For Much of the World, Demand For Water Outstrips Supply 318
ananyo writes "Almost one-quarter of the world's population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion (abstract). Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers — which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders — provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries. Yet in most of the world's major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs' capacity for renewal."
Future Generations Will Hate Us (Score:2)
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NG (Score:2)
When you unbalance a stable system, it falls over (Score:5, Interesting)
Physics 101.
When you pump water out of the ground, it leaves a void. When you don't backfill, the void eventually collapses. The oil industry is aware of this problem (that and oil doesn't tend to want to just lift itself out of the ground once the initial pressure does its thing), which is why they use seawater to displace the oil: seawater is pumped in, oil flows out or is pumped out leaving the void which is then backfilled under gravity through a strategically placed hole or two.
Back to the topic: the stable system of rain=>aquifer is disrupted to greater or lesser degrees by human activity. That's obvious. The amount of rain remains constant (more or less), which means the amount of water removed from the aquifer is gone. Simple as. The global water industry has a few options to try and deal with this problem before we start seeing entire cities disappearing into sinkholes:
1. Backfilling. Something not currently done, but it begs the question as to what to backfill with?
2. Alternative sources. We have viable desalination technology (geothermal, solar stills, seat salt extraction plants(!))... we have made great strides in atmospheric water extraction to the point where a plant in the middle of a desert can turn sand into golf course. One option that I don't think has been properly explored is a wide area water grid, possibly national or international in scale. We have the technology, we have the capability, the chock under that wheel is politics.
Re:When you unbalance a stable system, it falls ov (Score:5, Funny)
1. Backfilling. Something not currently done, but it begs the question as to what to backfill with?
Oil, obviously.
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Oil made from corn? You think we're dumb enough to turn water plants, then turn them into oil, so we can backfill wells for water?
Obviously we'd use oil made from coal.
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Alternately, the chock under the wheel is that it's much cheaper to use the groundwater. Of course, this might be disastrous in the long run, but it's easy to show that economics pays pretty much no attention at all to the long run.
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Re:When you unbalance a stable system, it falls ov (Score:4, Interesting)
You're adding a step where there doesn't need to be one: solar stills are basically greenhouses with pools in. The condensate runs off into side channels for utilisation, the salts and effluent are left in the pool to be scraped and disposed of.
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"Back to the topic: the stable system of rain=>aquifer is disrupted to greater or lesser degrees by human activity. That's obvious. The amount of rain remains constant (more or less), which means the amount of water removed from the aquifer is gone. "
Because all that water is shot into space when we are done with it. it's gone forever....
Please learn about water and what a watershed is. when you do watershed management and wastewater treatment your FUD does not exist.
Only in poorly designed systems wh
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With these machines, the best water output is obtained at 50 to 70 per cent relative humidity and between 28-42 degrees Celsius. A lesser water output is produced even at 25 per cent relative humidity. Atmospheric water extractor units can be kept anywhere, but need access to fresh air, so they work best when placed by a window, or in the balcony or terrace.
Sounds to me like they'd be way expensive to run in a desert to me. Desert air rarely hits 50 percent humidity.
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It takes a seriously long time for water to get back into the aquifers. If you are drinking a glass of water from a well, it could have easily been 50 or 100 years since that water was last above the surface. If you're pumping the water out faster than its being replenished, the ground can sink, and close up the voids resulting from extraction. Over time, that will reduce the aquifers total capacity. And this change is not reversible.
Use the Oceans (Score:2)
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Re:Use the Oceans (Score:4, Informative)
Just as important (Score:5, Interesting)
Put a price on it (Score:4, Insightful)
If water has a market price on it, people will use it efficiently.
Unfortunately, most fresh water supplies are owned by governments that price is far below what a private owner would.
