Beneath Africa, Survey Finds 'Huge' Water Reserves

gambit3 writes with this news, carried by the BBC: "Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface. Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water. Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated."

Comments

Oh no

[andrew3]

More resources means people will think they can make more people. Which, of course, will be worse in the long run since underground water never lasts forever, and it will be a larger population to starve.

What Africa needs is education, not more water to be exported to other countries.

Re:Oh no

[gweihir]

Indeed. As long as the people there do not understand what their problems are, they will not get out of their current situation. Education is the only way to achieve that. "Gifts" from the west only result in laziness, which is one primary enemy of education. Most people are only willing to learn if there is no alternative. Sad but true.

Re:Oh no

[unixisc]

I looked at the map. Most of the blue areas were areas that are actually desert - the vast areas of Egypt (west of the Nile), Algeria, Niger, Chad, Namibia and so on. Aside from Egypt, most of these countries have very small populations, so population is not the problem there. In any case, nothing to worry - most of these countries are not interested in the well being of their populations, and so one is unlikely to see an overpopulation problem suddenly hit the Sahara and the Namib deserts.

Re:Oh no

[zblack_eagle]

"Gifts" from the west only result in laziness

Also known economic circumstances as dumping. The local costs of production can't compete with 'free', and so local production is stymied by what is effectively first world governments subsidising domestic production.

And we get all indignant when China does things for "cheap".

Re:Oh no

[donscarletti]

Well, China is a big factor in Africa too, building roads and the like for free using Chinese labour and materials. It can be seen as dumping, but Africa still needs infrastructure.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymousslashdot]

More resources means people will think they can make more people.

Yeah ? Well, just look at them. They already can and do more people than they can possibly feed. It seems they don't need to think about it, they just do.

Re:Oh no

[outsider007]

You can't educate someone who's starving. Africa needs education but first it needs breakfast. And air conditioning.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't the least bit insightful. Just more lefty knee-jerk group-think.

The only force that stops excessive population growth without coercion, plague, warfare, famine or some other heinous calamity is material prosperity. This is why the fabulous wealth of the industrial west has caused population growth to achieve replacement, or actually decline. Material prosperity begins with abundant food, which requires water.

Education without prosperity is a fiction indulged by naive, wealthy westerners and practiced the world over by their pathologically ineffectual NGOs. Poor, cold, hungry, freighted people can not learn that which isn't experienced via Pavlovian feedback.

Re:Oh no

[sqrt(2)]

Africa has more than enough arable land and resources to feed itself solely with food produced from the continent. Their problems are political, and socioeconomic.

I don't have an answer to fix the problem, and I don't know enough about the situation and the history to give a very insightful explanation as to how it came about but it seems that the African people cannot govern themselves effectively. This goes back even to before Europeans arrived. They were subsistence farmers and hunter/gathers organized in tribal groups or regional empires that fought with their neighboring tribes when the Europeans came and that's mostly what they are still today. The only difference is that we provided them with terrible new weapons to kill each other much more effectively, and we established an amoral economic basis by which the most ruthless among them could gain much wealth and power by exploiting their kinsmen through cooperation with resource extracting imperialists.

I don't see a way out of this nightmare for them. Africa will remain mired in all of the worst aspects of humanity for the foreseeable future. Everything anyone does to try and help just addresses the symptoms, not the systemic problems which the West seems ill-equipped even to identify, much less remedy.

Re:Oh no

[greentshirt]

Gifts from the West? How are people so oblivious to recent history? Do yourself (and the world) a favour, go to a library and read.

Re:Oh no

[tsa]

Most people in Africa have enough to eat. Africa is an enormous continent with many different landscapes and people. What Africa needs is leaders who actually care for their people, so they can exploit the land better and be educated.

Re:Oh no

[gweihir]

Africa needs infrastructure built and maintained by locals. You can still find the ruins of plenty of bridges, roads, etc. built by the British, the French, etc. People only value infrastructure if they had to bleed themselves to build it.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Such arrogance. Such ignorance. Such laziness.

You just discredited yourself in a few words.

You give no argumentation why he is wrong.
You do not reply to anything he says.
Just personal insults...

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Gifts from the West?

How are people so oblivious to recent history?

Do yourself (and the world) a favour, go to a library and read.

i agree. do a search on the imf, ffs!

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

"More resources means people will think they can make more people. Which, of course, will be worse..."

By that logic it'd be best if there were no resources. If not, then what would be a realistic optimal amount of resources?

"What Africa needs is education, not more water to be exported to other countries."

Tell that to the other countries.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like Detroit or Haiti or... ah! never mind!

Re:Oh no

[benjfowler]

I've heard of stories where Chinese road-building companies would use local labour with picks and shovels to build roads during the day (to keep the local Big Men happy), and then send in Chinese workers with heavy earthmoving equipment to do the actual work.

Not training the locals was a deliberate strategy by the Chinese to prevent skilling up the local workforce and giving them ideas that they might be able to complete.

As always with the Chinese -- it's ALL about self-interest. The Han will always come first, and everyone else are racially inferior.

Re:Oh no

[ceoyoyo]

Scarce resources don't stop people from having kids. Rather the opposite is true for humans.

Africa needs education all right, but it also needs things like water, available food and security so the people who need the education are healthy enough and have time to get it.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the Chinese aren't as dumb as Westerners..... good on them!

Re:Oh no

[Chrisq]

Africa needs infrastructure built and maintained by locals. You can still find the ruins of plenty of bridges, roads, etc. built by the British, the French, etc. People only value infrastructure if they had to bleed themselves to build it.

Not necessarily true. I value a lot of roads that were built before I was born. I think that what is important is the expectation that people's work and taxes will have to maintain it. I could extend that to say that if someone built a road out of charity to a remote region this could be good for the locals, and if the expectation was that the new trade paid for the upkeep it would increase the economy.

Re:Oh no

[peragrin]

having driven around the USA that is far truer than you realize. even if their grandparents are the ones who built it.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Your last paragraph is a racist statement complaining about racism ... irony? contradiction? stupidity?

Re:Oh no

[Attila Dimedici]

Except that evidence shows that improving the economic situation of people reduces the rate at which they reproduce. The problem with the chart you linked to is that I am pretty sure that in those countries, those with more education are also more wealthy. I am not exactly sure why you think that anybody would pay to import water from Africa. The logic of this article is that countries in Africa that suffer from severe droughts and starvation as a result could improve their food supply by using water from their underground aquifers to irrigate their cropland. The idea being that if their food supply was more reliable and adequate for their population, the standard of living would rise.
Using the underground aquifers to irrigate farmland in these countries would not be a bad thing, if it actually results in a higher standard of living. As I said at the start, every study on the subject has shown that improving the standard of living of a country reduces the rate at which the population increases.

Re:Oh no

[turkeyfeathers]

Right. Send in the Jews!

Re:Oh no

[pnewhook]

Indeed. As long as the people there do not understand what their problems are, they will not get out of their current situation. Education is the only way to achieve that. "Gifts" from the west only result in laziness, which is one primary enemy of education. Most people are only willing to learn if there is no alternative. Sad but true.

Agreed. Which is why the ten poorest US states should lose all of their federal support money until every last citizen of appropriate age gets a high school diploma, and in science not religious dogma creationism. Too many rednecks running around in pickup trucks with guns breeding then getting welfare handouts.

Re:Oh no

[pnewhook]

You mean like what was done with most of the railroads in North America at the turn of the century - being build on the backs of Chinese laborers?

Re:Oh no

[Relayman]

And get addicted to Oxycodone. Driving around in pickup trucks with guns and breeding is painful.

Re:Oh no

[Nidi62]

Too many rednecks running around in pickup trucks with guns breeding then getting welfare handouts.

I drive a pickup and have several guns (4 atm, and will be getting several more in the next decade or so). I also have a Masters degree. Someone's choice in cars and their desire to exercise a Constitutional right does not have any bearing on their intelligence or economic situation.

Re:Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

I think you are confusing Africa with Asian countries like India and Bangladesh. They don't have the culture of huge families in most of Africa (except where there are large Asian populations).

They also understand the value of education. Most African children are actually desperate to go to school. Most is the non-energency charity is focused on building schools and giving children the opportunity to attend.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great theory and in some ways true.

What we tend to forget over here is that those countries have no welfare system and no social security. When you're too old to work your children are the ones to take care of you; it's their form of 401k. Now, if the chances of a child reaching an age where it can take care of you when you're old are only 20%, would you be willing to bet that 2 children is enough? Or would you hedge your chances?

It's a misconception that the poverty in Africa is caused by throngs of children. It's caused by us. The throngs of children are a result of that poverty.

Re:Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

Wow, and you are accusing /them/ of being racist.

My girlfriend is Chinese. Never been to the west, doesn't speak English, in every way a normal Chinese person. She and none of the other Chinese people I know think that way.

I would also point out that Western companies do the same thing when it profits them. Capitalism is amoral.

Re:Oh no

[couchslug]

"What Africa needs is leaders who actually care for their people, so they can exploit the land better and be educated."

Which African cultures tend to produce such leaders? It's a diverse continent.

Re:Oh no

[AmberBlackCat]

More resources means people will think they can make more people. Which, of course, will be worse in the long run since underground water never lasts forever, and it will be a larger population to starve.

What Africa needs is education, not more water to be exported to other countries.

I personally think it's a bit inconsiderate to basically say there should be less Africans. The number of Africans in existance is not the root cause of their problem. My first thought was "what non-African nation is going to lay claim to this water supply while Africans continue to die?"

Re:Oh no

[AmberBlackCat]

At this point, you guys are just circle-jerking. One bashes Africa and gets a +5, then another replies and bashes Africa getting a +5 repeatedly. I personally think Africa's problem has been nations repeatedly coming in with devastating weapons and laying claim to its resources. And when the people try to take it back they are faced with guns. And the people who took their resources will justify this by identifying one African as the representative of them all who, has agreed to sign everything over even though nobody else accepts this person as their leader. Kind of like when a law gets passed in the United States that nobody wants.

Re:Oh no

[AmberBlackCat]

Most people in Africa have enough to eat. Africa is an enormous continent with many different landscapes and people. What Africa needs is leaders who actually care for their people, so they can exploit the land better and be educated.

It's not that Africans can't pick the right leaders. It's that the people draining African resources will kill any African who tries to take the place of the leaders they've chosen for Africa.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States became prosperous when the British came in with devastating weapons and laid claim to its resources. So did Australia and Canada. Why didn't the same work for Africa?

Re:Oh no

[jbengt]

More resources means people will think they can make more people.

Actually, the opposite effect has been observed in real life. When people obtain (relative) wealth, and mortality (especially infant mortality) rates drop, the birth rate drops within a generation or two.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

^
|
|
|  This!

Re:Oh no

[AmberBlackCat]

The United States became prosperous when the British came in with devastating weapons and laid claim to its resources. So did Australia and Canada. Why didn't the same work for Africa?

That might work, but you probably should have included a comment about Africans not being smart, to ensure that you get your +5.

Re:Oh no

[outsider007]

The vast majority of Africans struggle with basic malnutrition. Enough to eat? Perhaps but try feeding your kids 1000 calories of rice a day and see how they perform in school.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent and Grandparent are wrong. Deadly wrong.

First, one of the biggest barriers to education is first having sustenance. You're not going to read a book if you're desperately hungry or if you have to spend all day plowing your cabbage field to survive. It's just not going to happen. It's no coincidence that the US and Europe didn't enact child labor laws and establish public schools until just after the industrial revolution.

Second, education is NOT the biggest reducer of fecundity: affluence or medicine is. When 1 in 3 children survive to reproduce, you're going to have at least 3 kids to make sure you have one that survives, resources be damned. When 9 out of 10 survive, you'll have many fewer, regardless of your education or affluence.

(This isn't to say that education isn't an important part of both the development of society, personal affluence, or lowering the birth rate. But to say that we should starve them til they're smart is not only inhumane, it' counterproductive.)

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

>Capitalism is amoral
As is government.

Re:Oh no

[Surt]

Reality? Fact?

Re:Oh no

[Nidi62]

Do you believe in creationism? And why have a gun anyway? - arguing that its a constitutional right is a fallacy.

