Slashdot Mirror
For Much of the World, Demand For Water Outstrips Supply
ananyo writes "Almost one-quarter of the world's population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion (abstract). Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers — which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders — provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries. Yet in most of the world's major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs' capacity for renewal."
brb, need a 30 min shower
Please get therapy, you clearly need it.
and then we all die.
"Demand outstrips Supply" is simply a restatement of "The price is too low."
That's not possible. As a matter of simple economics, demand can't outstrip supply. If supply diminishes, either demand decreases or prices go up, or both.
Technically, the only way for demand to outstrip supply is if supply couldn't meet the basic necessities for sustaining life, in which case demand would rapidly disappear.
Sam Kinison on World Hunger
There wouldn't be world hunger if you people lived where the FOOD IS!
You live in a desert! Nothing grows out here!
You see this, this is sand, you know what its gonna be hundred years from now, IT's GONNA BE SAND!
Get your kids get your shit we'll make one trip. We'll take you to where the food is!
We have deserts in America, we just don't live in them asshole!
(can't have food without water)
I dont believe inane means what you think it means.
What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
So be it... may your children be dried husks cursing us until they die.
"People back then would use fresh groundwater for bathing and flushing their waste!"
This is one reason why the Great Lakes states have signed a compact... our massive fresh water supplies will be worth a lot...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
Thanks for that, National Geographic. ...d' I mean... Slashdot? Hey, waitaminute.
sig: sauer
Our best estimate is that the ObamaCare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis.
1% of the purchase price goes to health care? That sounds like a bargain to me.
But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb ObamaCare.
Same with all your other competitors, so no one is at a competitive disadvantage due to PPACA.
The restaurant industry is worried about ObamaCare. The National Restaurant Association notes that the law requires companies which have more than 50 employees to provide affordable health insurance or face steep penalties.
Then they should have lobbied for single payer when they had the chance.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
So be it... may your children be dried husks cursing us until they die.
You seem to equate the matter with death.
Wouldn't most people just move from the region instead of dehydrating to a desiccated husk?
I mean, I guess people besides you since you seem so dead set on being a Water Martyr. We'll erect a statue to you before we leave. Or set up a stand for you to rest in as the end nears so you can make your own gruesome statue, somehow I think that your would prefer this option...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Physics 101.
When you pump water out of the ground, it leaves a void. When you don't backfill, the void eventually collapses. The oil industry is aware of this problem (that and oil doesn't tend to want to just lift itself out of the ground once the initial pressure does its thing), which is why they use seawater to displace the oil: seawater is pumped in, oil flows out or is pumped out leaving the void which is then backfilled under gravity through a strategically placed hole or two.
Back to the topic: the stable system of rain=>aquifer is disrupted to greater or lesser degrees by human activity. That's obvious. The amount of rain remains constant (more or less), which means the amount of water removed from the aquifer is gone. Simple as. The global water industry has a few options to try and deal with this problem before we start seeing entire cities disappearing into sinkholes:
1. Backfilling. Something not currently done, but it begs the question as to what to backfill with?
2. Alternative sources. We have viable desalination technology (geothermal, solar stills, seat salt extraction plants(!))... we have made great strides in atmospheric water extraction to the point where a plant in the middle of a desert can turn sand into golf course. One option that I don't think has been properly explored is a wide area water grid, possibly national or international in scale. We have the technology, we have the capability, the chock under that wheel is politics.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Man, I'm willing to pay an extra 14 cents on a Papa John's pizza if it means the poor bastards preparing and delivering it have health insurance now. Hell, I thought it would be an extra dollar.
It's good to see your priorities are in order, though. Fuck everyone else's needs if they make the price of a pizza go up by less than fifteen cents.
So the increase in temperatures by 2C is actually good - more evaporation from the oceans means more rain over the aquifers which means more aquifer replenishment!
Maybe those countries should oh, I dont know, control their populations? Or is the rest of the world going to have to scramble to assemble some sort of international relief for them as they blow past their sustainable population limits without hesitation?
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
...most of the world is busy either developing or buying smartphones and flat screens rather than investing in food/water/health technologies. Jeez, there is a country where 600M people were w/o electricity for a week and that same country is planning to send a mission to Mars.
the law requires companies which have more than 50 employees to provide affordable health insurance or face steep penalties
Provide != Pay for. Providing insurance costs companies nothing except a couple of hours of their CEO being wined and dined by insurance reps at 5 star restaurants, which I guess will cut into the CEO's all-important golf time if the golf club doesn't have a five-star restaurant on premises, in which case it must be a two-bit company because what self-respecting CEO would golf at such a cheap course?