I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE IN THE YARD! (Score:2)
All praise the invisble hand [wikipedia.org] from which all blessing flow!!! whoops, broke the 1st commandment there
The Water Cycle (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue, of course, is not "water"; it's freshwater. We have a lot of water on this planet. Generally it can exist in 5 states: seawater, clouds, freshwater (or what I like to call "drinkable land water"), aquifer water (underground water), and snow/ice.
Around the world aquifers are being depleted. This is a problem because this is one of the most low-energy (and technologically well understood) ways to harvest drinkable land water. And humans are not the only living creatures that use aquifer water! If there is not aquifer water for plants then the plants are completely dependent on rainwater or flowing drinkable land water (rivers, creeks, etc., which are all on their way to becoming seawater again ASAP). This is a precarious state to be in, because on a macro scale, once plants start to be incapable of doing their job (providing ground shade, ecosystems for biomass, improving and retaining soil structure, etc.) a landscape can be on the road to desertification. What does this mean? That means that it's going to stop raining. This has happened, many times, because of human modification of the landscape and has led to the total collapse of multiple powerful civilizations (Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" talks about things like this).
So what are we supposed to do? Say you are an ecological steward (or policy maker) for a couple hundred acres of land that are on their way to desertification or that are already in a stable, but arid, water cycle. It is easy to think of water in terms of accounting and cash-flow, what is the big picture that will make the landscape profitable and growing in "financial" reserves?
The big picture is very simple: we are trying to make seawater into permanent land water. The more net land water the Earth has, the more stable and abundant the existence of terrestrial life on this planet, in general, will be.
(Just remember we're practicing for Mars!)
How do you do this? The input of "free" water we have (meaning no energy cost for the conversion from seawater to potential land water) is rain. We need to make sure that as much rain as possible stays as underground water... or the *sixth* form of water that I haven't mentioned yet: biomass! There is a lot of water in biomass. And it is a relatively closed loop (meaning that once some water becomes biomass it will stay in the biomass cycle for a long time). Insects, plants and *especially* soil biology are some of the greatest resources we have for storing water on land instead of losing it to the ocean.
And then of course, we are all technologists, so I think it is also worthwhile suggesting that we should be using renewable energy resources to desalinate saltwater and just pump it back (I don't know if these techniques have even been invented yet) into our aquifers and ecologies.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainwater_harvesting [wikipedia.org]
http://www.lowimpactdevelopment.org/links.htm [lowimpactdevelopment.org]
Wait a minute (Score:2)
How dare these people hoard this water and remove it from the ecosystem. I'd also like to know where all these vast reservoirs of water are hidden, so we can raid them, and return our water to us. Oh wait - perhaps it's a case of... ahh yes, the USABLE, water, the potable water, the water that can be drunk by people and animals and crops, yeah that's in short supply. And it costs lots of money to turn all that urine - be it human or animal, or all that fertilizer and insecticide contaminated farm run-off -
Call Thomas Jerome Newton! (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth_(novel) [wikipedia.org]
Same story, new setting.
desalination plants (Score:3)
Seriously... How stupid are we as an "intelligent" species that we don't rely on the massive oceans for our water supplies? Desalinate it, pump it, drink it. I'm really surprised that a multi-billion dollar industry hasn't popped up to make this happen all over to planet.
Thankfully a solution is emerging... (Score:5, Funny)
Thankfully Global Warming will increase evaporation of the oceans causing more cloud cover and rain.
Of course then the rain comes in the form of Category 5 hurricanes, but farmers will always find something to bitch about why their crops won't grow.
Dune said it best. (Score:2)
Watering the foundation of our houses! (Score:3)
Talk about a waste of water: parts of north Texas (and many other areas obviously), have clay soil which moves in crazy ways if allowed to dry out too much. This moves you house in crazy ways, causing cracks inside and out. The solution? We're encouraged to water our foundations. Huge amounts of water go to this, which results in our lake levels getting low, which puts us into water restrictions where we can't water the lawn.
