I just realized something:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

With the growing global population, the biggest single issue facing societies is going to be drinking water relative to the number of humans and all other life on the planet. Even if greater populations are more sustainable in most ways, at a certain level if there's 75 million people on one island, the drinking water problem's going to be rising at some point given how little potable water there actually is on the planet. Green energy absolutely matters in the very long term, but enough water for everyone to drink on the planet's going to matter vastly more in the short term. So where are the people working to build a large number of effective desalinization plants, and why is the potential catastrophe of water wars generally under appreciated relative to everything else? Dihydrogen monoxide is perhaps the most crucial of all substances not just for humans but for everything else, too.

So why is everyone ignoring desalinization as one obvious solution that would at least contain and moderate this problem? Or is this going on and I haven't been paying attention to it?

Comments

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with the publication Foreign Affairs? Would you like a gift subscription for Christmas?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well, how about Renaissance Polyphony Today for me? :P

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Their centerfold for September was awesome.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Passacaglia Patty from Poughkeepsie, no doubt.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

lol!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

?

....

I don't get it.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Nothing to get. Do you read this publication> Would you like to?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure one or other of the Arab emirates gets almost 100% of its drinking water from desalinization.

FWIW.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I could see tiny, rich petro-dictatorships being able to make it feasible, not sure that'd translate into other states/societies.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

That is the same logic people used concerning computers back when mainframes were the size of a school bus.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

It's ok bro, the water isn't going anywhere. It's all still here, somewhere, in some form, except of course for any moisture and elemental content we've sent off into space or other planets.

What always struck me as weirdly disturbing is that the Space Age was the first time the Earth lost mass due to our activity. That's like, weird isn't it? Think about it. What happens to all the space probes? That's shit that is never coming back. For all the billions of years it was here, it is a net loss to the planet.

Doesn't matter, but still, just weird to think about.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

As for your question, yeah, people have been thinking about it for a while, notably the DoD has a whole report and policy outlook concerning water.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, space tends to return the favor by sending all sorts of debris back at us. ;-)

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

About 35000-78000 TONS of meteors hit the earth every year. Have we launched that much in the last fifty?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

You might be on to something here!

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

But we're still gaining weight every year due to solar dust settling down and meteor showers.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

So where are the people working to build a large number of effective desalinization plants,

Lots of places, including China (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/world/asia/china-takes-loss-to-get-ahead-in-desalination-industry.html?scp=2&sq=desalination&st=cse), apparently.

and why is the potential catastrophe of water wars generally under appreciated relative to everything else?

Because we're too busy viewing water wars through lobbyists' prisms (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2982730.stm) (the link is old, but the issue is ongoing).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'd wondered how much of this was simply my not having looked too much into who's doing things like this and why. ^.^

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

This isn't a new idea; people have been talking about water as the oil for a future generation (in terms of scarcity and importance). I think there's nothing being done right now because for the rich nations, it's not a big problem.

Beyond the technical problems of desalinization (energy cost, pollution...)

[lai-choi-san.livejournal.com]

It's a fact that you won't find much information on the matter in the daily press. It's also a fact that business groups are trying more and more to have control over water management.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

It has been said. The next world war will be fought over water. One example: Israel has been using water as a weapon in the West Bank - occupying the strategic Golan heights and redirecting rivers into their territory, and leaving the Palestinians to dry in the sun. And that's just one of many examples.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that also influenced one of the Israeli-Arab Wars when Israel was cutting off Jordan's water. But yes, that is just one of the examples.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Tampa Bay, Florida and ElPaso Texas are the two largest desalinization plants in the USA. I believe Walt Disney World Florida has the largest privately held desalinization operation in the USA, if not the world.

Wikipedia lists many of the Desalinization plants around the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination_plants)

The issue isn't a lack of water. It's the issue of turning non-potable water into potable... which takes energy. And tremendous amounts of energy at that. It's entirely possible to use solar energy to purify water, but it takes a tremendous amount of land for the process.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

For the life of me I don't know why the gov't hasn't built large reservoirs throughout flood plains and whenever the rain falls too hard, divert the water there for future use.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

They would be shallow, and you would lose most of the water to evaporation.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Desalinization is great, if you have some coastline. If you live in Chad, you're fucked (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6261447.stm).

"40 years ago, the lake was 25,000 sq km and the daily fish catch was some 230,000 tonnes; now it is 500 sq km with a catch of barely 50,000 tonnes."

Don't be led astray (or into a tizzy) by the climate change question at the end of that article.

"The lake's decline probably has nothing to do with global warming, report the two scientists, who based their findings on computer models and satellite imagery made available by NASA. They attribute the situation instead to human actions related to climate variation, compounded by the ever increasing demands of an expanding population. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/04/0426_lakechadshrinks.html)"

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

It's been discussed, extensively.

Most press have been quiet on this issue, I think, simply because they are silly. They go after the lowest-hanging fruit available, and there are so many tasty subjects just begging for first dibs.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Desalinisation uses enormous amounts of energy and creates horrific waste that creates deserts in the ocean. There's an easier alternative that is almost always rejected; water recycling. People can't handle the thought of drinking recycled pee, even though every time you drink something you're drinking some molecules that were once pee.