1. Backfilling. Something not currently done, but it begs the question as to what to backfill with?
Oil, obviously.
Most of this planet is covered by water. We simply need to learn how to use it instead of our ground water. There are plenty of reasonable nascent technologies to provide that ability. There just needs to be an economic incentive to invest. Either it comes earlier through government/corporate sponsorship through policy and investment, or it comes later when ground water becomes economically unviable relative to the alternatives.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Assume there is a container of liquid and bacteria with exactly enough food in the solution to feed the bacteria for 30 minutes. Assume also that the population of bacteria doubles every minute.
At what time is half of the food remaining?
Should we start exporting water?
He is a long-term investor (in the Warren Buffet mold) who puts out a quarterly newsletter of investment advice. He just released his latest a few days ago, and it's highly bearish on the future because of resource demands.
http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/GMOQ2Letter.pdf
The ones who say "don't worry about the future, science will take care of it" would probably consider jumping off the Empire State Building to be ok, because they did it and they've fallen 30 floors and nothing bad has happened, therefore jumping off the ESB is perfectly safe...
Alternately, the chock under the wheel is that it's much cheaper to use the groundwater. Of course, this might be disastrous in the long run, but it's easy to show that economics pays pretty much no attention at all to the long run.
I am officially gone from
Please get therapy, you clearly need it.
Spot on. One of the first signs of insanity is discrimination.
I know lots of tech folks think we'll melt comets for water, but reality suggests otherwise. How many people are willing to give up the suburban dream of the house with a pool to help the species? You know, instead of *talking* about the species whenever a space story comes up, what are you DOING?
In some Arabic countries that's an actual option. It is said that the worst job in the planet is being a water well driller in Saudi Arabia. "Damn, it's oil again!!"
We're also polluting ground water at an alarming rate. With more droughts likely ground water is critical to agriculture in the US as well as drinking water. I used to live in LA and a disturbing number of wells were contaminated some even with radioactive waste, none from power plants it was industrial pollution. I'm in Phoenix now and the city is sinking due to the aquifer collapsing as the water is drained. That's capacity that is perminately lost. For every foot of settling that's the city a foot deep in water that's lost. The city has lost 74.5 million acre-feet in the last 70 years to give an idea what Phoenix is facing.
Ooo Ooo... made from Corn!
There are very cheap ways to recycle water that we don't use enough now but we must in the future. Desalinization is still too expensive but the costs are coming down. Solar/wind powered desalinization could work in poor areas for drinking water but probably not fast enough for farming. Ice mining is also an option we should consider since it is going to melt anyway.
If water has a market price on it, people will use it efficiently.
Unfortunately, most fresh water supplies are owned by governments that price is far below what a private owner would.
We live on a planet covered %70 in water. Salt is not difficult to take out of water, boy scouts can do it. I didn't go to Harvard but I know how to run a fucking pipe line of fresh water to where ever it needs to go. Seriously, this is fucking unnecessary to even complain about lack of water on this planet. Water water everywhere and if you put just a miniscule amount of effort you can drink to your hearts content.
If that 15 cents goes towards paying for Obamacare, will that mean there will be a personal mandate to buy pizza to make both more affordable?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The issue, of course, is not "water"; it's freshwater. We have a lot of water on this planet. Generally it can exist in 5 states: seawater, clouds, freshwater (or what I like to call "drinkable land water"), aquifer water (underground water), and snow/ice.
Around the world aquifers are being depleted. This is a problem because this is one of the most low-energy (and technologically well understood) ways to harvest drinkable land water. And humans are not the only living creatures that use aquifer water! If there is not aquifer water for plants then the plants are completely dependent on rainwater or flowing drinkable land water (rivers, creeks, etc., which are all on their way to becoming seawater again ASAP). This is a precarious state to be in, because on a macro scale, once plants start to be incapable of doing their job (providing ground shade, ecosystems for biomass, improving and retaining soil structure, etc.) a landscape can be on the road to desertification. What does this mean? That means that it's going to stop raining. This has happened, many times, because of human modification of the landscape and has led to the total collapse of multiple powerful civilizations (Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" talks about things like this).