Better solutions would be (1) build the foundations to withstand the soil moving, (2) and/or use a different method to keep the soil stable. I'm skipping (3) move elsewhere because DFW is not going to sprout legs and go take over Oklahoma. Unfortunately (2) likely suffers the same problem as the current solution of watering the foundation with soaker hoses: it's basically impossible to do it evenly... so you end up with overmoist areas, and other areas that still move some.
Marc
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What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
So be it... may your children be dried husks cursing us until they die.
Re:Where do I sign up....? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
It is also a lack of sensible policies. Here in California, farmers receive subsidized water to grow rice and cotton, which need a lot of water. If we end the taxpayer funded subsidies, farmers will grow crops that actually make sense, and much of the problem will go away.
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What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
It is also a lack of sensible policies. Here in California, farmers receive subsidized water to grow rice and cotton, which need a lot of water. If we end the taxpayer funded subsidies, farmers will grow crops that actually make sense, and much of the problem will go away.
Check your history books. The first Spanish settlers in California damned near died before they could get irrigation up and running. There's not a lot that grows in California without irrigation.
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But just about all of it requires less water than rice!
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Which some might think means that subsidizing farms in California is a bad idea.
Instead, let's consider using the water elsewhere for other things.
Or not, since California has lots of Electoral votes.
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Because it is 100% impossible for people to MOVE to where there are better resources...
Damn, I wish humanity was mobile and not firmly rooted to the ground like trees....
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Say China has a massive drought lasting a couple of years. Where, exactly do you think a couple hundred million people are going to go?
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You seem to equate the matter with death.
Wouldn't most people just move from the region instead of dehydrating to a desiccated husk?
Crack open a book sometime, and learn that most people can't simply "move from the region". Most of the world is, in fact, quite unlike the suburb of Scranton where you live.
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If people are everywhere,
They are drinking water everywhere
if everywhere cant support the people
Nowhere will.
Think about that and get back to me.
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I smell a Waterworld+Armageddon movie coming up.
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You may have history, but I have logic and evidence.
If people are everywhere,
They are drinking water everywhere
if everywhere cant support the people
Nowhere will.
Is that supposed to be read with a crunchy, dynamic-range compressed, bass-extended male voice, with a pause after every line?
Re:Read that book you opened... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact if you bother to open a history book instead of the comic books you apparently feast upon for your simplistic world view, you'd find that MANY past civilizations have migrated after conditions changed where they were - this was all pre-technology.
I'll bite. Pre-tech we had about 6 billion fewer people. Now, almost all land in the world is owned or not worth owning or living upon. Small migrations may be possible but if larger migrations were possible, millions of people in Africa might have shifted to considerably more human friendly areas in the past century. People move because of hunger and war, but generally those migrations are not sustainable as a future settlement area because of the lack of resources, well, everywhere. They are expected to move back.
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How many Latin Americans a year try to get into the United States? How many Turks, Pakistanis and other Central Asians and Middle Easterners try to get into Europe every year? How many rural Chinese try to move to the more prosperous coastal provinces every year? How many Africans end up in refugee camps outside their countries of origin?
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Re:Read that book you opened... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're being a little simplistic yourself.
Did people migrate in the past? Absolutely.
Is it as easy to do so today? Not even remotely.
California would not be as problematic. Plenty of technology to apply to the problems and more than enough qualified people to deal with the logistics. Costs would skyrocket to live in California, but then again, it costs a metric shitload to live in Hawaii compared to the Midwest. People that cannot afford to live in California already leave. My family did a few decades back when the business moved out since it was vastly cheaper for a business in another state. There is quite a bit of room in the continental US and people could spread out into other cities that already have the infrastructure to handle them.
In short, the peoples of California possess the sophistication, resources, and access to infrastructure to migrate.
What about the other places mentioned? How easy would it be for the peoples of the Upper Ganges to migrate? That's nearly 200 million people IIRC. How many of them have the resources to move at all? While moving you still need to provided shelther, food, clothing, water, etc. Where would they be going through while getting to their destination? Are those areas friendly to them? Is their destination going to be friendly to them?