No, I don't. And how is it a fallacy arguing that gun ownership is a constitutional right? It's expressly written. Or are you trying to say that it only applies to militias? You do realize that militias are citizens called up to fight in a local battle ARMED WITH THEIR OWN WEAPONS. And the fact that the writers of the Constitution made it the second amendment, and not the 10th, shows that they valued personal gun ownership just below the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly.

Re:Oh no

[JoeMerchant]

Florida was sitting on a vast, untapped groundwater reserve 100 years ago.

50 years ago it was starting to get tapped.

50 years from now, if usage trends don't change, Florida will need high powered desalination plants just to provide potable water to the populace, agriculture will be dead, and the whole place will bear more than a passing resemblance to the deserts of the Middle East.

It took mankind a couple of millennia to turn the fertile crescent into a wasteland, thanks to fossil fuels, we can lay waste to fertile land much faster now.

Re:Oh no

[gweihir]

Rather obviously, I was talking about groups of people, not individuals...

Re:Oh no

[guanxi]

Reality? Fact?

Random unsupported speculation and fabrication?

Re:Oh no

[guanxi]

Wow, and you are accusing /them/ of being racist.

My girlfriend is Chinese. Never been to the west, doesn't speak English, in every way a normal Chinese person. She and none of the other Chinese people I know think that way.

I would also point out that Western companies do the same thing when it profits them. Capitalism is amoral.

I suspect that the proportion of racist people in China isn't much different than other people in the same circumstances, and that making a generalization about people in China is as silly as making one about any large group of people.

Re:Oh no

[ColdWetDog]

I looked at the map. Most of the blue areas were areas that are actually desert.

Now doesn't that make the answer obvious?

Sandworms.

Re:Oh no

[gweihir]

In Europe, the Prussians enacted child labor laws, because the recruits were sickly and weak after working in the mines. They established public schools because the recruits could not read the service regulations. Those are the guys that managed to get incredible firing rates out of smooth-bore front-loaders using normal infantrymen and incredible levels of discipline. They also were the first to have child-protection and schools for everybody.

I doubt that the situation in Africa can be compared in any way. First, weapons have been engineered to the point that even an idiot can use them successfully. Second, in those areas where there are conflicts between nations, education is present, albeit typically strongly contaminated with religion. The Prussians were not really big on religion.

So, no, Africa is not going to follow the western model.

Incidentally, you reasoning is flawed: Affluence and medicine depend on education and infrastructure, which in turn depends on education, a strong will to improve things and education. It all comes down to understand what the problem is and what can be done about it. The argument about their resources being stolen by the west is untrue. Their resources are universally stolen by their corrupt politicians and given to the west to buy weapons and luxuries. And for that, the only way is revolution. Look at Europe (again), democracy and more equal distribution of wealth results from enough people having enough of it after they had, guess what, the education to understand were the problem was. Without paying a high price in blood, you cannot establish a fair system. In particular the price has to be paid by the people there, otherwise they will not value what they have accomplished (as a group).

So, yes, it all boils down to education and that is the only thing the west should offer. Sending food or medicine is deadly. Building infrastructure for them is also deadly. Not immediately, but a bit later, since it will remove all motivation for the change in mind-set, that is the only thing that can really solve the problems.

Re:Oh no

[canadian_right]

The best thing the USA and Europe could do for the world's poor is end their farmers subsidies. It's hard to compete with products produced with vast subsidies.

Re:Oh no

[canadian_right]

Most of Africa's current problems are due to very bad government. When your country is run by an immoral, thieving, crazy, gangster, the general population is unlikely to succeed. It is time to stop blaming the very real ills of colonization on the today's issues. There are successful nations in Africa and they all have competent to very good governments,and rule of law.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

The writers of the constitution didn't value gun ownership; they valued militias (otherwise the second amendment wouldn't have been so specific).

Since militias are not required now and not used by the government, neither is the automatic right to gun ownership. The constitution quite clearly states that.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

did the native americans become prosperous ? or the aborigines ?

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, just like in Germany during the glory day s of Hitler, huh? The Chinese (and Japanese for that matter) talk about "white devils" far more than we talk about Yellow Demons...or whatever.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

You ignorant idiot, America's native population was eliminated by those devastating weapons. 20th century world politics prevented Western nations from doing the same with Africa - imagine if events followed your analogy and Africa was settled predominantly by white Caucasian / Anglo-Saxon populations. Then Africa would be a land of whites with Mormons in the African Bible Belt.

How can you not think your own analogy through?

I get it - Americans like you have just forgotten the massacred native populace. Completely. It's a burden of huge guilt that wont go away from your nation easily.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

That may have once been true - and certainly its heritage as the "dark continent" harkens back to the colonial era - but Africa is largely in charge of its own destiny now. Several countries in Africa have extremely rich natural resources - notably, oil - and have become extremely wealthy as a result. The problem of course is that that wealth is confided to a very, very small group of extremely immoral and corrupt people while almost everyone else lives in grinding poverty. Many other nations have pretty rich mineral resources and may have the potential to have a strong agricultural base, but most are caught up in civil wars and the travails of despotic leaders who are killing off big chunks of people. Then there's AIDS, which is also devastating the continent as a whole. There's also the ever-growing influence of Islam, which Churchill rightfully called "the most retrograde force in the world." There are deep, painful, systemic issues with most African nations, none of which will be solved easily or quickly. But, regardless, those solutions must come from Africa. Read Teju Cole's brilliant essay "White Savior Industrial Complex" on what the problem is with Western attempts at helping Africa.

Re:Oh no

[HornWumpus]

Except there are more native Americans alive now then when Columbus landed.

It seams our gifts of germ theory, steel etc are worth more, in the long run, then our gifts of smallpox, whiskey, bullets etc.

Re:Oh no

[HornWumpus]

You don't understand. You should STFU and stop embarrassing yourself. You also can't read.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

the concept of leaders is wrong. its the reason why humans havent changed much for all of recorded history.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

na na na na na na LEADER!!!!!

hah captcha is advising!

I be advising you to take your leaders and shove it!

Re:Oh no

[JosephTX]

Bullshit. The reason the roads built by European countries grew dilapidated was because they were useless for the locals' travel and commerce. When European powers colonized Africa, they just build roads leading straight from villages to port towns, paying more for goods than the locals could and consequently pretty much killing all trade between villages. The roads they built were generally in tropical areas where the cement couldn't dry before getting doused in rain, and the undergrowth constantly damaged what the rain hadn't. So even if the roads that Europeans built were useful in any way for the Africans themselves, they still wouldn't have lasted until the present day.

China's intentions are probably no better, for that matter.

Re:Oh no

[JosephTX]

Lots of those groups of people building roads nowadays aren't American citizens. So which roads do you choose to value?

Re:Oh no

[tomhath]

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is hard for you to understand.

Re:Oh no

[supercrisp]

There's a big difference between consumer goods, durable goods and infrastructure. As a side note to that, the provision of tube wells in the Sahel only led to increased desertification. So it wouldn't be much of a "gift" anyway.

Re:Oh no

[supercrisp]

The USA got really lucky. In part because the continent is so damned big. In part: big thank you to to a little guy named Napoleon. And to the folks who led the Haiti rebellion and got us the Louisiana Purchase at a bargain basement price. Also a shout-out to a bumbling Parliament working at cross-purposes because it had other/bigger fish to fry (such as electoral politics). And of course, a big big up to our original black founding fathers who got the "opportunity" because of an odd philosophical perversion to work for free to build this great nation. Now, people in Africa facing modern innovations like radio, barbed wire, and machine guns, well, the situation they faced was very, very different. Colonialism changed a lot as warfare grew increasingly asymmetrical. I know this will draw a lot of hate. But read about, just for one example, the Belgian Congo. Or check out the impact of the Cold War across Africa. And check the racist white man's burden bullshit at the door of the library.

Re:Oh no

[The Terminator]

The argument, to bear a gun because the constitution grants the right to do so is the fallacy. This is no logical reason.
If you had said, that you feel endangered and want to be able to protect yourself or you want to hunt game, that would be reasons.

To have received a right is no reason to execute it.

Re:Oh no

[GLMDesigns]

So, you don't feel you have the right to self-defense? You think that only the government can act in your behalf? A gun is a tool. No more, no less. If you don't have a need for a chainsaw don't buy one. If you don't need a hammer don't buy one.

Re:Oh no

[argStyopa]

The "colonialism" excuse has just about run its course, I think.

It's like blaming your parents for you being neurotic at 20 might be credible. At 45, not so much: you've had plenty of time to straighten your own shit out, so stop blaming mom and dad.

I'll be the first to point out that colonial powers did heinous things in Africa.
I'll also be one of the only ones pointing out that they likewise brought those countries into the modern era (not for altruistic reasons, except perhaps some missionaries) with things like literacy, currency, commerce, education, and government.

It's really been at least 40, and in many cases 60-70 years since the colonial powers abandoned their mandates (often in a chaotic, and damage-causing departure, to be honest) but one can't point to Robert Mugabe and blame his idiocy primarily on anyone but the African people.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

You ignorant idiot, America's native population was eliminated by those devastating weapons. 20th century world politics prevented Western nations from doing the same with Africa

More's the pity...

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Indians didn't get rich from it. Neither did the Aborigines.

Re:Oh no

[hairyfeet]

But what everyone seems to be forgetting is there are several resources there that are quite valuable to whomever controls them so like it or not somebody is gonna step in and try to control the region and the easiest way to do that is bribes of whatever they desire or require. its like that old George Carlin bit about how those in power don't want a populace smart enough to question, just smart enough to work and let's face it your population can be pretty fucking stupid and still work in a mine.

While I agree 100% that education is the answer its gonna be damned hard to push that agenda when there are several superpowers that want those resources. lets be honest folks, all the resources that were easy to get to, the "low hanging fruit" as it were? just about gone. Africa was ignored for the most part simply because it was a war torn disease ridden mess and there were easier sources of materials to acquire but those days are over and as we have seen with all the moves by China in that region in the last few years the superpowers are waking up to the fact that Africa has been largely untapped. As much as i'd like to think we'd help our fellow man several thousand years of history tells me more likely we'll just exploit the hell out of the place until there is nothing left to exploit and if we can keep them in line with a few trinkets or bags of rice? Well then that's what will happen.

Re:Oh no

[mrmeval]

Because British citizens in America had been raised with the idea of a nation state and had seen the laws work well and appreciated the organized structure. It in essence is a habit and when the British monarchy damaged their relationship with them they revolted turning to a different system. A minority of learned malcontents for a different system of government promoted it and it was agreed to.

It seems to happen quite often but it's outcome is by no means a positive thing.

In Africa...well there's a thesis in there or three.

Re:Oh no

[DNS-and-BIND]

People who state that it's okay to hold a racial preference in dating are often unaware of the racist structure their preference is based on; that white media has done a great disservice to Asian men; that there are more tools to articulate white masculinity than there are to articulate Asian masculinity; that some of the most disparaging remarks about Asian men come from Asian women themselves, and are often based on nothing but bad stereotypes; that the world being what it is, an Asian woman simply walking down the street with a Caucasian boyfriend can send a negative message about Asian men.

Re:Oh no

[oatworm]

The issue with "free" infrastructure isn't moral hazard. It's expertise and cost. If nobody around knows how to maintain a road, it won't be maintained, regardless of short-term economic benefit. Similarly, if the road or bridge doesn't bring enough benefit to the local economy to pay for maintenance, it won't happen.

This is the real problem with dumping and helicopter development (i.e. flying foreign engineers and crews in to build something, then going home) - the economic incentives from this behavior perversely guarantee that locals will never pick up the experience and expertise required to maintain their economies. That's great if you're a multinational resource extraction company looking for cheap, desperate labor willing to work in mideaval conditions. It's less great if you're a local trying to build a better life for yourself or your family.

Re:Oh no

[cmarkn]

No, it's the exact opposite of that. The railroads were built by American management and treasure and engineering, with newly migrated Irish and Chinese laborers. The result was a core of experienced leaders ready to leverage the new transportation with the industrial revolution and the expansion of the US economy into the powerhouse that won the World Wars. The Chinese building infrastructure in Africa use Chinese management and treasure and engineering, which produces experienced leaders they can take home to expand their own economy, leaving behind a shell of local laborers with few useful skills for leveraging their new infrastructure.