So what are we supposed to do? Say you are an ecological steward (or policy maker) for a couple hundred acres of land that are on their way to desertification or that are already in a stable, but arid, water cycle. It is easy to think of water in terms of accounting and cash-flow, what is the big picture that will make the landscape profitable and growing in "financial" reserves?
The big picture is very simple: we are trying to make seawater into permanent land water. The more net land water the Earth has, the more stable and abundant the existence of terrestrial life on this planet, in general, will be.
(Just remember we're practicing for Mars!)
How do you do this? The input of "free" water we have (meaning no energy cost for the conversion from seawater to potential land water) is rain. We need to make sure that as much rain as possible stays as underground water... or the *sixth* form of water that I haven't mentioned yet: biomass! There is a lot of water in biomass. And it is a relatively closed loop (meaning that once some water becomes biomass it will stay in the biomass cycle for a long time). Insects, plants and *especially* soil biology are some of the greatest resources we have for storing water on land instead of losing it to the ocean.
And then of course, we are all technologists, so I think it is also worthwhile suggesting that we should be using renewable energy resources to desalinate saltwater and just pump it back (I don't know if these techniques have even been invented yet) into our aquifers and ecologies.
What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
It is also a lack of sensible policies. Here in California, farmers receive subsidized water to grow rice and cotton, which need a lot of water. If we end the taxpayer funded subsidies, farmers will grow crops that actually make sense, and much of the problem will go away.
same NRA that does not pay the full cost of drivers useing there car to be delivering pizza much less auto insurance to cover pizza delivery.
You can get hit by a pizza driver and there insurance may not pay out as they don't cover pizza delivery or only cover it at a much higher rate.
Grandpa still thinks the three shells are a socialist invention.
Oil made from corn? You think we're dumb enough to turn water plants, then turn them into oil, so we can backfill wells for water?
Obviously we'd use oil made from coal.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Because it is 100% impossible for people to MOVE to where there are better resources...
Damn, I wish humanity was mobile and not firmly rooted to the ground like trees....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You may have history, but I have logic and evidence.
If people are everywhere,
They are drinking water everywhere
if everywhere cant support the people
Nowhere will.
Think about that and get back to me.
I know this is /. where everyone is an expert on everything, so I'll buck the trend and ask a honest question; wouldn't desalination be the perfect use for the power supplied by sources such as wind and solar? (Solar especially I guess.) As it appears to the be perfectly suited to the variable power output that these generate?
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You actually thing providing healthcare is next to free for a company?
Oh noes! It costs my company $0.0000000001 to pay for the laser toner to write the line on my pay stub that lets me know that they withheld MY money from my paycheck to pay 100% of my insurance premium! Quick we better charge twice as much for everything or we might go out of business!
Like I said, I'm sure the CEO had to take a break from his very important golfing to handle whatever kickbacks he took to decide what insurance policy the company would offer to us employees. I guess the company is losing money on disability insurance just in case the CEO sprained his wrist signing the contract.
Maybe if you Republicans actually focused on the real problems with the bill instead of making up fake bullshit like this, people would take you more seriously.
Apologies if you're actually a Democrat trolling people by pretending to be a stupid Republican.
How dare these people hoard this water and remove it from the ecosystem. I'd also like to know where all these vast reservoirs of water are hidden, so we can raid them, and return our water to us. Oh wait - perhaps it's a case of... ahh yes, the USABLE, water, the potable water, the water that can be drunk by people and animals and crops, yeah that's in short supply. And it costs lots of money to turn all that urine - be it human or animal, or all that fertilizer and insecticide contaminated farm run-off - back into potable water.
So this is an economic problem, not a physical one. Well you know at some point you have to stop building stadiums and funding armies and buying fancy jet fighters, and actually spend money where it's needed. Otherwise you have to start sterilizing or shooting people. It's that simple. And if you do nothing, the problem will fix itself. Earth will always have water, and the water will be much cleaner when there are no humans left.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Because he cant whine like a baby there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I agree, it should be 100% mandated and tax paid healthcare like Canada.
Funny, how canada has great doctors and they all did not "flee" like some retards think will happen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
People aren't everywhere though...
I imagine most of the water would be used for irrigation, and most of that would go down back to the aquifer.
That's OK, T Boone Pickens is working on correcting that.
All praise the invisble hand from which all blessing flow!!! whoops, broke the 1st commandment there
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I smell a Waterworld+Armageddon movie coming up.