What about migrations across different countries? Look how friendly the US is with immigrants. If half of Mexico was inhospitable to life and lacked the infrastructure and resources to support 100 million people, would the US culture, environmental and political climate support such a migration?
1000 years ago it would not be as complex to migrate a much smaller number of people through sparsely populated areas. There might still be some issues, but generally the migrations that populated North America had far less difficulties than moving 200 million people in India from one place to another.
Migration is a simplistic solution to resources shortages that may be coming. Unless you plan, well, well, well in advance and start early you could end up with quite a problem.
Planning is quite doubtful too given human behavior. I already forgot which state it was, but on the east coast of the US you already have a state government legislating the dismissal of scientific evidence about sea level rise since it is just too hard to deal with economically. Why would people not ignore scientific evidence about the progressive lack of water for the same reasons?
Of course, there is also a quite probable outcome... the destination for the migration simply won't want to absorb millions of extra people and could resort to violence....
Re:Read that book you opened... (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to equate the matter with death.
No shit. And you seem to think "exists" means "will always exist, even if we don't do anything to preserve it."
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>>>Wouldn't most people just move from the region instead of dehydrating to a desiccated husk?
No the State of Calfiornia will demand that the U.S. government extract funds from the other 49 states, so they can come-up with even more elaborate ways to water their millions of people. Like maybe build massive desalination plants to suck water from the Pacific. (Of course it would make more sense for Californians to simply move eastward after their arid state empties its underground aquifers, but pol
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Just so you know, California pays a great deal more in federal taxes than it receives in federal benefits [creditloan.com], only receiving 78 cents for every dollar sent out.
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Yes..... now. It wasn't always like that when California was brand-new and receiving federal dollars injected to the new territory/young state (like the irrigation trenches to carry water from the mountains, interstate highways to connect the huge state, army to protect it during the Mexican war, etc). And it won't be like that if CA industry keeps packing-up and moving to China or India.
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How much does it pay the states through with the Colorado River flows?
The Tradeoff (Score:2)
Hmm, no more California drivers, vs. living in a third world...
Still thinking. Can you get back to me on that?
Say, isn't Facebook HQ in California? I think I just made up my mind.
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What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern. So be it... may your children be dried husks cursing us until they die.
You seem to equate the matter with death.
Wouldn't most people just move from the region instead of dehydrating to a desiccated husk?
I mean, I guess people besides you since you seem so dead set on being a Water Martyr. We'll erect a statue to you before we leave. Or set up a stand for you to rest in as the end nears so you can make your own gruesome statue, somehow I think that your would prefer this option...
Depends on whether the Powers-That-Be in the region allow you to leave the area, and whether you have the resources to move. A lot of 'desert tribes' are desert tribes because they were pushed there and weren't strong enough to escape.
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Depends on whether the Powers-That-Be in the region allow you to leave the area
If they will not allow you to leave an area with no water, that's an entirely different matter and water is the least of your problems - since obviously they want you dead and will accomplish it by bullets or dehydration.
Pretending an aquifer matters at that point strikes me as exceedingly silly.
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Re:Pizza Prices Will Go Up Under Obamacare (Score:5, Insightful)
Our best estimate is that the ObamaCare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis.
1% of the purchase price goes to health care? That sounds like a bargain to me.
But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb ObamaCare.
Same with all your other competitors, so no one is at a competitive disadvantage due to PPACA.
The restaurant industry is worried about ObamaCare. The National Restaurant Association notes that the law requires companies which have more than 50 employees to provide affordable health insurance or face steep penalties.
Then they should have lobbied for single payer when they had the chance.
Re:Pizza Prices Will Go Up Under Obamacare (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I'm willing to pay an extra 14 cents on a Papa John's pizza if it means the poor bastards preparing and delivering it have health insurance now. Hell, I thought it would be an extra dollar.