Re:Oh no

[guanxi]

Where did all these bigoted AC's come from? Will someone explain?

Re:Oh no

[NFN_NLN]

Except there are more native Americans alive now then when Columbus landed.

It seams our gifts of germ theory, steel etc are worth more, in the long run, then our gifts of smallpox, whiskey, bullets etc.

Is this true? If so, it is an interesting fact. Can you provide a link to the numbers...

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you mean like an African who's administration has had to plea the 5th in cases like Fast and Furious, and a GSA spending spree? An African who's law enforcement refuses to prosecute voter intimidation? It seems Americans too can't pick leaders. Dunno, maybe it isn't that they can't pick, perhaps it is the shitty choices they are given?? :-/

Re:Oh no

[pnewhook]

Sure I can buy a chainsaw, but do I really need 50 different chainsaws??? give me a break!!

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of resources in Africa, its a massive landmass. It seems like even when they start out good, eventually the leaders turn corrupt. Where do these exploited resources end up ? America, Europe, Middle East, and Asia . People naturally want to point figures but everyone has a hand in this.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

There are successful nations in Africa and they all have competent to very good governments,and rule of law.

Which nations would those be, exactly? (I'm not trying to be a smartass, it's just that I am having trouble thinking of a single example.)

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

And oddly enough, those are the governments that the CIA has been actively seeking to destabilize and overthrow on the grounds that "they must be commies", installing corrupt dictators instead.

I mean, seriously. Some of them have SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE!! and actually like REGULATIONS!!

USA!! USA!! USA!!

AC

Re:Oh no

[khallow]

Education is the only way to achieve that.

Don't fall into the trap of confusing education (which can be thought of as knowledge infrastructure) with more general infrastructure. There are many countries out there that are so dysfunctional that transporting a person from there to the developed world, even if that person doesn't know the language or culture of the destination, increases the value of the person considerably, perhaps by tenfold in the extreme cases such as say, Somalia or Bangladesh to the US or Norway.

What makes people valuable is not just what they know, but also the whole of the infrastructure that they can use. I speak not just of the physical infrastructure such as communication and transportation infrastructure or knowledge infrastructure such as public schools and colleges, but also legal, cultural, economical, and political infrastructure.

Re:Oh no

[LynnwoodRooster]

The argument, to bear a gun because the constitution grants the right to do so is the fallacy. This is no logical reason.

There is no logical reason for the 3rd Amendment; after all, we have military bases and the like. Let's just toss that one away as well, shall we?

Now how about the 5th Amendment? After all, there's no logical reason to protect yourself unless you've done something wrong, so only those who are evil-doers will need to claim the 5th Amendment.

And might as well tack on the 4th, since again there's no logical reason to be protected from the Government's interests unless you're up to something nefarious and need to hide stuff. So let's give that one up too... I mean, to have received a right is no reason to execute it...

Re:Oh no

[Pros_n_Cons]

Education is the only way to achieve that. "Gifts" from the west only result in laziness, which is one primary enemy of education.

Lately I'm thinking education is the primary enemy of education. All these "educated" people are the ones telling us to spread the wealth (give away to the less fortunate) and encourage laziness here in the US. But when we do it in Africa and hurt their economy its not cool. well wtf do the socialists think will happen everywhere else you introduce free chit? We are so superior to africans that we will continue to work? That we will go out and buy steak when everyday is all you can eat pizza and pepsi? I will take a 100k student loan for a job with a standard of living that is barely above my cousin who has cable, 4 year old car, ps3, decent apt, cell phone, tv. we basically have the same stuff cept my two bedroom is a house, not an apt. Hardly worth 4 years of my life and debt. and they haven't even begun to screw with socialism the way they plan to soon as we get used to it.

I'm sure folks will point out im not as educated as them and just dont understand but i understand I work all day while he's at home downloading movies on the pirate bay so the kids can watch something new. I'm starting to want that life. I want to go fishing and never miss an episode of... anything too!

Re:Oh no

[repapetilto]

Robert Mugabe. Perhaps it is too early to abandon the colonialism excuse.

Re:Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

It's an easy troll for them.

Re:Oh no

[danlip]

There is a wide range of guesses on the numbers and no general consensus. Diseases may have wiped out up to 90% of the population long before Europeans started deliberately killing them, in fact long before Europeans had even visited most parts of the Americas, so Europeans found a mostly empty continent. But that doesn't mean it was always that way.

Re:Oh no

[GLMDesigns]

I thought the discussion was about the need, or utility, of owning guns. I think there is: among them self-defense, target shooting and hunting.

I'm not a hunter and don't own any guns - but I can easily see how someone can have many guns. I'm not a professional carpenter and I have many saws: sheetrock, keyhole, hacksaws, coping saws, rip saws. Some I have in different lengths and teeth size. I'm certain that gun owners have different guns for target shooting, hunting and self-defense. There are also different quality guns. One may not be able to afford a "Super-Duper XYZ gun" while going to college but purchase one 15 years later.

Having a gun is no more a sign of low intelligence and low education that having a motorcycle or a row boat.

Re:Oh no

[Seraphim_72]

There is no "dumb as a bag of hammers" mod so must I reply instead.

You are as dumb as a bag of hammers.

"It's like blaming your parents for you being neurotic at 20 might be credible. At 45, not so much: you've had plenty of time to straighten your own shit out, so stop blaming mom and dad."

Sure if you are talking about jaywalking or angst about spiders but have you honestly never met anyone that has undergone real abuse? As in Dad beat the fuck out of me every night just because he could? Do you understand the cycle of abuse at all and the way it becomes multi-generational? Imagine that on an entire public scale.

"I'll also be one of the only ones pointing out that they likewise brought those countries into the modern era (not for altruistic reasons, except perhaps some missionaries) with things like literacy, currency, commerce, education, and government."

*Fuck that*, they didn't ask for it. How about I show up out of nowhere to your town and bring you things like literacy(Korean), Currency(the Won), Commerce(The State owns everything), Education(Dear Leader, who invented history itself just died, on your knees and weep), Government(On your knees and pray to Dear Leader)

"It's really been at least 40, and in many cases 60-70 years since the colonial powers abandoned their mandates (often in a chaotic, and damage-causing departure, to be honest) but one can't point to Robert Mugabe and blame his idiocy primarily on anyone but the African people."

Yeah and it has been 150+ since the US civil war and we *still* can't get civil rights working properly here and you expect them to do better? Compared to the plight of the American Indian, the Africans got horribly screwed. I suggest you read up on it. Your "Man Up" speech here though sounds more like "Sure she was raped, she needs to get over it already"

Re:Oh no

[HornWumpus]

Indians had at best (in one small part of S. America) bronze age technology (Not copper and tin, copper and arsenic, not that it matters.)

Assumed huge native populations are based on wishful thinking and crack smoking. Hunter gatherers with no medicine beyond shamans didn't live long or have many surviving children.

Granting most modern 'natives' are just enough native to qualify for the handouts.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand how concrete works. It will cure under water. It's mainly kept dry after pouring to preserve the surface finish.

Re:Oh no

[Zanadou]

Reality? Fact?

http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal

Re:Oh no

[Zanadou]

Wow, and you are accusing /them/ of being racist.

My girlfriend is Chinese. Never been to the west, doesn't speak English, in every way a normal Chinese person. She and none of the other Chinese people I know think that way.

http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus christ man, way to write off an entire continent.

"They were subsistence farmers and hunter/gathers organized in tribal groups or regional empires that fought with their neighboring tribes "

africa was (and is ) more more than just that. there were scholars and creators and artists as well. see "timbuktu" , or "the libraries of great zimbabwe". i mean , what was medieval europe (or asia for that matter) but "subsistence farmers and hunter/gathers and warring regional empires"?

Re:Oh no

[gweihir]

Well, I think you problem is not education, but the broken US system. (There are no student loans in Europe. Well, there are but they are for covering living expenses. And you can do without them if you work. In addition, your parents typically have to finance your first education and if they cannot, then you get some money from the sate. This tends to make the decision to go to university more a question of interests and talents and less one of money.) Making education hugely expensive is a sure way to prevent smart people from going into that trap, or, as you are finding out, recognizing the problem later. The true problem is that education is not only necessary for a decent income (well), but also is the key to understanding how things work and voting and influencing people accordingly. Driving education down is hence a sure way to drive civilization back. Not good.

It is also a FINITE supply.

[WolphFang]

It is also a FINITE supply.... not a true fix for water shortage problem long-term...

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[Intropy]

Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever. It gets consumed, evaporates, and then it never rains again.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[KiloByte]

It rains into the oceans (mostly), and will evaporate back at the same rate it does currently. All you do is to slightly increase an already huge buffer.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be a huge buffer but go figure out how much current desalination technology costs and come back tell me about shipping it to iowa and texas when the underground resevoirs go dry.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[KiloByte]

Uhm, you want desalinate enough to dry out the oceans? Now you're thinking big.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aquifer based water utilization is exploitation of non-renewable resource. Many water-based industries like agriculture and softdrinks are insensitive about it.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[Anonymous Coward]

To clarify, this is enough water to cover the entire continent of Africa to a depth of 15-60 meters (~45-180 feet).

While it is still finite, pumping anything like that much water will probably fundamentally change the environment. It would almost certainly transform the area to a wetter cycle which would still be finite in the sense that everything ends eventually.

Now most of it is probably inaccessible with current technology at reasonable cost and what is available will be wasted but the fact is that it could probably solve one major problem for Africa for long enough to remove one excuse for not concentrating on elimination of corruption.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[Guppy]

Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.

If I cut your comment short, it's exactly correct. Much of if appears to be Fossil Water, which is non-renewable, being a geological legacy much like oil.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[DadLeopard]

Might be enough for a re-forestation project large enough to flip the climate back to Savannah, that is if they could keep them from using the trees for firewood and the goats from eating the bark long enough for it to have an effect!

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[WolphFang]

Past reforestation projects there haved failed. They kill the trees, (intentionally dig them up), because they are convinced it has to be that way for the goats.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[tomhath]

There are storage, distribution, and sanitation problems in Africa. But overall the continent has plenty of precipitation. Water and food shortages are weapons of mass destruction used in genocides. In this case you should focus on the disease rather than the symptom.

Re:It is also a FINITE supply.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend you read up on the Great Artesian Basin in Australia. Its water levels have been steadily declining since humans first began tapping into it.

So how long will it last?

[SuricouRaven]

I don't care how much good that water might do today: I want to know how long it'll last if a billion people start sucking it up. Aquifers replenish, but only very slowly. Even the scientists behind the research are stressing that industrial-scale drilling will exaust the supply eventually.

Re:So how long will it last?

[mysidia]

Even the scientists behind the research are stressing that industrial-scale drilling will exaust the supply eventually.

Presumably it will last a long time, if they make sure to tightly regulate any tapping of industrial scale quantities, ensure that the amount of water drawn out is less than the local replenishment rate, and ensure that players are treated fairly, no one entity is allowed to hog the resource, and any entity that does tap the resource pays a quantity-dependant price for doing so, to discourage waste.

There's no inherent reason that industrial-scale drilling has to be allowed to exhaust the supply

Re:So how long will it last?

[Surt]

It actually doesn't matter much. If it lasts as little as 20 years, the consequent industrialization and improvement to the standard of living will make desalinization an affordable replacement.

Re:So how long will it last?

[bryan1945]

""Even in the lowest storage aquifers in semi arid areas with currently very little rainfall, ground water is indicated to have a residence time in the ground of 20 to 70 years." Dr Bonsor said."
That was the only bit I saw that had any time period, and I'm not sure exactly would that means. The scientists are strongly suggesting smaller-scale bores, but we all know that none of the governments will listen. Even the US mid-west aquifier (sorry, forget its name) keeps dropping, and that area gets a ton more rain than Africa.

Re:So how long will it last?

[symbolset]

Yeah, I haven't ever been to Africa either.

Re:So how long will it last?