"Back to the topic: the stable system of rain=>aquifer is disrupted to greater or lesser degrees by human activity. That's obvious. The amount of rain remains constant (more or less), which means the amount of water removed from the aquifer is gone. "
Because all that water is shot into space when we are done with it. it's gone forever....
Please learn about water and what a watershed is. when you do watershed management and wastewater treatment your FUD does not exist.
Only in poorly designed systems wher water is taken out of a watershed is when things fail. Bad designs like the middle east, africa, california have failures.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Governments have been manipulating weather for decades. It's only going to increase. http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I forgot to mention how much welfare has been the end of poverty. I'm out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth_(novel)
Same story, new setting.
In fact if you bother to open a history book instead of the comic books you apparently feast upon for your simplistic world view, you'd find that MANY past civilizations have migrated after conditions changed where they were - this was all pre-technology.
I'll bite. Pre-tech we had about 6 billion fewer people. Now, almost all land in the world is owned or not worth owning or living upon. Small migrations may be possible but if larger migrations were possible, millions of people in Africa might have shifted to considerably more human friendly areas in the past century. People move because of hunger and war, but generally those migrations are not sustainable as a future settlement area because of the lack of resources, well, everywhere. They are expected to move back.
Am I the only one who had to go back and read the thread to figure out why the National Rifle Association was allegedly not paying pizza delivery insurance?
well that NRA should stand up for drivers who get fired for useing a gun to fend off robbers.
The problem with migration is that most countries don't like immigrants.
I think that is what he is trying to say, that many of these systems are poorly designed. Water is being removed from an area of "ample" supply to areas with little or no supply. We are attempting to take the same volume of water and spread it out over a larger area, on a global scale.
Seriously... How stupid are we as an "intelligent" species that we don't rely on the massive oceans for our water supplies? Desalinate it, pump it, drink it. I'm really surprised that a multi-billion dollar industry hasn't popped up to make this happen all over to planet.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
What does seem obvious to me is the lack of concern.
It is also a lack of sensible policies. Here in California, farmers receive subsidized water to grow rice and cotton, which need a lot of water. If we end the taxpayer funded subsidies, farmers will grow crops that actually make sense, and much of the problem will go away.
Check your history books. The first Spanish settlers in California damned near died before they could get irrigation up and running. There's not a lot that grows in California without irrigation.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Thankfully Global Warming will increase evaporation of the oceans causing more cloud cover and rain.
Of course then the rain comes in the form of Category 5 hurricanes, but farmers will always find something to bitch about why their crops won't grow.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
you're missing the obvious -- "For much of the world..." sooooo pick up and move to ... where? another place that has no water? suppose you do find a place that has water. now all the water refugees are moving there. how soon until that water source can't sustain its growing demand? life is a zero-sum game.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Aquifers, pssshhh. The best place to store water is in the body.
This situation exists in your head, not in the Canada of "real life".
So, yeah, evidence would be nice.
You may have history, but I have logic and evidence.
If people are everywhere,
They are drinking water everywhere
if everywhere cant support the people
Nowhere will.
Is that supposed to be read with a crunchy, dynamic-range compressed, bass-extended male voice, with a pause after every line?
Not sure if parent is trolling or just plain stupid. Nevertheless, it's pretty disgusting that somebody fosters thoughts like that in their mind.
But just about all of it requires less water than rice!
Which some might think means that subsidizing farms in California is a bad idea.
Instead, let's consider using the water elsewhere for other things.
Or not, since California has lots of Electoral votes.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
With these machines, the best water output is obtained at 50 to 70 per cent relative humidity and between 28-42 degrees Celsius. A lesser water output is produced even at 25 per cent relative humidity. Atmospheric water extractor units can be kept anywhere, but need access to fresh air, so they work best when placed by a window, or in the balcony or terrace.
Sounds to me like they'd be way expensive to run in a desert to me. Desert air rarely hits 50 percent humidity.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
We got two problems. Insufficient replenishment of fresh water (this article), and global warming (man-made or otherwise).
The latter problem will lead to an increase of evaporation of water. Consequently, this leads to an increase in rain. Which in turn increases the rate of replenishment of resh water.
Don't worry. This world is self-balancing. Else everything would have died ages ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Girl_(film)
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Say China has a massive drought lasting a couple of years. Where, exactly do you think a couple hundred million people are going to go?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Interesting, yet you would seem to be insane.
if everywhere cant support the people
Nowhere will.
And if everywhere can, then everywhere will!! Ha!
Think about that and get back to me.
