this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Have fun in the water wars, kids!
I can't remember where I first read it but I've agreed with it ever since: "My retirement plan is dying in the potable water riots."
The only time water will be a problem is when someone's using weapons to force others away from sources of it. In terms of desalinating water and delivering it to thirsty people, that's something the market is perfectly capable of attaining. It's always profitable to meet unmet basic needs so any water holes will be filled automatically. And that's in the worst case scenario, where people are just buying trucked in water. In most places there will be actual plumbing serving people.
Great. Thanks. Now I can't get the image of Kevin Costner pissing into a funnel out of my head.
Me either :-)
Where's the water going to go? It's in the water cycle, if anything is going to rain a lot more and a lot more violently, and in areas it shouldn't be raining.
If it's contaminated we should be fine collecting and stiling rain water.
"Water is a rare and precious resource" when not talking about habitats, is a silly hyper capitalist argument meant to stoke fear and panic purchases.
It is in the water cycle true, but where it is in that cycle and where it ends up are both critical to our long term industrial agricultural water use.
Our water (in the US) comes from aquifers and like the proverbial milk shake, we're drinking it all up and pouring it on alfalfa.
We need far far more water than collecting it from the rain would provide.
The coming water wars will be fought over the rights to the dwindling supplies...
Those Saudi Royal horses need to eat
A lot of water used in agriculture is actually from underground water sources that refill very slowly. Once we run out of those, many of the things we do can't work anymore.
About 10 years ago it didn't rain in Central California for 2 straight years. Imagine that, but with the ground water gone, and places water is traditionally piped from saying "no more". Millions of people would die.
When all the rain falls in the ocean, it's effectively gone.
Lmfao you really think the people with money won't take control of natural resources?
That's a pretty bad assumption considering they already have. Companies across the planet have already taken over most natural resources and will defend them with militaristic ways.
Water is already privatized in a lot of areas.
Just a heads up, but most states have laws that guard against rain water capture. For example Colorado only allows 2 barrels or 110 gallons per year!
https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/natural-resources/rainwater-collection-colorado-6-707/
Avg US citizen uses 100 gallons/day
https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/Departments-and-Agencies/DPH/dph/drinking_water/pdf/27icwaterfactspdf.pdf
The water goes into the ocean and then we cant drink it anymore, is that not obvious??
Wait, why can't we drink it anymore? Do you really think there's no way to purify and remove things like salt from water? Please tell me I missed the satire.
It's not that we can't remove the salt, it's that electrolysis to remove salt from the water is very expensive from an energy perspective, which makes it expensive from an economic perspective too. A massive spike in the price of water would cause a widespread crisis impacting every corner of the economy.
Also, building out the infrastructure required to do electrolysis on that scale would take a lot of time and resources on its own.
The word you are looking for is electrodialysis. And that's not the only method. Reverse osmosis, distillation and nanofiltration are other options. Also, you mention having to build out infrastructure. You must not be aware of the 16,000 desalination plants around the world already.