[macraig]

I doubt if very many of the people suffering from continual Guinea worms they ingest from contaminated surface water would share your worry. They're too busy trying to yank two-foot-long spaghetti aliens out of their arms, legs, feet, and abdomens. Having a guaranteed uncontaminated water source from a gigantic aquifer would end their daily war against the alien invasion.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Nursie]

There's no inherent reason that industrial-scale drilling has to be allowed to exhaust the supply

Pffft. Silly rabbit. The inherent reason is humans. Someone with an interest in industrial scale wasting of water will pay the right people just enough to get them out of the way, and start depleting it as fast as they can, for as much or as little profit as they can make from it.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Grayhand]

The point though is legitimate because the population has exploded with most people living not much different than they did a hundred years ago. Everyone shares this naive belief that all we need to do is feed the hungry people. Feeding them without education gives you two hungry people instead of one. Every documentary I've ever seen showing starving single mothers in Africa they ask how many kids they have and it turns out they are trying to raise 6 or 8 kids on $2 or less a day. It's impossible so most starve. The only sure cure for out of control fertility rates is education and improved lifestyles. Where are the lowest fertility rates in the world? Japan, the US and most of Europe where they have strong economies. The exception being religious groups that insist the members have as many kids as possible. Conditions weren't that different in this country a 100+ years ago except we had the resources to feed them. Send them drills and water pumps as well as condoms and tell the Pope to go fuck himself since they aren't willing to help feed the people his and the church's policies help create. If we've been exceeding the Earth's resources since the early 80s every one born since then will eventually have to find some place else to live. It's not opinion if the numbers are right it's a fact. The only real solution in the long run is that there are fewer people using the resources. If we don't fix the problem nature will do it herself. Fewer kids born or mass starvation, which is crueler?

Re:So how long will it last?

[donscarletti]

Guinea worm is looking like it is on the verge of eradication thanks to a concentrated effort over the last 10 years, a 99% reduction over the last 25 years. This is through basic sanitation and proper treatment procedure with none of this no-holds-barred short term thinking you are proposing.

It just awaits the opening of certain war-torn areas to health workers, then it will be gone for good. Proposing to deplete a valuable resource in its name just makes you sound impetuous and stupid.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Anonymousslashdot]

Well, in case they develop an advanced civilization from the abundance of healthy drinking water, they can build pipelines...

Re:So how long will it last?

[Stephan Schulz]

Presumably it will last a long time, if they make sure to tightly regulate any tapping of industrial scale quantities, ensure that the amount of water drawn out is less than the local replenishment rate, and ensure that players are treated fairly, no one entity is allowed to hog the resource, and any entity that does tap the resource pays a quantity-dependant price for doing so, to discourage waste.

There's no inherent reason that industrial-scale drilling has to be allowed to exhaust the supply

Because this works so well for aquifers in modern, developed, industrial countries where the aquifer is fully within the borders of the only country using it? See e.g. the Ogallala Aquifer.

Re:So how long will it last?

[DNS-and-BIND]

I love it. Some good news for Africa at last, and all you can think of is "they need fewer people". First world good, Africa bad. Ever consider the implied racism in this thinking?

Re:So how long will it last?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it. Some good news for Africa at last, and all you can think of is "they need fewer people". First world good, Africa bad. Ever consider the implied racism in this thinking?

The only racism here is your post. The only person saying first world vs. africa is you. The only person incapable of seeing that this is a double-edged sword... is you.

Re:So how long will it last?

[tomhath]

Unfortunately a good source of water would be just one more thing for the warlords to fight over. Check out what's going on in Sudan this week if you don't understand. The Darfur genocide wasn't a natural catastrophe.

Re:So how long will it last?

[SuricouRaven]

I see no racism. At worst, he might be insulting cultures that encourage unsupportably large families... but that is truely something worth insulting.

Re:So how long will it last?

[SuricouRaven]

That's all very well, but what about here in the real world?

Re:So how long will it last?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Except that most of the food aid which exacerbates the problem comes from western governments, and most of the teachers are coming from religious charities.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Surt]

Well, I haven't been there in more than a decade, but all the maps clearly still show it surrounded by ocean. I guess I just have an excessive trust of cartographers.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even realize how big Africa is? You can fit the entire area of USA and Europe (as defined by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe ) in Africa and still have space left over. Go use a _globe_ sometime. Or look at the numbers.

The USA is rich, has some desert areas but those still aren't using desalination for water.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Surt]

Because those areas have cheaper sources of water.

Re:So how long will it last?

[Afty0r]

You could ask the same about the US - in many areas of the US aquifers are being drained far, far faster than they are being replenished...

Re:So how long will it last?

[Anonymous Coward]

so what do you suggest, that first-world (white) people should have less babies and then import mass amounts of third-world (non-white) people to mooch off the welfare state? Do you think that perhaps some people might not want their civilization replaced because some people who don't know how to use condoms? Oh, but opposing genocide of white people through immigration and forced integration would be racist.

Re:So how long will it last?

[symbolset]

This post is now long forgotten but my point was that your post ignores certain elements of doing thing in Africa - most especially the social issues. The social issues must be overcome before your hopeful rhetoric becomes possible.

Great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When do we get to play "colonize" again?

Re:Great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

well the original is abandonware and there was a rerelease using firaxis' civ 4 engine.

Re:Great!!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I'm sorry, Sir, but we are still not quite finished with the first round yet. You will just have wait for that to end, before we start the next round. House rules, Sir.

Re:Great!!

[turkeyfeathers]

Shortly after they discover the oil reservoir that's laying just next to the aquifer.

Re:Great!!

[TheRaven64]

We gave up on that game when we discovered that we didn't actually need lots of peasants. Now we just install corrupt governments and bribe them to let us take all of the natural resources. It's much cheaper and doesn't leave us with embarrassing colonies that we need to maintain.

May be like oil

[Anonymous Coward]

In principle it's a renewable resource, but it renews so slowly that it is non-renewable for all practical purposes. In Africa, deep wells have run dry because the water table has fallen after heavy use. Not a big surprise: Where is the replenishment supposed to come from?

Irrigation in areas with extreme sunlight is also going to create problems with mineral deposits ("salted earth").

great idea

[slashmydots]

So not only do they continue to attempt to live in a place that doesn't support human life but now they might screw with a water supply that's millions of years old. That sounds like a good idea.

Don't do what we did

[girlintraining]

Although I'm sure many will say this is inhumane, I suggest that this survey quietly disappear. Many of the United States' agricultural land is in danger of turning to dust due to several factors. Part of it is the poor use of land; Overuse of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, genetically engineered crops (the crops are not the problem, the business practices of companies like Monsanto are), and the loss of top soil due to erosion are just some of the problems. We have several states that are largely desert right now (the "dust bowl" was a ecological disaster caused by irresponsible farming practices). However, the other part of it is due to lack of access to fresh water. People are living in places that have tapped out their underwater reserves; Especially those in the southeastern United States. Several municipalities are embroiled in fierce legal battled over neighboring cities (and even states!) refusal to share their water. This is a situation that will only get worse over time; Already there is talk about southern states passing legislation or taking overt and aggressive action to divert water from the Great Lakes to areas of the south that soon will be uninhabitable without water relief -- others of course argue that the areas should never have been inhabited in the first place.

If the countries of Africa tap that resource, on one hand they will experience a sudden burst of economic activity and agricultural reform; and with it a corresponding explosion in population. However, there is already too much industrialization of the planet as it is, and with global warming going unaddressed due to a lack of cooperation by sovereign powers, an untempered entry into industry by so many new countries could cause a global ecological disaster that could leave most of the tropical regions of the planet devastated and unfarmable. If an industrialized country with access to state of the art technology, extensive scientific understanding, and sufficient natural resources, cannot solve these problems... I shudder to think what could happen if an entire continent did a history repeat.

Re:Don't do what we did

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you are doing there, reverse psychology.

Re:Don't do what we did

[Grayhand]

The Great Lakes or a finite resource. The midwest is already draining them on it's own. I've seen photos of boats sitting on mud dozens of feet from water. I grew up in Michigan and I never heard of such a thing. Climate change has reduced the water flowing into the Great Lakes and irrigation is draining them. Build a giant irrigation pipe and you get the great mud lakes. Most of the food grown in this country relies on irrigation. When I was in Los Angeles we were all told to conserve water yet 90% went to agriculture so cutting your water useage in half would have little impact since I believe another 6% was used in industry so personal use was negligible. My whole life we've been told we can feed the world but that's a myth.

Re:Don't do what we did

[roman_mir]

Yeah, those black people, why should they be able to use water that is found on their continent? Goldman Sachs should get all the rights to it, set up a few pumps and 'monetise' it the way the know how.

Re:Don't do what we did

[Anonymous Coward]

You are what's wrong with the world, you selfish bastard. If the Earth is "too much industrialized" that is in no way Africa's fault, and Africa should not be expected to sacrifice its people to afford others a few more years of polluting the planet to their hearts' content. You clearly are not willing to go back to the Stone Age, so what makes you think anyone has the right to prevent a whole continent from getting out of it?

You talk of global ecological disaster and try to blame it on the countries that barely did anything to cause it. If you truly care about the environment, and aren't using it as a bad excuse, it would be far more effective to deal first with the big offenders (USA, China and Russia), who for years have polluted the planet we all share without caring for the consequences.

You also say access to water will cause a populational explosion in Africa. According to history, you couldn't be more mistaken. What will happen is a greater populational growth in the short term - thanks to reduced infant mortality - but reduced populational growth in the long term.

For thirst or greed, sooner or later someone will get to the water. I only hope some of the water will get to the thirsty and to the crops; it would be truly sad if it was all sold overseas.

Re:Don't do what we did

[rally2xs]

Sure. All we have to do is kill 3/4 of our population, and we can use way less oil. Oil sustains life here, get used to it.

Re:Don't do what we did

[tomhath]

Many of the United States' agricultural land is in danger of turning to dust due to several factors. Part of it is the poor use of land; Overuse of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, genetically engineered crops (the crops are not the problem, the business practices of companies like Monsanto are), and the loss of top soil due to erosion are just some of the problems. We have several states that are largely desert right now (the "dust bowl" was a ecological disaster caused by irresponsible farming practices).

Citation needed. The dust bowl was a combination of factors, one of which was not realizing that the relatively cool/wet period at the end of the 19th century and early 20th when the land was brought under cultivation was unusual. But if you've ever been to the Midwest you would know that much of the soil there is loess, obviously the Dust Bowl had been repeated many times over millions of years.

The rest of your post is FUD, US agriculture productivity continues to increase.

Re:Don't do what we did

[ColdWetDog]

Sure. All we have to do is kill 3/4 of our population, and we can use way less oil. Oil sustains life here, get used to it.

Well, at first glance, it would appear that the dominant form of life in the US is an automobile - so killing 75% of them would be a good start to decreasing our fossil fuel use.

Re:Don't do what we did

[rally2xs]

Well, yeah, killing the cars would kill the people. We need 'em, duh... sooo... same thing.

Re:Don't do what we did

[HornWumpus]

Killing 75% of my cars would only leave me with one. Which is all I can drive at once though.

It would suck daily driving the drag strip car. It would increase my fuel use rather a lot.

Greening of Africa

[symbolset]

Global warming is likely to lead to a de-desertification of Africa anyway, as increasing equatorial heat increases the absorption of water by the air over the Atlantic. But it's still Africa.

Re:Greening of Africa

[flyingfsck]

Why? The earth was much warmer in the past and instead of being a desert, the Sahara was a grassland. Higher temperature means more evaporation from the oceans, which means more rain...

Re:Greening of Africa

[symbolset]

Yeah, that's what I said. De-desertification. As in grassland.

Re:Greening of Africa

[TeknoHog]

De-desertification.

Instead of a double negative, why don't we just call it "sertification"? Though that would probably not happen without involving a standards body.

Re:Greening of Africa

[symbolset]

This is why Africa has no friends.

Surprise

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

Hmm, that's a surprise, I thought the ground was drenched in generations of bloodletting.

Last time...