You think about the inverse, but keep it to yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All I have to say is:
Tank Girl
We always knew that in aggregate the people of California are among the stupidest in the U.S. Your figures merely supply further proof.
Although frankly wouldn't a nearly 80% on federal taxes seem rather high given that we have to have a decently sized army, and also care for the poor in every state of the nation? Seems like a state would be proud of helping others instead of complaining about it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How many Latin Americans a year try to get into the United States? How many Turks, Pakistanis and other Central Asians and Middle Easterners try to get into Europe every year? How many rural Chinese try to move to the more prosperous coastal provinces every year? How many Africans end up in refugee camps outside their countries of origin?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hmm, no more California drivers, vs. living in a third world...
Still thinking. Can you get back to me on that?
Say, isn't Facebook HQ in California? I think I just made up my mind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's how Egypt came to the Nile in the first place.
He did not say that the farmers in California should not irrigate their farms. He said that they should not receive taxpayer subsidized irrigation.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
millions of people in Africa might have shifted to considerably more human friendly areas in the past century
They have. Have you not heard of the masses of people fleeing Zimbabwe into places like South Africa?
No South Africa does not like it, neither can they stop it.
A truly mass migration of people cannot really be stopped, even when you are willing to gun many down.
The fact is most people stay where they are if they can live, even if conditions worsen. It's only when things get terrible fast that they move on en masse.
An aquifer going dry is a more gradual thing. Some areas will no longer be able to pull from it, water costs will go up.. over years, people will be squeezed out of a region, and easily absorbed elsewhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No shit. I'm a Canadian. My wife was diagnosed with a tumor in her neck in February of 2006. In April she had her first surgery, which revealed it to be a thyroid tumor, and by June she had a total thyroidectomy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Indeed. The half-ass system that the US has seems destined to always be suboptimal.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Talk about a waste of water: parts of north Texas (and many other areas obviously), have clay soil which moves in crazy ways if allowed to dry out too much. This moves you house in crazy ways, causing cracks inside and out. The solution? We're encouraged to water our foundations. Huge amounts of water go to this, which results in our lake levels getting low, which puts us into water restrictions where we can't water the lawn.
Better solutions would be (1) build the foundations to withstand the soil moving, (2) and/or use a different method to keep the soil stable. I'm skipping (3) move elsewhere because DFW is not going to sprout legs and go take over Oklahoma. Unfortunately (2) likely suffers the same problem as the current solution of watering the foundation with soaker hoses: it's basically impossible to do it evenly... so you end up with overmoist areas, and other areas that still move some.
Marc
-- PGP keyID: 0x4C95994D
You're adding a step where there doesn't need to be one: solar stills are basically greenhouses with pools in. The condensate runs off into side channels for utilisation, the salts and effluent are left in the pool to be scraped and disposed of.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Get rid of malpractice.
Already tried that.
Turns out that doctors do all those so-called "defensive" tests because they're paid per-test, and it sounds better to say "I did 20 tests so I wouldn't be sued" instead of "I (well, actually my medical assistant... my time is too important, I have to see 19 other patients and order their tests this hour) did 20 tests at $100 a piece, ka-ching!"
Read More.
Require plain and simple billing from doctors, and insurance companies
Good luck with that. For the doctor to tell you how much you're going to owe him/her, they're going to have to get the insurance company to tell them what they're going to pay for that procedure on that day, which the insurance company has to be dragged kicking and screaming because they don't want the doctor to know what they're supposed to be paid for doing that procedure.
How about medicare and medicaid? Those have been here a long time. Still we need universal health care.
The Moon has been there a long time but we still need healthcare (no less of a non-sequitor).
And this is why I'm glad I live in the Mid Western United States on the Great Lakes. Freshwater shortage whats that? Now if only we can keep company's from dumping hazardous chemicals into the lakes, and make cities keep up there water treatment facilities....
If you think healthcare is expensive now wait until people don't have to pay for it.
You mean, like, if an employer-provided insurance plan covers it?
but it is a viable option in India because the infrastructure is cheaper to install than several hundred massive electrically-powered or oil-powered pumps across vast tracts of desert and upwards through several thousand feet - and from your quote, it does produce even at desert-level humidity.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Good point, so how can California be in this situation?!
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What is he talking about here? Do all the lakes, rivers, etc., only account for 1% of the unfrozen freshwater in the world? A couple of paragraphs above Gleeson's statements: Yet Famiglietti notes that the study, which focuses on quantifying the rate of groundwater tapping versus recharging, underscores the lack of data we have on the amount of water currently in the world's aquifers. “The only way to answer the sustainability question is to answer how much water we actually have,” he says.
