Alaska To Export Billions of Gallons of Water 290
theodp writes "Newsweek reports on a company called True Alaska Bottling that has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka, Alaska's bountiful reserves. If all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will soon be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. Think of it as a proof of concept for turning life's most essential molecule into a global commodity." I'm sure the residents of Saratoga Springs and Perrier (not to mention the island nation of Fiji) can think of some prior art.
News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
How is a story about a company exporting water relevant to slashdot or can be considered nerd news? I don't even see any tech angle here.
And whats up with the quip about prior art? Its not like this is a patent story or anything.
What a waste of front page space.
Prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're shipping water, not patenting the process of shipping water. Is that all you have to do to get a submission published is say something like "prior art" or "in Soviet Russia, water ships you!"?
Re:News For Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
trading with the oil rich but water poor nations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:back in the day... (Score:2, Insightful)
So trade is bad?
Re:We've got water problems in the lower 48 (Score:3, Insightful)
Much of the issue exist because people insist on maintaining lawns that have no place in deserts.
Re:We've got water problems in the lower 48 (Score:5, Insightful)
And treaties with Canada somewhat restrict what you can do with our water.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:1, Insightful)
The kind of articles I originally signed up at Slashdot for -- kernel news and programming language debates -- are no longer welcome to the newer demographic who just want shiny luxury tech like iPhones, even if they are not Free and are barely hackable. But a story on bottled water being shipped halfway around the world will no doubt spark a discussion of global warming that draws a large crowd. Even as Reddit and Digg have eclipsed Slashdot in many ways, no doubt Taco can still draw in ad money on stories like this.
Well, Slashdot's demographic isn't as knowledgeable or geeky as it was back in the day. At best, it's full of IT people without a significant background in math, science or engineering. That's not CmdrTaco's fault. As far as the stories go, I'd say Slashdot is much better than Digg or Reddit (besides, Digg 4.0 is awful).
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, it's changed since I started reading it (a long time before I signed up to comment!)
It's now rare to have a debate amongst subject-matter experts, and more common to have arguments between the ill-informed.
Or maybe I'm just succumbing to nostalgia. It has changed around here though. Where is the place that is now what slashdot was?
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Ha. Ha. Let's see, just where are those tankers? Nope, don't see them (they have to transit the channel my house overlooks). Didn't see any yesterday when we drove by the place.
That's the point. These clowns have been talking about this for just about a decade without doing anything functional. It's easy to make PowerPoint presentations and show a pretty CG tanker trundling out of Sitka. Harder to get all of the oil out of the old rusty thing you just leased. Moties [wikipedia.org] may like long chain hydrocarbons in their coffee, humans not so much.
Details matter.
Re:or desalinate? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no way it is cheaper to desalinate.
Re:or desalinate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like reverse osmosis.
I often wonder about how well a solar water distillation plant would scale, using a football field worth of mirrors and a massive heat exchanger using sodium, like they were considering not too long ago for power generation. In fact, what if they used the steam from one of those massive heat exchanger power generators and recondensed it as pure water - by tweaking the pressure / volume ratio in order to increase the volume at a lower pressure, could those big plants serve double duty (power / desal)? Depending on their original intent (water vs power) they would be getting the other one for free as a by-product.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:2, Insightful)
I look at it differently. As the Slashdot readers have become older and moved on, so has the content. Sure, Slashdot still covers the uber geeky tech stuff, it also covers a broader variety of topics. Which is rather welcome, I must say.
Re:We've got water problems in the lower 48 (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. While the younger generations get all the slack for supposedly having massives senses of entitlement and being greedy, the 50-60 somethings epitomize greed and narcissism. If you live in Phoenix and you have a nice lawn, you are part of the problem.
Re:Look at the quotes (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot has outlived it's usefulness.
That statement is simply not true. Slashdot used to be entertaining, but I don't know that it ever was useful.
Re:Not as much as you'd think (Score:3, Insightful)
...the ships can simply be run on nuclear. The US Navy already does this with many ships.
If you are going that route, just build a similar nuclear reactor on the shore and save the expense of the whole cargo ship.
Typically, those navy ships desalinate more potable water than can be used on the ship, and the excess is just dumped overboard as waste.
If you are determined to ship water to the mid east, just start an empty ship heading that way, and it can fill it's own holds with potable water.
Putting the reactors on land also makes it easier to connect to the electrical grid and use the power generated while you desalinate your water. Bonus!
I've seen many an engineer get side-tracked from the original goals by getting in a linear mindset. :-)
Re:or desalinate? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're comparing cycling to swimming here. You can go on for a few hundred meters without pedaling on your bike, but you'll be still in the water after a few meters if you stop swimming.
Depending on the size and speed of the ship, without engine power you'll be dead in the water after a few miles. Ships most definitely use their engines 100% of the time at sea.
Re:or desalinate? (Score:1, Insightful)