[jd]

...an aquifer was found in Africa it was drained dry due to wastage and abuse of resources. This isn't a miracle cure, guys. If used properly, it might reduce the stress on the land (so allowing it to recover, so increasing rainfall) but it is NOT a substitute for surface reservoirs, it is NOT a substitute for learning how to be efficient with resources, it is NOT infinite and it is NOT going to cure centuries (if not millenia) of neglect of Africa.

Not news...

[drmaxx]

It's not new that there are huge groundwater resources in Africa. The only new thing in the article is that they mapped it in more detail then ever before. And these resources are also heavily utilized today. However, using groundwater for food production is not without great danger - the keyword here is salinification.

Re:Not news...

[12WTF$]

the keyword here is salinification.

Pedantic pedant is pedantic.
The great danger is not MAKING SALT - salinification
but adding salt to the agricultural land - salination

Oh yes

[dutchwhizzman]

People bread like rabbits once there is enough food and water to go around. They do anyway, but the infant mortality rate is high and migration to barren areas is very limited. Once there's food, water and safety, large groups of people migrate and breed. In just one or two generations, the country will be densely populated and there will once again be a shortage of resources.

Re:Oh yes

[Barsteward]

I think the opposite is true. Infant mortality is high in these areas so they have more children in the hope some survive. When there is food, medicine, better sanitation etc, they breed less because there is less chance of the infants dying.

Re:Oh yes

[Anonymous Coward]

People bread like rabbits once there is enough food and water to go around.

Wrong. There is an over-abundance of food and water throughout the western world and other wealthly nations and population, not counting immigration, is either at replacement or declining. Malthus was simply wrong. Please stop promulgating your mutual ignorance.

Re:Oh yes

[zephvark]

People bread like rabbits once there is enough food and water to go around.

What is this, a soylent green joke? ...anyway, I believe other people have made the point that Malthusian theory turns out to be completely incorrect. There is the problem of government, as always. Many African nations have completely horrific governments that cause starvation and poverty in the midst of what should be plenty. Looking at you, Zimbabwe.

Re:Oh yes

[GNious]

It may be true that in areas with high infant-mortality (or low average life-expectancy), people have more children as a way to compensate. Other animals do the same, so why should humans be any different.

What is an issue, though, is the time it takes for humans to switch to a lower rate of child-birth, or smaller families; this tends to take a few generations, by which time you are already facing a possible over-population.

(disclaimer: I'm the 9th child in a family, from a western European country)

Re:Oh yes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Other animals do the same, so why should humans be any different."

Don't be so glib about people's suffering. Those babies dying in Africa are no less deserving of prosperity than you or me.

Re:Oh yes

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an over-abundance of food and water throughout the western world and other wealthly nations and population, not counting immigration, is either at replacement or declining

But here in 'the western world', you're expected to, you know, pay for your food and water, not like Africa, which gets tons (literally) of free stuff. If you look at a segment of 'the western world' where people are given free stuff (welfare, et al.), you see over-population.

Re:Oh yes

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are posting AC, Press Alt-F4 to moderate your score to +5

Do people actually fall for that?

Re:Oh yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Too lazy to dig up source right now, but of all factors, child mortality has the highest correlation with fertility.

Re:Oh yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Those babies dying in Africa are no less deserving of prosperity than you or me.

Yes. Yes they are.

Re:Oh yes

[LynnwoodRooster]

People bread like rabbits once there is enough food and water to go around.

Actually, I find that for people you need to add a bit of milk to the egg wash to get the breading to stick to them or it all comes off when you drop them into the fryer - with rabbit, it's a quick egg wash, a dip in some Panko or bread crumbs and sizzle away.

Probably has to do with the fat content of the meat...

Re:Oh yes

[Coren22]

Personally, I use f4, seems to work better.

Re:Oh yes

[Coren22]

ctrl-f4...I shouldn't of used the brackets.

Re:Oh yes

[Barsteward]

I don't know, did it?

Not if Coke or Pepsi settles in...

[Kergan]

Just wait until either drill a few boreholes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola#Water_use

Re:Not if Coke or Pepsi settles in...

[jaymemaurice]

Man that is probably the worst written/cited wikipedia article I have ever read... It's like someone got so sick of revising the Coca-Cola article they relized they could give all these anti-coke tinfoil hatters their own article to spew whatever on and just left them to it.

See also the 1978 novel "Flyaway" and ...

[dbIII]

See also the 1978 novel "Flyaway" and the results of surveys made in the years before that which meant the author could find this out by reading some information for tourists.
What is new is the detailed map instead of finding it under just a few countries while looking for oil.

Vast?

[Anonymous Coward]

100 times something really small is not vast.

Also, there is a big difference between not having safe water and not having water. Just because there may be water there doesn't solve the problem of making it safe to drink.

Gaddafi

[blind biker]

Gaddafi has built a pipe system to use the huge aquifer under Libya. My friend told me that this was the reason why NATO went to war in Libya but not in Syria. The latter had nothing to offer (a la oil etc.) but the former has a huge treasure, and you can't have someone who doesn't play ball with the rich guys in charge.

Do I share my friend's opinion? Every day more and more.

Re:Gaddafi

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bullshit explanation. NATO didn't go to war against Libya, the Libyan people went to war against Qaddafi, and NATO lent support. Also, precisely what does NATO have to gain by preventing the Libyans from having more water?

Re:Gaddafi

[Anonymous Coward]

NATO used military force against Lybia, if that isn't an act of war I don't know what would be. NATO supported the fundamentalists in Lybia but didn't give a shit about Syria. There's a reason for that. Research which of the two was more subservient and you'll understand.

Re:Gaddafi

[MrQuacker]

The largest underground network of pipes (2820 km) [2] and aqueducts in the world. It consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500 m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m3 of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River

Re:Gaddafi

[blind biker]

It's a bullshit explanation. NATO didn't go to war against Libya, the Libyan people went to war against Qaddafi, and NATO lent support.

I shouldn't reply, because this very sentence shows that you are less than a moron, but rather totally demented. Reference: in my original post I didn't say NATO went to war with Libya. Furthermore, what NATO did in Libya is the same thing NATO could have done in Syria, but didn't. Whatever you call that, it's semantics. It's even more useless semantics because the same intervention from NATO in Libya is what the insurgents in Syria were and are in need of, to protect the civilians from Assad's tank and artillery.

Also, precisely what does NATO have to gain by preventing the Libyans from having more water?

I am not surprised you're showing yet more idiocy, but hey, it's the AC's prerogative, right? First of all, it's not NATO's interest or non-interest. NATO is nothing but the tool of powerful and international rich circles. These have nothing to gain from a prosperous and independent Libya, so they sought to put in place a different regime, one that will play ball (albeit it seems it is as oppressive as the last one) and allow for the commercialization and exploitation of these resources. Gaddafi was keeping those for himself and his countrymen, however crazy he was.

To highlight just how important water in Africa is, think about how the Nile all by itself made Egypt the second most prosperous and powerful country in Africa, after South Africa.

Re:Gaddafi

[gtall]

My friend told me that Gaddafi was a space alien who was going to use the water to desalinate the Med. Sea and thus end all European fishing in what he considered his own private lake. Maybe my friend and your friend could get together and compare conspiracy theories. With enough care and feeding, we could get lots of new theories, enough to keep all of us happy for years to come.

Handing out resources

[hantms]

US and Middle East got oil, Europe got gas. God screws over Africa yet again with some muddy water. It's just not fair.

Re:Handing out resources

[Anonymous Coward]

US and Middle East got oil, Europe got gas. God screws over Africa yet again with some muddy water. It's just not fair.

I am pretty sure Nigeria and Libya are in Africa..../s

Re:Handing out resources

[hoboroadie]

I'm pretty sure that any country owned by Brown People is screwed the day that anything (oil,minerals, Rhino horns) is discovered.

No they don't

[Sycraft-fu]

You see this bullshit all the time from people who never took more than BIO 100 and presume that humans work like bacteria. Turns out, they don't. The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth. The "human bacteria" theory says they should be the prime places for a massive booming population. There's abundance in everything and IMR is low so population should explode... But it doesn't.

Turns out when you solve the basic needs, when people have more than a subsistence living, when they don't have to worry about a bunch of their offspring dying, they stop having so many kids.

The way to control population is not to try and starve people of resources. You might notice that is the situation now and yet there's high birth rate. The way to control is to get people better lives. Sufficient food, clean water, medical care, shelter, etc and then the population growth is tamed.

This isn't a "Well we hope humans work like this," theory, it is how things HAVE worked. It is the reason there was no massive boom and crash in the US, Europe, Japan, and so on. Population growth has slowed, leveled off, or even inverted in all the places that have the most abundant resources.

The strategy of "Just let the brown people die," is not only extremely callous, it is also counter productive to getting a stable population level.

Re:No they don't

[andrew3]

Of course you assume that the water will actually be given to Africa. More likely it will be bottled up and sold to the rest of the world.

A win for corporatism and jobs for the world, and an overall loss for Africa.

Re:No they don't

[turing_m]

You see this bullshit all the time from people who never took more than BIO 100 and presume that humans work like bacteria. Turns out, they don't. The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth. The "human bacteria" theory says they should be the prime places for a massive booming population. There's abundance in everything and IMR is low so population should explode... But it doesn't.

I'd be a bit more circumspect about my ability to judge the long term growth rates of humans just two generations after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and Roe vs Wade. It's like the equivalent of spraying some dilute poison in the petri dish that most but not every bacterium is affected by and thinking that the long term growth rates can be predicted by the growth rates of that bacteria in a few hours.

Re:No they don't

[siddesu]

You have it the wrong way around. The argument isn't biological in nature, it deals with economics. People are not bacteria in a petri dish. They can think about the future and plan according to the means that are available to them. Children are the only investment available to many peoples in the poorest parts in the world, since they receive little care, but tend to take care of their parents. In the West, children bear a huge opportunity cost, as they need to be taken care of, but don't contribute directly to the well-being of their parents as much as the offspring in poorer nation.

This is why there is a lot more demand for contraceptives and abortions in the West, and that is why methods for birth control were developed in the first place.

Re:No they don't

[tsa]

It doesn't help Africa that the Pope and George Bush both told the many many catholics there not to use contraception because... well, I don't know actually.

Re:No they don't

[ceoyoyo]

We had effective contraception and abortion LONG before the 60s. There is a long history of resource rich societies NOT breeding as much as would be expected from a simple resource utilization model.

Re:No they don't

[Attila Dimedici]

As others have pointed out, this trend of those with higher incomes having fewer children is more than two generations old. It goes back to the Enlightenment period at least (our ability to track it further than that is limited). This trend has nothing to with abortion and/or modern contraception.

Re:No they don't

[newcastlejon]

[snark]
The Pope is incapable of being wrong, so his reasons are moot... aren't they?
[/snark]

Re:No they don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately most humans do not live in first world nations, so the bacterial growth model still fits when you look a the human population as a whole. Expect to see 10-12 billion humans in your lifetime.

Re:No they don't

[Anynomous Coward]

"The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth."

That bullshit simply isn't true. Already overpopulated affluent western countries in the middle of Europe like this one still managed to add more than 10% to its population in the last 20 years and 40% over the last 50.

Re:No they don't

[AmiMoJo]

There is a weird episode in the Bible where a guy called Onan was boning his brother's wife, and deliberately pulled out and soiled the carpet to avoid getting her pregnant. Got murders him for wasting his seed, despite being generally against adultery...

I know he said "go forth and multiply" but with your sister in law? And why are Catholics so against sex out of marriage when God seems to condone it as long as you try to get her pregnant?

Re:No they don't

[TheRaven64]

Look at the population figures excluding immigration. For most of the EU, population growth is slightly negative if you discount immigration, which indicates that people are not breeding at below replacement rate.

Re:No they don't

[Rob the Bold]

There is a weird episode in the Bible where a guy called Onan was boning his brother's wife, and deliberately pulled out and soiled the carpet to avoid getting her pregnant. Got murders him for wasting his seed, despite being generally against adultery...

I know he said "go forth and multiply" but with your sister in law? And why are Catholics so against sex out of marriage when God seems to condone it as long as you try to get her pregnant?