So we don't know how much water we have in the aquifers. Yet, Gleeson is happy to state that 99% of the unfrozen freshwater is groundwater? Also, when did water-tables go out of fashion? I thought it was the water table which was being replenished by rainwater. I realise that the article is only an overview of the analysis. Nevertheless, considering its alarmist tone, I'd have expected mention of improvements in desalination technology.
Quillem : An India-centric mishmash of things.
It is China, my guess would be to the nearest Foxconn factory where they will be worked until they can't any more and the problem solves its self.
Time to offend someone
They did "flee" : the small cities and towns. Places like Thunder Bay, Ontario, have to pay new doctors 2x or more than the old ones who retire, because new doctors all want to live in the big cities. That is the Canadian health crisis.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Global Warming to the rescue!
Melt those icebergs! Melt, melt, melt! You can do it!
And the rising flood will bring the water to the people! How handy!
Crack open a book sometime,
While you only cracked open the book, I have read them. In fact many.
In fact if you bother to open a history book instead of the comic books you apparently feast upon for your simplistic world view, you'd find that MANY past civilizations have migrated after conditions changed where they were - this was all pre-technology. Bays receded, rivers changed - the story of people migrating to other areas because water has moved is literally as old as recorded history.
Further, it takes a certain level of technology to make use of aquifers - the level of technology that would help to enable a migration... the poor still work off shallow wells or rivers the world over.
Most of the world is unlike the fantasy world you have constructed, people are far more practical and able than you can possible imagine.
Maybe they could move to your backyard. You wouldn't chase them off with a gun or anything, would you?
You think we're dumb enough to turn water plants, then turn them into oil, so we can backfill wells for water?
That depends, will the required subsidies get someone in a marginal state reelected next election?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How dare you infringe on someone's right to grow crops in places they won't grow naturally at the expense of others!?!
1% of the purchase price goes to health care? That sounds like a bargain to me.
...until General Motors does the same thing, that is. :/
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You're being a little simplistic yourself.
Did people migrate in the past? Absolutely.
Is it as easy to do so today? Not even remotely.
California would not be as problematic. Plenty of technology to apply to the problems and more than enough qualified people to deal with the logistics. Costs would skyrocket to live in California, but then again, it costs a metric shitload to live in Hawaii compared to the Midwest. People that cannot afford to live in California already leave. My family did a few decades back when the business moved out since it was vastly cheaper for a business in another state. There is quite a bit of room in the continental US and people could spread out into other cities that already have the infrastructure to handle them.
In short, the peoples of California possess the sophistication, resources, and access to infrastructure to migrate.
What about the other places mentioned? How easy would it be for the peoples of the Upper Ganges to migrate? That's nearly 200 million people IIRC. How many of them have the resources to move at all? While moving you still need to provided shelther, food, clothing, water, etc. Where would they be going through while getting to their destination? Are those areas friendly to them? Is their destination going to be friendly to them?
What about migrations across different countries? Look how friendly the US is with immigrants. If half of Mexico was inhospitable to life and lacked the infrastructure and resources to support 100 million people, would the US culture, environmental and political climate support such a migration?
1000 years ago it would not be as complex to migrate a much smaller number of people through sparsely populated areas. There might still be some issues, but generally the migrations that populated North America had far less difficulties than moving 200 million people in India from one place to another.
Migration is a simplistic solution to resources shortages that may be coming. Unless you plan, well, well, well in advance and start early you could end up with quite a problem.
Planning is quite doubtful too given human behavior. I already forgot which state it was, but on the east coast of the US you already have a state government legislating the dismissal of scientific evidence about sea level rise since it is just too hard to deal with economically. Why would people not ignore scientific evidence about the progressive lack of water for the same reasons?
Of course, there is also a quite probable outcome... the destination for the migration simply won't want to absorb millions of extra people and could resort to violence....
You seem to equate the matter with death.
No shit. And you seem to think "exists" means "will always exist, even if we don't do anything to preserve it."
A small percentage compared to those that would migrate if nobody was stopping them.
You mean, like, if an employer-provided insurance plan covers it?
There's quite a few million people out there who will have to, you know, get a job first before they can get that.