It's good to see your priorities are in order, though. Fuck everyone else's needs if they make the price of a pizza go up by less than fifteen cents.
Re:Pizza Prices Will Go Up Under Obamacare (Score:5, Informative)
No shit. I'm a Canadian. My wife was diagnosed with a tumor in her neck in February of 2006. In April she had her first surgery, which revealed it to be a thyroid tumor, and by June she had a total thyroidectomy.
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You mean, like, if an employer-provided insurance plan covers it?
There's quite a few million people out there who will have to, you know, get a job first before they can get that.
There's also that "employer-provided insurance plan" - fact is, most of them suck. Instead of my previous catastrophic plan that was dirt cheap ( > $100/mo plus $5k sitting around in the bank to cover the deductible)? The required changes my employer made will mean that my health insurance bill will now cost more per month than a car payment, and I'd still have to pay $3,500 out of pocket* before it actually kicked in and did anything.
So, thanks to the government, instead of my regular salary? I have to dock it by the annual insurance payments.
Way to reduce my fucking wages, Mr President. Anything else I can do to further your short-sighted partisan agenda?
* (That $3,500 becomes a $7,000 annual out-of-pocket max if I got stuck with using an out-of-network provider)
Believe it or not, once upon a time people had jobs. And the jobs frequently carried decent insurance.
But two things happened since 1980. First, jobs stopped being "permanent" and benefits went out the window. Secondly, medical rates skyrocketed because people didn't pay for health care, insurance did. Well, the second item I'm pretty sure predates 1980, actually.
That's where the whole deal from "Hilarycare" on down came in. If you can't keep a job, you get jacked around by the insurance. Worse, for those o
same NRA that does not pay drivers for use of car (Score:2)
same NRA that does not pay the full cost of drivers useing there car to be delivering pizza much less auto insurance to cover pizza delivery.
You can get hit by a pizza driver and there insurance may not pay out as they don't cover pizza delivery or only cover it at a much higher rate.
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Am I the only one who had to go back and read the thread to figure out why the National Rifle Association was allegedly not paying pizza delivery insurance?
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well that NRA should stand up for drivers who get fired for useing a gun to fend off robbers.
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I agree, it should be 100% mandated and tax paid healthcare like Canada.
Funny, how canada has great doctors and they all did not "flee" like some retards think will happen.
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I'm sorry. I didn't know I had to spell it out, but it was all during 2006. The order of events, as I recall it:
Winter 2005 - She started noticing some pain while eating sour foods and drinking things like wine. Our family doctor put her on antibiotics and sour candies (yup, that's right), thinking it was a blocked salivary gland.
Early 2006 - Problem still there, so doc sent her in for an ultrasound
Feburary 2006 - Off to a specialist, who initially thought salivary tumor, but sent her off for CAT scan. CAT
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Domestic water use is less than 1% of total water use in the US, so cutting down on your shower time will not have any measurable impact even if everybody did it. But, if it makes you feel better, go for it.
Re:speaking of which (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful when looking at stats for water usage.
A huuuuuge portion of "water used" is actually passed through power plants for cooling purposes and goes right back into [waterway].
Agriculture and industrial factories are by far the two biggest consumers of potable water.
And water used for domestic households is actually higher than ~1% when you add in the significant (>50%) losses in municipal plumbing.
/low flow toilets are usually a bad choice, because ancient sewer systems require minimum water volumes to move shit effectively.
Re:speaking of which (Score:4, Informative)
For those who are interested in the actual statistics, it would seem that you're using about ~.45 gallons per kwh of energy generated. So the amount of water required to generate the energy necessary for hot water use in a house per day is roughly 30 gallons.
Still highly insignificant compared to say, the water required to produce meat. As meat animals consume large quantities of food, and that food has to be irrigated. And the conversion of crop energy into beef is not very efficient.