Except God didn't murder him for wasting his seed, but for disobeying the law from Deuteronomy regarding providing an heir for a dead brother. The Catholic interpretation is so inane that it would be risible if it didn't do such harm.

Re:No they don't

[gtall]

It isn't that less of their kids dying that leads to lower family counts, it is that they no longer need a large family to support them when they get old if there are enough government resources to help with the job. A large family is an expense, so in effect they are paying into an old age insurance system. Lower the expected expense for their later years and they'll forgo the current expense of a large family. Also, it helps if they can keep producing an income longer which is what education tends to do for them.

Re:No they don't

[guanxi]

Also, one of the bigger factors in development and reducing birthrates is educating girls. There is a lot of research and practice behind it; it's widely accepted to work.

I don't know the exact reason, but I suspect that making half your population more productive would be a big help and empowering girls to control their lives also gives them power over their own reproductive systems.

Re:No they don't

[guanxi]

We had effective contraception and abortion LONG before the 60s.

IIRC, the innovation of the 1960s was the pill, which was safe, effective contraception that women controlled. It gave women the control over whether they conceived, a revolution in human history.

Re:No they don't

[gtall]

A bigger question is why western religions are so interested in sex. Could it be because they are run by a group of horny old men? No, that surely couldn't have anything to do with it.

Western religions should announce they no longer give a two-headed rat's ass about sex, from now on they'll be more involved with the eternal verities of life, i.e., what does it all mean, why are we here, where shall we have lunch. If they would concentrate on those, there'd be much less strife caused by the religions. Well, getting rid of their voyeuristic pre-occupation with sex is one thing they can give up. They also need to give up their fear of women. I'd like to hear them proclaim to heavens they no long care what a woman wears as long as it is stylish and the colors don't clash.

Re:No they don't

[HornWumpus]

It also serves to kick islam (as currently practiced) square in the nuts!

Re:No they don't

[AmiMoJo]

I dunno, Catholicism in particular seems to be obsessed with suffering and living a generally dreary and unenjoyable life for no apparent reason other than to outdo each other in the race to get into heaven. Remember that until recently it was thought that only a minority of people would get in so you had to work hard for it.

Re:No they don't

[supercrisp]

One popular theory holds is that it's the strongest bodily drive you can deny without causing death. Regulating this drive thru shaming and sumptuary law creates misery, which then leads the miserable to turn to spiritual authorities for comfort. Bada-bing; you got yourself a powerful positive feedback loop that puts Prada on the Pope.

Re:No they don't

[russotto]

There is a weird episode in the Bible where a guy called Onan was boning his brother's wife, and deliberately pulled out and soiled the carpet to avoid getting her pregnant. Got murders him for wasting his seed, despite being generally against adultery...

Onan's brother Er was dead at the time of the boning, so God wasn't being inconsistent, just arbitrary. Of course, it was God who ordered Er to be killed for some unspecified offense. You'd think God could have saved a lot of trouble by killing Er before he was married.

Re:No they don't

[AmiMoJo]

I thought Er was a Mooninite.

Re:No they don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush was opposed to abortion, not birth control. But blame him anyway, this is an election year.

Re:No they don't

[guanxi]

It also serves to kick islam (as currently practiced) square in the nuts!

There is a long history in humanity of religious bigotry. It always turns out to be ignorant and it is perhaps the most destructive problem in human history. Why repeat it? Why show yourself to be ignorant and hateful (in a permanent record that you can never erase)? I know it's trendy to be loud and outrageous; people feel like they are bold, breaking taboos, but consider the consequences. Consider why those taboos are there.

There many people out there, Muslim and otherwise, who trust each other and people of other religions. Imagine what they feel when they read your comments. You justify the words of people like Bin Laden, who say that westerners hate other religions, that our freedom, openness and tolerance is a sham. Your their best recruiting tool.

Learn something real about Islam instead of just believing what you read on the Internet. Visit a mosque; take a course. There is everything to gain.

Re:No they don't

[tomhath]

It can be done though. Mexico stands as a perfect example of how a country (even an overwhelmingly Catholic one) can get its birth rate under control. It takes an enlightened government, not outsiders and foreign aid, to make it happen.

The effect of this program in Mexico is amazing; when I visited in the late 80's it seemed every family had at least five or six children. Today you visit and it's unusual to see parents walking around with more than one or two. They need to beat the drug cartels, but Mexico's future is very bright.

Re:No they don't

[jbengt]

A bigger question is why western religions are so interested in sex. . . . Western religions should announce they no longer give a two-headed rat's ass about sex, from now on they'll be more involved with the eternal verities of life . . .

I dunno, the big "why are we here" type questions all have to do with death and birth, so, since sex is a big part of at least half of that, it ought to be a natural subject for religions. My question would be why do so many of the religious seem to avoid the subject of sex, other than to say "Don't do it" or "Procreate, but don't enjoy it"?.

Re:No they don't

[ceoyoyo]

Certainly the pill was a revolution because women could take it without a man even knowing, but it wasn't the first safe, effective contraception. That would be the condom, which has a LONG history.

Re:No they don't

[samoanbiscuit]

Note: I'm NOT the GP.

I don't know about taking a course, but I have friends who work in Dubhai, and I've grown up with muslim people, and they seem a bit misogynist to me, especially the whole deal about women not being allowed into the mosque because they'll profane it, and the whole "honour killing" crap. What kind of religion/culture gives a man the idea that he can totally kill his sister if she "embarrasses" the family by getting raped? That's right, Arabic Islam, as it is practiced wherever there is sharia law. I realize that there are millions of "moderate" or "safe" or "whatever term you want to use" muslims out there, like in Indonesia, but seriously, can you honestly say that the crazy sharia-law pushing, adultress-stoning, women-not-allowed-to-drive law passing bullshit is NOT supported by their Quran, and thus is not merely taking what is written to their logical extremes? Y'know, like the Westboro Baptists, except with way more money and power?

Re:No they don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Because sex is for procreation, not recreation.

Re:No they don't

[guanxi]

Certainly the pill was a revolution because women could take it without a man even knowing, but it wasn't the first safe, effective contraception. That would be the condom, which has a LONG history.

Agreed, that's what I meant by it being the first one that women controlled. With the pill, women can choose whether or not they conceive; before that they needed the man's cooperation.

Re:No they don't

[ceoyoyo]

If you look at the post I replied to, you'll find that the OP was suggesting that we don't have a long enough baseline to assess growth rates of humans because the pill was only invented in the 60s and Roe vs Wade was whenever. People were getting abortions LONG before some court case made it legal in the US, and effective contraception was around long before the pill.

The pill IS special because, combined with educated women, it's a VERY powerful brake on population growth, but the major predictors of human population growth have been effective even without it, for a long time.

Re:No they don't

[Anonymous Coward]

A bigger question is why western religions are so interested in sex. Could it be because they are run by a group of horny old men?

Could it be that you think this way because you're "horny" yourself? Project much? You know Christianity does not have any hangups about sex. Sex is for procreation between a husband and a wife. That's the purpose of sex according to natural law. It's pretty much the empirically derived purpose too. When we abuse that purpose we create evolutionary niches for things such as duh - HIV, Hep B, gonorrhea, syphilis, etc.
There actually would be NO STDs (and derivatives - e.g. cervical cancer, most cases of ectopic pregnancy, most cases of chronic pelvic pain, vaginal cancer, etc) if people listened to religious teaching.

Western religions should announce they no longer give a two-headed rat's ass about sex, from now on they'll be more involved with the eternal verities of life, i.e., what does it all mean, why are we here, where shall we have lunch. If they would concentrate on those, there'd be much less strife caused by the religions. Well, getting rid of their voyeuristic pre-occupation with sex is one thing they can give up. They also need to give up their fear of women. I'd like to hear them proclaim to heavens they no long care what a woman wears as long as it is stylish and the colors don't clash.

Assuming Christianity is made up, sure. They could worship unicorns and perhaps the president of the USA next. The sad fact is that no, Christianity is not made up, nor is it run as a democracy. Hence its tenets can't be changed at whim, not even your whim :-). Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Of course you're free to believe what you will just have the intellectual honesty to recognize that not everyone thinks this way.

BTW not sure what strife is caused by religions. Most death and misery is (was) caused by secular causes. Atheists and secularists have started most wars and butchered most people. Maybe if we had more religion, we'd be better off, and perhaps our scientists would be more honest too? :-)

Re:No they don't

[guanxi]

I have friends who work in Dubhai, and I've grown up with muslim people, and they seem a bit misogynist to me, especially the whole deal about women not being allowed into the mosque because they'll profane it, and the whole "honour killing" crap. What kind of religion/culture gives a man the idea that he can totally kill his sister if she "embarrasses" the family by getting raped? That's right, Arabic Islam, as it is practiced wherever there is sharia law. I realize that there are millions of "moderate" or "safe" or "whatever term you want to use" muslims out there, like in Indonesia, but seriously, can you honestly say that the crazy sharia-law pushing, adultress-stoning, women-not-allowed-to-drive law passing bullshit is NOT supported by their Quran, and thus is not merely taking what is written to their logical extremes? Y'know, like the Westboro Baptists, except with way more money and power?

Well, it is taken to an extreme in some places, like the Westboro Baptists with way more power and money. That is, it's not reflective of Muslims in general but a small powerful minority; these are dictatorships -- was everyone in the Soviet Union a Bolshevik? Is everyone in China now a Communist?. But that's politics and not religion. Here are my thoughts ...

There is far too much oppression of women by anyone, and especially in many Arab countries. But it is not a consequence of Islam:

* First, those horrors and oppression correlate with of the level of advancement (wealth, education, etc.) of a society, not with Islam. Similar horrors happen in poor countries all over the world, Muslim or not. In parts of Africa (and my apologies to Africans for lumping them all together, but in my ignorance I don't remember which part), there were recent trends of raping virgins because people thought it prevented AIDS, and murdering albinos and taking their organs for medical use.

* Second, it's not supported by the Quran or no more than other ancient scriptures. There is plenty of grisly, medieval (well, earlier actually) justice in the Judeo-Christian bible; it's a product of the times when they were written; the West was butchering people until at least the 19th century (want to go to a hanging? hang-draw-and-quartering? burning at the stake?). In the Old Testament people are butchered for not being circumcised. In Acts, someone is disemboweled for withholding part of a donation to the church, and there are many more examples (don't quote me exactly on those, but those stories are pretty close to the originals). Imagine what the Palestinians in Jericho would think of us lionizing Joshua for conquering their city and driving them off! If someone objected to these things, we'd laugh and say that nobody takes them seriously except a few wackos. In every religion, people use it to justify what they want to do. Islam is no different, nor is Christianity.

* Third, it's perception. We do the same horrors, but human nature is to see what happens in Our culture as aberration and crimes, and in Other cultures as endemic and universal (due to ignorance and the resulting fear of the unknown). For one thing, look at these statements:

I've grown up with muslim people, and they seem a bit misogynist to me ...
... it is practiced wherever there is sharia law

Could you make such a sweeping statement about all Christians in the world (to pick a religion you're probably familiar with)? People who follow Islam are just people; their opinions, behavior, vary just as much as you, me, and someone in the Philippines (as a random example). The same goes for Sharia; do we really know anything about what it is, how it is interpreted or practiced? Are people just falling for rumors yet again; another 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'?

Also, Judeo-Christian westerners we have no less propensity for oppression and violence: Remember what most Western nations did in their colonies,

Re:No they don't

[HornWumpus]

Fuck you apologist. Islam has been at war with 'the west' sense it was pulled from Mohammed's (piss be apon him) ass.

We will win by educating it's girls. Arab society is far too rigid and brittle, if will not bend (like western society did), it will break.

They know this. That is why they attack girls schools/students in the 'stans.

Re:No they don't

[guanxi]

The problem is people who attack innocents; bigoted, ignorant, angry people, like those who attack the schools. Angry people can't think clearly and don't listen to others; that's why leaders like Bin Laden rouse anger in their followers -- because only the ignorant will follow them.

In the Gospels, Jesus says,

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. ...
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Hatred is an evil fruit. Those who have seeded hatred in you -- you should know them.
 

