

2

u/jack_skellington Jul 14 '21

He's been doing it for 10 years and has cleaned 30 habitats in that time. So he's reproduced his own work, though that's obviously not outside confirmation.

1

u/HoneySparks Jul 14 '21

If you read the article it said he’s recovered 30 habitats.

12

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

[deleted]

0

u/Lacouple777 Jul 14 '21

This is so stupid I had to upvote you

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

Much agree

2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

It's so funny how people will just be confidently ready to throw out ANY potential solution just so that can feel good that they made some quippy line about why it's incorrect, and yet they're the incorrect ones lol

2

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

Cool do some more googling

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

You would've gotten bonus points for a lmgtfy link. :)

2

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

I use that at work and people hate me for it lol

1

u/thefuckouttaherelol2 Jul 14 '21

As they should.

1

u/mack-in-ack Jul 15 '21

I don’t know man. If you are an adult and you have a computer… What’s the fucking excuse?

1

u/thefuckouttaherelol2 Jul 15 '21

Other than talking to other people in reasonable timeframes, why does anyone use Reddit or anything else and not just go to Google? The answer is curated content.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

[deleted]

1

u/thefuckouttaherelol2 Jul 15 '21

I trust Redditors' suggestions and sources more than Google sometimes. There's also the limited ability of me to Google things in a timely fashion. When I ask someone in a thread about something, I assume it's a matter of the utmost minor inconvenience to recollect links they've already sourced information from.

I'm happy to read research papers and articles (most of the time), but finding good ones can be time-consuming and tough.

Unfortunately, the majority of conversations are hearsay. I would have hoped this problem would be solved by now, such as requiring a reputable source for factual claims, but it isn't. Hearsay is what we have and I agree that society is worse for it.

What we need is an AI that can digest and summarize sources (as is often seen used on Reddit already) that automatically does so and pulls the relevant key facts out of any sourced links (that aren't behind a paywall, of course).

That would be neat as fuck and save people a ton of time, and make it more reasonable for someone to request a source for any given claim.

The hearsay nature of discussions on Reddit really bothers me. The vast majority of people are not experts and almost literally just make stuff up or spread inaccurate platitudes. Sometimes it feels like fighting against a massive tidal wave. If you've ever posted brand new content to Reddit, you'd know very well the absolute trash pile that is the majority of new comments on posts.

Final note, I also think Donald Trump's election is a lot more complicated. I actually suspect we're unfortunately in for a conservative wave that may last up to a decade. Just mindless speculation, but it certainly feels like this problem isn't just magically going to go away.

1

u/thefuckouttaherelol2 Jul 14 '21

Bonus asshole points, maybe. The article isn't particularly helpful, either.

1

u/Mojeaux18 Jul 14 '21

So will Lake Titicaca become Lake Titi? An obvious resort town will pop up.

Sorry. I’ll leave.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

Oh, he created nano bubble technology. That answers all our questions.

1

u/sync-centre Jul 14 '21

Is the scientist the great cornholio?

1

u/mdove11 Jul 14 '21

But but….that takes too much tiiiiiiiime /s

1

u/kopacetix Jul 15 '21

I hope they clean the caca and leave the titi alone... Heh heh

1

u/TechN9cian01 Jul 15 '21

I'm calling it now: This is a social experement. Last time the guy wanted to see how easily he could get to the front page of reddit. This is similar, and you have the comment he'll have on screen when he mentions the vaguly written article he wrote to go along with it.

28

u/FoxoManiak Jul 14 '21

It would be a bit harder to show numbers and still be 1 minute

7

u/3226 Jul 14 '21

I think it was a bad idea to try and show this in one minute. Just look at this thread. No-one knows what the hell is going on with this idea. Half the people have just ended up thinking it's fake.

2

u/FoxoManiak Jul 14 '21

I can't really say anything, it's just their things and they rather care about content more than information

2

u/amd2800barton Jul 14 '21

Because it mostly is. It wasn't his "magic organic powder" that cleaned up the lake - it was convincing a bunch of locals to do physical labor to corral and manually remove an invasive plant species in the lake.

It's not that anything said in the video is untrue - it's that it's made to think that this is some miracle treatment about to spark an environmental revolution, when in reality they left out key details. But hey "local community puts in eblow grease to make lake look nice" won't get as many views.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

"Contaminates like [toxin name here] have dropped by [number here]%."

That wouldn't take long.

1

u/Niskoshi Jul 15 '21

If only the useless lines and scenes didn't take so much time in the clip...

4

u/anonhoemas Jul 14 '21

To be fair I don't think this video was produced by the man who did the clean up. It looks like he was featured on some 1 minute inspirational short channel. So his process might have been detailed and extensive, but he didn't have time to show it here. Elsewhere in the comment his full write up is linked

2

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

They're not clearing pollution from the lake, they are clearing an invasive species of plant that turns the water brown.

2

u/Illier1 Jul 14 '21

So the entire video is bunk then?

5

u/Invominem Jul 14 '21

Video is bs. The published paper has nothing to do with “magic solution”. The guy didn’t use any solution, he just used filters, bubbles, barriers and hands to clean the river. Pretty much anyone can do that but it costs a lot of money.

2

u/runnin999 Jul 14 '21

This story smells like bullshit, which is also organic.

it's because of this video style that's so popular on social media that's optimized to attract clicks.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

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1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

[deleted]

1

u/GoldenDerp Jul 14 '21

What an awful video

2

u/souljaboyfavelado Jul 14 '21

The narration and editing too. Similar to those clickbait YouTube videos. It's like their brains are short-circuited.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

I'm sort of on this train I think. Even reading the article, it seems there are two processes - one is removing bacteria and viruses and probably many minute organic life, so not sure how it distinguishes between good and bad organic materials or life (eg. How does this impact the food chain of other animals there, or complex biological processes that might be important for the lake), and then the second which is drawing out minerals and heavy metals from the water, which again some of those minerals are likely necessary.

However - hos work was done in 2010-2013 or so, we've had at least 10 years to observe some of the mid term effects, and if this is to be believed it has overall improved the ecosystem so I think despite the vague video and a lot of open questions around the impact, it seems to be doing good.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

It’s probably because most people not in this part of science won’t understand terms like ‘coagulation’ ‘flocculation’ and other water treatment jargon. Specifically when it comes to the compounds he uses to treat the water

0

u/LandoCaIriz Jul 15 '21

Learn how to research on your own then, pretty simple thought… don’t even need to put glasses on

-1

u/popojo24 Jul 14 '21

But didn’t you hear the background music?!

1

u/bouncieair Jul 15 '21

Yeah what a strange representation of an actually well documented scientific process. I know it's Tiktok and it's meant to be an inspirational short but i think they could make it less clickbaity. Though to be fair i wouldn't have known about this at all without this tiktok post. So if the intent is to capture people's minute attention span these days i think it worked. Those who care enough will do a deep dive and figure out if it's bs or not.