There's also that "employer-provided insurance plan" - fact is, most of them suck. Instead of my previous catastrophic plan that was dirt cheap ( > $100/mo plus $5k sitting around in the bank to cover the deductible)? The required changes my employer made will mean that my health insurance bill will now cost more per month than a car payment, and I'd still have to pay $3,500 out of pocket* before it actually kicked in and did anything.
So, thanks to the government, instead of my regular salary? I have to dock it by the annual insurance payments.
Way to reduce my fucking wages, Mr President. Anything else I can do to further your short-sighted partisan agenda?
* (That $3,500 becomes a $7,000 annual out-of-pocket max if I got stuck with using an out-of-network provider)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And more on topic, that 11 to 14 cents per pizza is going to be dwarfed by the current drought affecting most of the US. That pepperoni and sausage and whatever other meat you use comes from animals fed on feed made from corn. There's going to be way less than half the corn this year because of the lack of WATER. That cheese is made from milk from cows that eat feed made from corn. That coke you drink with your pizza is sweetened by corn syrup. The crust will probably cost more too, because iinm it's affecting Kansas as well.
The supply of food will be far lower than normal, cause by far less water than normal. The best things in life, including rain and air, are free.
Of course, the bigoted moron you responded to will of course see the rise of food prices caused by this terrible drought and blame it on Obamacare.
Free Martian Whores!
Places like Thunder Bay, Ontario, have to pay new doctors 2x or more than the old ones who retire, because new doctors all want to live in the big cities. That is the Canadian health crisis.
That's been a serious problem in the American system for at least the past thirty years, in case you really are as clueless as this comment makes you seem. In fact, it was starting all the way back in the late fifties. That was when my dad started practicing in a small town. The only reason he moved there was that he grew up on a farm and wanted one of those, too. The town had a vacancy for about four years prior to his starting because they couldn't find anyone who wanted to come out there.
That is all.
To be perfectly honest, I do not know that the OP on this thread is correct about the subsidized irrigation. I do know that the water distribution setup in California (and much of the Southwest) is a complicated mess and subject to political shenanigans.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The people who equate "comic books" with "simplistic" demonstrate their own failure to read.
Global warming => higher evaporation rate from the oceans => greater precipitation => more water entering the aquifers. Problem solved!
I jest, but it's half serious. Just because something is undesired overall does not mean it cannot have some desirable effects.
Unless that extraction happens just before the air moves over a large body of water, it will have no net effect. All you're doing is removing moisture before it can turn into natural rain elsewhere. e.g. If California started extracting water from the air, it would mean more fresh water for California. But the states to the East (downwind) would experience a proportional decrease in natural precipitation as a result.
... because LA is leeching up a large percentage of our water supply.
A few years back we got put under 'drought warning' because it turned out more profitable for the water company running Folsom Dam to sell our water down to LA than to supply it to the locals, and the local government allowed it. Anyone who thinks that regional demands are outstripped supply should look at the areas supplying water, and the areas actually recieving water and see if perhaps the water is flowing towards the money rather than the citizens who support it.
By any means necessary but preferably passive means such as involuntary sterilization through bacterial of viral vectors, facilitating conflict, restricting medical technology and promoting genocide.
We love Gaea and we will not be happy until humans who will not live right cease to exist.
1% of the purchase price goes to health care? That sounds like a bargain to me.
- the pizza guy is wrong, it's going to be much bigger than that.
The prices for insurance are going to go through the roof now, that the health insurance industry will be destroyed. There is no concept of 'insurance' if there is no concept of 'pre-existing condition', and since the fine for not having the insurance is going to be low (that's why the SCOTUS ruled it Constitutional, because the fine was too low to make people buy it, so it's not 'legislation through tax', * you can read more in the post I am linking to in my sig *) the people will not buy insurance.
Instead people who have insurance today will be getting rid of it, why pay for it now, if the fine is very low and they can't be denied coverage once they need it? The people who will have insurance will be those, who are subsidised under Obama's plan.
The real costs to the insurance companies will go through the roof, insurance is no longer insurance, people won't buy it and those who have it will cancel it, the insurance model will collapse. The gov't will step in with 'bail outs' and as the case with GM, the insurance industry will become government industry, which to you basically means 'single payer'.
This is the destruction of individual freedoms through what amounts to basically hacking of the political system and the implicit and explicit support by the mob.
You can't handle the truth.