Myth

[reversible physicist]

With enough energy, we could distill sea water. Therefore pure fresh water is not a finite resource that must limit the earth's population anytime soon. This is a myth. There is also not (in principle) an energy shortage -- just technical obstacles to using more of the solar and geothermal energy that are available in such staggering abundance (compared to our current energy usage).

Re:Myth

[jaymemaurice]

what do you do with the brine?

Re:Myth

[12WTF$]

Distill? Kidding, right?
Unless the energy fairy (aka Mr Fusion) arrives soon (not in 40 years), industrial desalination of sea water at semi reasonable cost requires reverse osmosis.
But and it's a REALLY big but, reverse osmosis of seawater does give you nice, pure as rain, water.
It gives you water with most of the salt removed EXCEPT for Boron*.

what do you do with the brine?

How do you cope with the public health issues of BORON poisoning of people and irrigated lands from industrial RO?

*Boron (aka AntRid) is a light weight element that slips through the reverse osmosis membranes as they age and easily
exceeds the safe limit unless the costly membranes are replaced regularly. The usual method is dilute the RO water with fresh water.
Parts of Sydney water supply between the RO plant and the fresh water storage get undiluted RO water straight from the tap.

Re:Myth

[newcastlejon]

Out of curiosity, just what is the safe limit for boron/boric acid consumption in humans? I was under the impression that it was so high as to be inconsequential. It's pretty nasty stuff for insects, but not the rest of the animal kingdom AFAIK.

Re:Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

Pump it back out to sea. Duh.

Two big canals, one from the ocean, tone to the ocean. 1000000 gallons of water come in one, 900000 gallons of brine go out the other. The other 100000 is freshwater removed from the sea water. Just set it up int he right place so offshore currents distribute the brine widely, to avoid any problems.

Re:Myth

[Cenan]

So basically dump it in the river and let the next town over solve the problem? That sounds like an awfully familiar "solution".

Re:Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

What river? I'm talking artificial canals to and from the ocean.

Re:Myth

[12WTF$]

0.5mg/L is twice the safe level for all mammals, before it was a cost problem, now it is whatever level
industry ^H^H^H^H^H government believe it can get away with ^H^H^H^H legislate.

Cited from
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/problems-with-desalination-plants/3796870

Food for thought below:

Sea water is difficult to desalinate to make potable water using filters. All sea water contains boron, mostly as boric acid. The boric acid molecule is about the same size as a water molecule.
Boron occurs in the sea at a concentration of at least 4 milligrams per litre or over 20 times a safe drinking level of 0.2mg/L where it is safe for all mammals and plants. Tests in the US show that boron in dam water is 0.047 mg/L on average. Boron is tasteless. Membranes used to filter sea water under pressure are not efficient at reducing boron and their ability to remove boron diminishes with use.

Even in order to get the boron level down to 0.5mg/L (twice the safe level for all mammals) will require the RO filters to be changed every six months an increase of 12% in the operating cost. Usually RO plants are small and are used for short periods to produce permeate (or manufactured water) for use on installations like oil rigs or mixed with fresh water to dilute boron to safe levels.

From 2003 to 2009 0.5mg/L of boron was considered to be a safe level for drinking and is the maximum boron amount specified in the Wonthaggi contract. Records from Australia’s Gold Coast and Kurnell plants show that boron has not been kept at levels below 0.5mg/L and the level exceeds 0.5mg/L after about six months. The Kurnell plant which is currently up for sale by the NSW government is mixed with water held in the large Warragamba Dam to dilute the boron to safe levels, apart from the suburbs of Prospect, Ryde and Potts Hill which receive unmixed water for pressure reasons.

The toxicity tests entailed feeding a group of pregnant rats increasing amounts of boric acid to the point where the average foetal weight loss was 5% compared to a control group. The World Health Organisation then used this standard formula to establish safety guidelines for humans based on water consumption, boron retention and adult body weight. On this basis the WHO set the 0.5mg/L safety guideline which was adopted by Australia.
It was only when reverse osmosis plants began to replace distillation plants that the WHO guidelines became of more than academic interest to the water industry. In 2008 the Harvard Medical School undertook an exhaustive survey of boron literature which concluded that additional boron exposure above the background level in drinking water should be avoided by children under 18 years of age.

The original boron safety standard of 0.5mg/L is costly to meet. One way of reducing that cost is to relax the guidelines.

Despite the lack of new laboratory or population research in 2009 the WHO increased the safety guideline to 2.4mg/L and the Australian guidelines were increased to 4mg/L in 2004 just before Australia’s first large desalination plant was approved. The 400% increase in the WHO guidelines and the 800% increase in the guidelines for Australia are not based on published toxicology or epidemiology. This apparent regulatory capture has international as well as national implications for the development of public health standards.

Sorry if this is tl;dr but this is not slashfox

Re:Myth

[jaymemaurice]

Okay, but I read RO only accounts for less than 15% of the worlds desalination and that Multi Stage Flash desalination is the dominating desalination technology. (poorly cited wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-stage_flash_distillation)
How is the boron problem with MSF vs. RO? (too lazy to research myself)
I'd imagine with an abundance of free energy can result in less efficient technologies being used (reverse electrolosis?!)

Re:Myth

[12WTF$]

Be glad you live in a desert country sitting on billions of barrels of sweet crude that flash desalination is cheap for you.

I'd imagine with an abundance of free energy

I prefer to contemplate what effect declining energy sources (in terms of EROEI)
will have on our complex near post industrial society, but then I dont need any
imagination to see the abyss that is our future...

Funny but I do actually use 100% free, no-carbon energy to distill water.
When my off-grid solar system finishes charging my batteries, it switches
over to using the solar power that would just bounce off the panels into
distilling rain harvested water for topping up the batteries....

I care that the men of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne will grow a pair, literally:

The WHO said in support of the 2003 0.5mg/L guildeline and repeated in the 2009 guideline “Short and long term oral exposures to boric acid or borax in laboratory animals have demonstrated that the male reproductive tract is a consistent target of toxicity. Testicular lesions have been observed in rats, mice and dogs given boric acid or boric in food or drinking water. Development toxicity has been demonstrated experimentally in rats, mice and rabbits”.

But the reasons for this decision which were promised in 2010 have still not been published on the WHO website. Ditto the Australian guidelines that allow 67% higher boron guidelines than established by the WHO.

There is an inverse relationship between boron toxicity and weight. The WHO used an average adult weight of 60kg and Australia used 70kg—why? But even if the new guidelines are safe for adults, especially obese adults, it does not follow that they are safe for children, foetuses, small animals and plants. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation produced a list of 58 major food crop varieties which show that only nine would live with total boron levels above 4mg/L based on field research in 1960, 1973 and 1982.

Re:Myth

[jaymemaurice]

Yeah my home is where my hat is. Today it's the UAE. Yeah flash desalination works here because the co-generation. The sad thing about being a simple peeon is that somebody else did the cost/benefit analysis of RO Boron problems and the few lives they are messing with may be your own or your childrens... but there are still the problem of the alternatives and money already invested in the purchased RO plants.

In terms of declining sources of energy with low EROEI... I don't know if all doom and gloom yet
The first solar powered solar panel factory has already been created... and maybe we will stay ahead on the technology curve. Maybe not. I share your concern for our children, but what can you do besides educate?

Actually underground reservoirs can be "finite"

[perpenso]

Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.

Underground reservoirs are not necessarily refilled by the next rain. Read up on such reservoirs found in North America. They were filled over many thousands of years and significantly drained by agriculture related drilling and pumping in decades. Every year agriculture has to drill deeper and deeper to find water.

It gets consumed, evaporates, and then it never rains again.

Of course it rains, the problem is that it does not necessarily rain where the water was harvested. Harvesting deep water reservoirs does not somehow change the fact that a region is a desert or arid region with little rainfall.

Re:Actually underground reservoirs can be "finite"

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh*

If anyone "wooshed" it was the several mods who rated the weak attempt at humor as insightful. Several did so, only one rated it as funny. Plus the joke was poorly made, a macro/global joke is a quite poor fit for a very micro/local problem. The GP's weak attempt at humor was as good a place as any to point out the actual complexity of the situation, especially given the modding.

Re:Actually underground reservoirs can be "finite"

[DadLeopard]

That is not the only problem you get with massive extraction of fossil water! Checkout the problems around Las Vegas, where due to the pumping they have land subsidence ruining whole neighborhood, cracking roads, shifting foundations, etc.

Re:Actually underground reservoirs can be "finite"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm...errr...you guys need to watch the movie (free online) "HOME", which briefly talks about 'fossil water (25,000 year old water)' supplies that are being used up, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1

Re:Actually underground reservoirs can be "finite"

[10101001 10101001]

Of course it rains, the problem is that it does not necessarily rain where the water was harvested. Harvesting deep water reservoirs does not somehow change the fact that a region is a desert or arid region with little rainfall.

Perhaps not. But the region a few hundred miles to the east/west (depending on wind patterns) might see a change. I'd image that it'd relate heavily to things like the degree of water conservation and exploitation. That isn't, of course, to say such a change is a good thing. It's just, I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea that it'd have an effect on the region. Once you involve enough humans doing the same activity, it can easily turn into firewood for the stove wiping out a forest, many wells emptying an aquifer and changing rainfall patterns, or several million cars heating up the Earth. So, I'd guess it'd be at least a decade before noticeable changes occurred and perhaps fifty years before those changes become critical to some degree. Whether anyone cares enough or not about those changes...

Lost in corruption

[acidradio]

All of this water is great! But with all of the corrupt governments throughout Africa who will ever get to benefit from it?

I've always felt that Africa is the richest continent. It's chock-full of minerals, oil, diamonds, arable land (some land better than other land but with the right techniques just about anything is possible)... The climate is warm to hot throughout much of the continent facilitating growing. Its people? If you go to the right places hard-working, skilled and eager to work. But its corruption is widespread. Without targeting that (much easier said than done) this water will either stay in the ground or will go to benefit some dictator or other "politician".

Re:Lost in corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

All the other continents used to be rich in natural resources too.

100 times the amount on the surface!!!

[WSOGMM]

That's like!... that's like!... *mumbles doing some math* carry the four... subtract the depth times the... divide out all extra... mmhm ... surface area... ah, yes... average out the known surface water... okay... times roughly 100... *writes some more* Yes! ... That's like zero liters of water!

*shoulders drop in disappointment*

Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously? You think we actually bother to ship water across oceans? Not hardly. All the bottled water you find gets bottled relatively locally. Nobody is going to pay ocean freight prices to ship water when you can get it from a municipal source at $5/750 gallons or so.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[jo_ham]

Actually, that is *exactly* what we do right now - with "Fiji" water being the biggest example - a spring with lots and lots of lovely water coming out of it that is bottled up and shipped to the US while the local population faces water shortages, all because people have been fooled into thinking that the Fiji water is somehow better than tap water.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[yahwotqa]

But this will be Genuine African Water(tm) with Guaranteed Health Benefits and Minerals, sold at premium prices to rich morons in "1st world" countries. It will sell like crazy.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[hoboroadie]

IMHO that Fiji water is the tastiest I've had except for Mount Palomar water, which I haven't seen anywhere outside Los Angeles. That said, I generally drink from the Tap.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[kyrsjo]

I was quite shocked (and probably laughing) when I was served "Voss" water from my home country (Norway) in San Francisco. Its the same stuff you get from the tap somewhere along our south coast (quite some hours away from the town "Voss", but apparently thats a cooler name than where it really came from), stuffed into a nice bottle and sent halfway around the globe... At least it didn't have chlorine (not common/needed in Scandinavian tap water. Here in France... I'll take a Perrier, thanks.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss_(water)

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[canadian_right]

Almost all bottled water is local municipal water that has been filtered, bottled, allowed to sit in a warehouse for a month then truck tot he store. The water coming out of your tap is better, lower bacteria counts etc... than bottled water in most of the 1st world.

