On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 21:23:58 -0700,
(paghat) posted:

In article , Stephen
Henning wrote:

"presley" wrote:

Warren, you're not as informed as you think you are.

http://landresources.montana.edu/LRE...pic%20B2_Part1
_Solution_Chemistry_Web.pdf

According to the site above, from University of Montana, the composition of
rainfall is nearly identical to seawater with some additional molecules
picked up in the atmosphere.

Let's see now:

1) People drink rain water, especially on ocean islands where there is
no other fresh water, are very healthy.

2) People who drink sea water die.

and you claim that they are the same. I hope you don't try to drink sea
water.

The methods by which it can be assessed that rainwater is evaporative from
the sea measured for it's isotopic signature & ionic proportionality does
not mean rainfall that is the "same" as the sea for salt content. When by
mass ratio it can be proven that sodium & chloride ions in groundwater are
"the same as seawater" this means whatever the salt load (whether barely
detectible or extremely great) originated in the ocean vs originating in
mineral dissolution or man-caused pollutants. It does NOT mean the
groundwater or the rainfall is sal****er. It just doesn't mean that. As
sensible to believe being that signatures & proportionality "the same as
seawater" means rainfall is teaming with plankton & jellyfish.

Salinity in soil DECREASES in areas of highest rainfall. If rain were
salty the opposite would be true, & much of the world would drop dead
because rainwater would be unfit to drink.

Rainfall even lowers the salinity in tidal areas of the ocean itself. In
the Ariake Sea for a studied example, salinity for most of the year is a
fairly constant 25-26%. During the rainy monsoon season salinity drops to
15% [H. Koike, University of Tokkyo Bulletin 18, 1980]. So too mangrove
swamps become decreasingly salinized when deluted during rainy seasons. If
the "sameness" of rainwater & seawater was defined by their salt content,
tidal environments would not have lowered salinity during heavy rainfall,
& the land surface would become so salinized, within a year or two the
earth would no longer be habitable my man.

What sodium does find its way into rainfall is generally assumed to be of
ocean origin. It is such an inconsequential component that rainfall is
NEVER given as one of the causes of inland salinization.

It's beyond comprehension that even one person really believes rainfall
has the same salt content as the sea. Such belief is explicable only if
scientific knowledge, ability to reason, or even the ability to draw
personal conclusions after opening one's mouth in a rainstorm, are fast
slipping away from an increasingly imbecilic population.


It is as bad as all that, Paggie. The abilities are down, the
increasinglies are up, way up. It's becoming harder and harder to
carry on simple, ordinary, succinct conversations with average
people.

"It's beyond comprehension ... ". I like that.

"And your wise men don't know how it fee--ee-eels
To be thick
As a brick."

Me, I revere the small islands of sun drenched sanity that still
exist. Carry on.

Implanted

And so the thread gets increasingly stupid from assertions that
rhododendrons are planted as salt air windbreaks, that the Atlantic ocean
dumps sal****er 300 miles inland from rainclouds & storms, & that sodium
mass ratio statistics for FRESHWATER somehow prove that freshwater is in
reality sal****er. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

-paghat the ratgirl