Re:speaking of which (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, link to the PDF with the water per kwh generated statistic.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/33905.pdf [nrel.gov]
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good thing that code updates require me to purchase low flow showerheads.
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Sure that is great for you, but why punish those of us that live in places with plenty of ground water and hundreds of inches per year of rainfall.
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it sucked for me. It was very annoying as i was renovating and had a moving target on what was allowed to be put in that would pass inspection. There were many models for sale, but since I was going to be inspected, I was very restricted. Anyone can put any device in their own shower, but if you have anyone look for code they will enforce these new rules. I had the plumber come out to look at an issue about a year after the job was complete, and he told me as an aside that the flow would be too high again..
Re:speaking of which (Score:5, Interesting)
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It does not outstrip short term supply (the rate you can pump water out).
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So basically we're talking about Peak Water instead of Peak Oil..... the point where we use more of the substance than is being replaced (or discovered).
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That's not what Peak Oil means.
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Peak Oil means the human race is burning more of it, then is being "replaced" through new discoveries of underground reserves. In other words the oil inventory is shrinking.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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> We have deserts in America, we just don't live in them asshole!
Las Vegas is in a desert. They just put some water pipes there and started living there. In Brazil they have started to grow stuff in places where the soil is poisonous and where nothing grows. They simply investigated what makes the soil so bad and modified the soil to fix it.
On the other hand, people have cut down all trees on some areas and erosion has taken all the soil and places that were full of plants are now deserts. People have ha
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Please get therapy, you clearly need it.
Spot on. One of the first signs of insanity is discrimination.
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At 15 minutes.
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29 minutes.
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This makes no sense. Assuming that double the bacteria requires double the food, after 1 minute there is only 15 minutes worth of food left (minus whatever the bacteria ate during the one minute).
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I know lots of tech folks think we'll melt comets for water, but reality suggests otherwise. How many people are willing to give up the suburban dream of the house with a pool to help the species?
Yeah, because not filling a pool in surburban America will really help Africans grow crops.
Here's an idea: how about we grow things where there's enough water for agriculture?
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That's no surprise. Most water companies are actually government-owned, and the politicians don't want to raise the price on water to equal its true value. Just as they don't want to raise the gasoline tax in order to supply enough money to fix our crumbling bridges.
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Uh, they're both rivalrous (if I use the water, you can't) and excludable (you can be prevented from using the water). Not sure where you picked up the words around public goods, but it might be wise to re-read it for improved understanding. In fact, this is a textbook example of how pricing mechanisms work. Consider:
Assume that the market for water from the aquifer is unregulated. If the cost of extracting water is $x/unit, then the price will be $x + p% per unit, where p% is the profit. This results in
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BS. Let them drink Coca-cola
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Yup. I'm hoping for more water shortages... My acerage here in Michigan will go to the highest bidder. Hey rich man in California... want water and a lawn? 1/4 acre for only 600million. get it while it's hot!
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Ditto for me. I figure with the way things are going, scenic Cleveland, Ohio could become prime tropical coastline.
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A very, very smart move on their part.
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Screw that, the idiots in California can drink the ocean. Great lakes water belongs to the midwest.
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Im not sure if you're joking with this comment or not. I know that there is much debate currently going on regarding the great lakes, and how much water (both the USA and Canada) are entitled to take. Places like Las Vagas, who need far more water brought in than say a regular city thats not built in a dessert.
Water treatment is becomming a far more important industry than others, most people just haven't realized it yet.
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Because artificial scarcity can be turned into profit...
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Actually, a giant solar still floating out on the ocean should be pretty close to energy neutral, and if designed correctly, ignoring the initial construction costs, shouldn't cost any more to maintain than the pumps that oceanside communities already have to employ to bring water up from underground. Actually, if you design it right, it should be cheaper, because the water should flow downhill to a pump-assist station on the beach.
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LA should be on that list... trade in the prius move to somewhere sustainable.