It seems to me that sponges could save us from global warming - just breed a bunch of them and problem solved!
Or is it more complicated than that?
If all the world’s sponges (the sea animal, not the household cleaning item) were beamed at once into deep space, the oceans would actually get just a tad lower. Sponges do displace their own volume in water.
Why would the oceans be deeper without sponges? How do they help solve global warming? Do you think that sponges absorb water and magically reduce the volume of that water?
A sponge does not actually reduce the volume of water. Sponges on land seem to reduce the amount of water spilled on a surface by absorbing some water into its own structure, but that water still exists and has the same volume. In the ocean, the sponge would already be saturated and wouldn’t absorb anything.
Previous thread on this question/joke:
Personally, I have a hard time even comprehending the mindset that would make this question meaningful.
I think sponges might make like, what, 0.0000000000000000000001% of a difference?
The ocean is deep. And contains an almost incomprehensibly vast quantity of water.
I’m not attacking the OP, just pointing out that sponges make virtually no difference.
It’s a standup comedian’s joke from the 1980s or so. Steven Wright perhaps.
Related question… How much deeper thinkers would we be if our minds didn’t absorb everything like a sponge?
It’s at about the same level as building a pipeline to carry water from Lake Superior to the California San Joaquin Valley, or building nuclear fission plants on every body of water to product hydrogen via electrolysis to support the “hydrogen economy”. They all fall along the lines of, “I have this idea that is completely unworkable and will utterly fail to address the actual problem I’ve proposed to resolve; prove to me why it won’t work.”
The subsequent discussions are rarely fruitful, and the participants that bring in actual facts and experience are often castigated for their “lack of imagination”, “negativity”, et cetera, ad nauseam.
Stranger
Emo Phillips, I think. Or Jack Handy.
I figured out a way to land on the sun without burning up. We go there at night!
Is that you, Bill Dana?
I believe you are thinking of Lyndon LaRouche, and the starting point was meant to be in Alaska.
Yep. It’s right up there with building a 700-mile wall between the US and Mexico. Oh, wait, no, make that a double-layer wall the full length of the US/Mexico border with surveillance and boots on the ground. And getting Mexico to pay for it. Or even, a wall the length of the US/Canada border.
It isn’t just a wild-eyed LaRouche idea.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=2854695
It’s a wild-eyed DOPER idea, as well!
Yeah, I know it’s an old comedian’s joke (and I think it was Jack Handy), but that still doesn’t change the fact that, for the joke to work, it has to make sense.
It makes perfect sense. Sponges soak up water so they must be soaking up the ocean if that’s where they live. Therefore the ocean would have more water if the sponges weren’t soaking it up.
It’s funny because it’s stupid.
Kinda like certain politicians.
Would sea levels fall if you took all the ships out?
Why does everyone talk about Antarctic Ice? Isn’t the ice at the North pole melting too?
Questions that my niece, aged 10, asked last year. I thought they demonstrated a good level of perspicacity for her age.
As you’d expect of any good precocious kid question, xkcd has this covered: Ships
With a bonus section about sponges.
If xkcd’s author was as good at predicting the stock market as he is at predicting Dope threads he’d own the damn planet by now. Which would probably be a huge improvement over the current owners.
That depends on what hat he’s currently wearing.
And I still maintain that the question is nonsensical, in a way that (say) the pipeline from the Great Lakes to California isn’t. One can envision such a pipeline, and if actually built, it could be made to work. It’d be insanely expensive and wholly impractical, but it makes sense. But putting sponges in the ocean does nothing. Taking sponges out of the ocean would do something, and would make sense in a pipeline sort of way, but that’s not what the question is asking.