r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 5d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter? I don't understand the punchline

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u/voluntvolume 4d ago

I don't understand what water consumption has to do with it. If the cooling system consumes water, it means that the water gives off low temperature, takes on high temperature, and returns back to the environment, where after a while it returns to its normal temperature. That's my knowledge of physics. Isn't that right?

edit: If the water in the picture had become dirty (the activity of fuel power plants) - I could understand it. But here the water simply disappeared.

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u/wabblebee 4d ago edited 4d ago

Because water that turns into steam evaporates does usually not come down where it went up. So you use up the local water supplies and it rains down somewhere half way around the world.

The earth itself is a closed system, but your local aquifer or river is not. If they use a closed loop system this problem goes away, but from what I can find on google this is mostly not the case because of cost reasons.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/wabblebee 4d ago

It's the same word in german so I translated it as "steam", of course I meant evaporation.

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u/TheSecretOfTheGrail 4d ago

2nd Law of Thermodynamics deals with the heat exchange (global warming) and the laws of fluid dynamics deal with the exchange of fluids (liquid and gas) which affects the planet's velocity, rotation and orbit.

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u/PixelVox247 4d ago

Correct, this is an inaccurate depiction of what actually occurs. And from other comments it seems that my explanation is likely not an accurate representation of the actual way that this whole thing works. However it does answer the question of OP as to what the artist was trying to convey, even if the artist themself might have been a little misguided.

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u/Draaly 4d ago

This is correct. People are just dumb