Conversation

If you take space exploration and anything to do with preventing or lowering suffering (eg stopping climate change or curing cancer or eliminating hunger) off the table, what’s at the top of your list as a worthwhile civilizational ambition?
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The great lakes are basically just glacial puddles that haven't dried up yet. If you take their water out of their local basin, it doesn't come back. The US uses enough water that we could drain them entirely in a few decades, permanently destroying those environments.
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Rivers like the Chicago are part of the local basin, bringing in rainwater. More rain raises lake levels temporarily and drains through St Lawrence. IIRC, cold temperatures and lake currents minimize intermixing, and almost all water a few feet deep is original glacier water.
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Most of the lakes are closer to 7000 years old. Agriculture was invented before the lakes fully formed. Brownian motion is dependent on temperature. You don't have to go very deep into these lakes before the water gets close to freezing. Superior is 1333 ft at its deepest.
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