In the 1st world bottled water is a scam.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[citizenr]

I have this wooden knob and some http://www.pearcable.com/sub_cable_design.htm cables that I am willing to sell you.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[samoanbiscuit]

Geek from Fiji here, undoing my moderations just to reply to this. Fiji is a tropical island with an abundance of water, and a water treatment and supply system that's considered very good for a third world country (Water comes from catchment areas in the mountains in the main islands). The only time there are water shortages are due to infrastructure being damaged due to natural disasters (like the flooding that struck parts of fiji a few weeks ago), or in crowded urban areas where water supply is rotated around suburbs to allow everyone limited access. The Fiji Water Company uses a very productive spring in a relatively remote part of Fiji (Yaqara) to bottle their water from, and has no bearing at all on the water supply of the rest of the country. On a side note, I have relatives who work for FW, and have holidayed with them at the executive housing they have nearby the bottling plant, and the water piped into the house for drinking, washing, flushing the toilet is the same that goes into a bottle sold so expensively overseas. So I can say I've flushed my shit with Fiji Water! lol lol

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you being sarcastic? Its disgusting that Fiji water. Flat metallic taste like a bore hole in the country. Gawd give me tap water any day.

Re:Where's the LOL WUT picture when I need it?

[hoboroadie]

Your mileage appears to vary. That Palomar springwater is "even worse" I guess. It tastes like it's pulling molecules off my teeth.
I like it.

Dune

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else thing of Dune after reading the article?

hopeless

[Anonymous Coward]

if it turns out to be worth anything, they will start a never ending war over it and the only gaining anything would be producers of ak-47s and landmines .....

Freshwater isn't the problem

[Charliemopps]

Having been to Africa, I can tell you that more freshwater wont solve the problem in the least. The water they get is not contaminated at the source. Much of it comes from wells, or Rivers and lakes. The rivers and lakes may have "Some" contamination... but that's not what the real problem is. The real problem is their horrible infrastructure. They lack even basic building inspection laws. Plumbing is done on-site, by whomever happens to be there. With no training in the field. The result is a haphazard public water supply infrastructure that is subject to contamination from the user.

A simple example is: Every bathtub that I saw in Africa did not have a shower. It had a sprayer that had a hose that led back to the side of the faucet. There was a hanger on the wall for... in every case that I saw the hanger had been long broken, and the sprayer lay in the bottom of the tub. If you fill the tub while leaving the sprayer laying in the water, you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply. It's irrelevant where that water came from, it could have been triple distilled, it's now contaminated. This sort of setup is illegal in the united states for that very reason. There were thousands of other problems like this. Now imagine that your city had this sort of problem... ALL of the plumbing would have to be replaced... from the well to your faucet. The whole thing. How could you fix that? Now imagine it's an entire continent... and now you have a grasp of the size of the problem.

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_(valve)#Backflow

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[danceswithtrees]

you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply.

I am having a hard time understanding how this can happen. How can two feet of water pressure (depth of bathtub) cause siphoning of water from the tub into the high pressure water system. I don't think I could do this if I tried. If they have less than two feet of water pressure, then yes, they have infrastructure problems.

Perhaps you are talking about a venturi effect? If the sprayer comes off at an angle from the faucet/pipe used to fill the tub, you can possibly draw water backwards into the sprayer hose but this is still downstream from the faucet and will not go back into the main water supply.

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[TeknoHog]

you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply.

I am having a hard time understanding how this can happen. How can two feet of water pressure (depth of bathtub) cause siphoning of water from the tub into the high pressure water system. I don't think I could do this if I tried. If they have less than two feet of water pressure, then yes, they have infrastructure problems.

Perhaps you are talking about a venturi effect? If the sprayer comes off at an angle from the faucet/pipe used to fill the tub, you can possibly draw water backwards into the sprayer hose but this is still downstream from the faucet and will not go back into the main water supply.

I've heard similar explanations for the separate hot and cold water taps in the UK. They say the hot water is not fit for drinking* and a mixer tap might cause a contamination of the cold, potable water supply. Similarly, this would require a serious problem in the infrastructure.

*(Microbiological issues. Here in Finland, we do advise against drinking hot water from the tap, because there is a marginal risk of heavy metal leaching from the plumbing, depending on the age/material of the series of tubes. Of course, this problem does not grow like microbes.)

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[Charliemopps]

The easiest scenario to understand would be:
Full tub with sprayer in the tub filling it up
Water main downhill from you breaks (This happens ALL the time in Africa. We lost water pressure three times in one week)
Water pours out the main...
you lose pressure
The hose sitting in the tub now works in reverse and siphons the contents of the tub into the main water supply lines.
They fix the broken main
Now imagine this happening in a city of 5million + where 80% of the population has intestinal parasites
Your clean drinking water literally may have been someone else's bathwater just hours before.
This completely discounts the fact that the water pipes themselves are now breading grounds for bacteria.
Lastly, this is only 1 example. There are hundreds of other problems with the infrastructure. This was just the most glaringly obvious to me.

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[HornWumpus]

Old construction in the UK has very strange hot water plumbing. Vented hot water heaters and gravity feed for the hot water, pressure feed for cold.

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[russotto]

A simple example is: Every bathtub that I saw in Africa did not have a shower. It had a sprayer that had a hose that led back to the side of the faucet. There was a hanger on the wall for... in every case that I saw the hanger had been long broken, and the sprayer lay in the bottom of the tub. If you fill the tub while leaving the sprayer laying in the water, you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply. It's irrelevant where that water came from, it could have been triple distilled, it's now contaminated. This sort of setup is illegal in the united states for that very reason. There were thousands of other problems like this. Now imagine that your city had this sort of problem... ALL of the plumbing would have to be replaced... from the well to your faucet. The whole thing. How could you fix that? Now imagine it's an entire continent... and now you have a grasp of the size of the problem.

A bathtub with a sprayer hose isn't illegal in the US. It's actually quite common. The solution to the siphoning issue is pretty simple: backflow preventers at the service entrance (or between the well pump and the inside plumbing, for a private well). This would require the water supply company to be actually competent, and for illegal hookups to not happen, however -- I don't believe either is generally true in Africa.

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[Nimey]

Also for government to do its job and enforce sensible regulations.

Yeah, I know.

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[dkf]

Old construction in the UK has very strange hot water plumbing. Vented hot water heaters and gravity feed for the hot water, pressure feed for cold.

It works if you don't have mixer taps. It even wasn't completely crazy originally, because the bore of the water supply to the property was probably tiny and so the pressure difference wasn't all that much. To be fair, that was due to the practice of using lead pipes, which need to be much thicker than copper or polycarbonate pipes and so tended to have smaller bores. Thankfully, lead's been long outlawed as a pipe material but the time to remove it from everywhere it was used is long (especially from rarely used pipes that aren't carrying water used for drinking).

Re:Freshwater isn't the problem

[Retiefdv]

Every bathtub that I saw in Africa did not have a shower. It had a sprayer that had a hose that led back to the side of the faucet. There was a hanger on the wall for... in every case that I saw the hanger had been long broken, and the sprayer lay in the bottom of the tub. If you fill the tub while leaving the sprayer laying in the water, you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply. It's irrelevant where that water came from, it could have been triple distilled, it's now contaminated. This sort of setup is illegal in the united states for that very reason. There were thousands of other problems like this. Now imagine that your city had this sort of problem... ALL of the plumbing would have to be replaced... from the well to your faucet. The whole thing. How could you fix that? Now imagine it's an entire continent... and now you have a grasp of the size of the problem.

Where in Africa did you see this? I live in Africa (near Cape Town), born in Zimbabwe, I have visited Tanzania, Rwanda, Namibia, Lesotho and nowhere have I seen the plumbing contraption that you refer to.

Re:Infrastructure

[hoboroadie]

They will have to build it themselves if it doesn't lead directly from the mine to the container-port.

Salination

[hoboroadie]

Congrats, you win the pertinent point award. I had to scroll down quite a ways to find your post, what, did all the Aussies go to bed already? They alluded to it in the article when the scientists said that this might not be the solution that they need for this problem.

The land is already being bought up by petrochem

[Anonymous Coward]

The water would be great to grow biofuel crops. So there has been a lab grand all over the fossil water under Africa, by no less than ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and ConocoPhilips, among other smaller players. I'm concerned both with their unfair exploitation, and with the possible effects of an increase in atmospheric water vapor (a global warming gas like CO2) from tapping these fossil water resources.

Value has nothing to do with it...

[denzacar]

People only value infrastructure if they had to bleed themselves to build it.

Or bleeding.
People can only fix things for which they have resources needed for fixing.

Like knowledge how to fix the things, tools needed to fix the things, materials needed to fix the things and the access to whole supply chains which will bring all those things needed TO the place where things that need fixing ARE.

Re:Value has nothing to do with it...

[real-modo]

Most importantly of all, they need to know that the materials and tools they buy to fix things won't be confiscated by corrupt elites, and that the elites won't try to extract economic rents out of the infrastructure. Otherwise maintenance won't even be attempted.

What Africa needs first and foremost is an honest, meritocratic, transparent bureaucracy supported by an honest, meritocratic, and transparent military.

Oh, and a pony.

Tell that to Indians.

[denzacar]

Both of feathers and dots variety.

Easy...

[denzacar]

Places that have water supply issues tend to have scheduled (or unscheduled) water supply interruptions.
I.e. When the water in the reservoirs runs out, they shut off the water completely until the reservoirs refill.
Maybe for couple of hours a day. Maybe longer.

So, as the pipes across the system/town are drained of water, water draining away leaves vacuum behind which then sucks the water from the tub back into the pipes.
If you leave the hose in the tub and the faucet opened or leaky.

Where I live we have a similar problem with rural homes which used to have (or still do) their own wells providing water before the local infrastructure expanded to cover such locations.
As the water shortages were quite common until recently (new water treatment plant, pumping in water from the local lake) people would connect their wells as backup.

So... Water shortage drains water from the aqueduct, vacuum sucks the untreated well water from the wells, bacteria starts growing in the pipes.
Reservoirs are refilled, aqueduct water runs through the pipes, soon everyone's tap water smells "fishy".
Add to that decades of patching up the aqueduct, with pipes in some places being almost a century old, and you end up with tap water being literally white with chlorine.

That is until you supply enough water for the system to be full at all times by the said water treatment plant, preventing pressure issues.
Well... except at places where there are leaks. And back-flows due to "historical plumbing" somewhere in the pipes.
As a bonus, now that half the city is getting its water from a modern water treatment facility and the other half from another clean natural source - there is no need to dump that much chlorine down the pipes anymore.
After all, it was the complete shutdown of water supply that caused the sucking of the waters from the wells, right?

Except there are still underground leaks, pipes are still old, wells are still connected and the condition of filters in the water treatment plant is not exactly public knowledge.
So, half the city still keeps buying bottled water for drinking and cooking while those in charge of the aqueduct keep claiming that the water is fine.

Re:Oh no - BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? The African people were enslaved and exploited, and their natural resources were exported to other nations. In contrast, the Americans were able to rebel and use their resources to develop their own economy. Perhaps if African had self determination earlier it would be in better shape, and perhaps not, but the situations were completely different.

I can see them comming

[Anonymous Coward]

US army bringing "democracy" to africa...

No not really

[Sycraft-fu]

Fiji is a strange exception and I've no idea how they've managed to survive with those costs. Most US bottled water is made right in the US.

Take the two largest US brands, by far: Dasani and Aquafina. Those are Coke and Pepsi respectively. They are, quite literally, Coke and Pepsi without the syrup and carbonation. They just purify the municipal water, and put back in a bit of minerals for flavour (RO water is strange to most people, they aren't used to the utter lack of taste), bottle it up and sell it. It is made in local plants, along with the other beverages the companies produce.

So no, really, the US is not chomping at the bit here to import water from Africa. Almost all of it is local, and most of that is just from municipal supplies (some of it comes directly from springs or the like).

Why am I suspect of BBC science

[gelfling]

Which just happens to find another precious resource under Arab countries?????

Can they use Fracking to pump water out of ground?

[DickBreath]

Fracking -- injecting high pressure water so that they can pump the sought after resource out of the ground.

Dude! Come on. A pony?

[denzacar]

Oh, and a pony.

That's Africa. They get a monkey.

Re:Undiscerning organisms

[hoboroadie]

ROTFLMAO