But California has the perfect Mediterranean climate to grow most things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_(California)
"On less than 1 percent of the total farmland in the United States, the Central Valley produces 8 percent of the nation’s agricultural output by value"
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Says the guy who just admitted that it took 6 years for his wife to get a surgery for cancer...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
It's really not as simple as it sounds at first glance. But if it becomes a major issue it could happen.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I'm sorry. I didn't know I had to spell it out, but it was all during 2006. The order of events, as I recall it:
Winter 2005 - She started noticing some pain while eating sour foods and drinking things like wine. Our family doctor put her on antibiotics and sour candies (yup, that's right), thinking it was a blocked salivary gland.
Early 2006 - Problem still there, so doc sent her in for an ultrasound
Feburary 2006 - Off to a specialist, who initially thought salivary tumor, but sent her off for CAT scan. CAT scan revealed a large mass near or on carotid body. She is now referred to an ENT (Ear-Nose-Throat specialist). More CAT scans and MRI ordered. A biopsy is done but results are indeterminant.
March 2006 - ENT suspects carotid body artery, so books her in for surgery for April.
April 2006 - Surgery reveals this is a thyroid tumor. She is closed up. The ENT orders more scans specifically of thyroid, and sends off biopsy.
May 2006 - A diagnosis of follicular thyroid cancer is made... which is good, because it's a very slow growing cancer, but bad because it appears to have lymph involvement (bad for any kind of cancer). He recommends a total thyroidectomy, and as a side note, gives a piece of paper with the risks of such a procedure, which I may say is the most frightening 8.5x11 piece of paper I've ever held in my hands. More CAT scans and MRI.
June 2006 - Thyroidectomy performed. A number of lymph nodes are removed as well as considerable surrounding tissue. Five days in the hospital along with physio afterwards because of nerve damage to that side of the face and to the nerves controlling that shoulder. Has to spend to take synthetic thyroid medication the rest of her life.
I left out the best part, which you Americans should pay attention to. By the time of a diagnosis of cancer had been made, the ISP I was working for had closed and I was out of work. Because Canada has a fully public health care system, there was no loss of insurance and for all our cares and worries (our kids were 12 and 14 at the time, so A LOT to worry about), the one thing we never had to worry about was paying what surely must have amounted to tens of thousands of dollars in bills. We did not lose our house, we did not declare bankruptcy, we did not have to borrow vast sums.
I would guess, in most of the US, my wife would probably have gone through the final surgery a few weeks earlier.
So when some anti-health care American comes around talking about how bad the Canadian system is, I have personal experience with the Canadian system, and have known a number of people who have had cancer, and no one has died for lack of treatment. Most certainly it does happen, but can anyone seriously claim that it doesn't in the States?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The prices for insurance are going to go through the roof now, that the health insurance industry will be destroyed
how on earth do you reach that conclusion? the insurance industry said the only way they could reduce costs was if they had more customers. the government just handed the insurance industry all the customers they could ever ask for. this is the greatest gift to an industry that the us government has ever handed out.
The real costs to the insurance companies will go through the roof, insurance is no longer insurance, people won't buy it and those who have it will cancel it, the insurance model will collapse
that makes no sense. did you fail economics 101? increased demand - even forced demand - is supposed to push prices down, not up.
The gov't will step in with 'bail outs'
the insurance industry just got the biggest bailout any industry could ever hope for. just because they own congress and the white house doesn't mean they get additional bailouts after this one.
as the case with GM, the insurance industry will become government industry
ok now you're trying to be funny? general motors hasn't done government work since WWII. even with the gm bailout they weren't taking orders from the federal government.
Stop growing grains for cattle. That would decrease the amount of grains needed by factor "alot" and therefore decrease the water needed.
Stop eating ridiculous amounts of meat. 80 grams is enough for what you need. You will not have a bad life if you do so. Also you will not grow a beard and become a hippy.
Privacy is terrorism.
You mean, like, if an employer-provided insurance plan covers it?
There's quite a few million people out there who will have to, you know, get a job first before they can get that.
There's also that "employer-provided insurance plan" - fact is, most of them suck. Instead of my previous catastrophic plan that was dirt cheap ( > $100/mo plus $5k sitting around in the bank to cover the deductible)? The required changes my employer made will mean that my health insurance bill will now cost more per month than a car payment, and I'd still have to pay $3,500 out of pocket* before it actually kicked in and did anything.
So, thanks to the government, instead of my regular salary? I have to dock it by the annual insurance payments.
Way to reduce my fucking wages, Mr President. Anything else I can do to further your short-sighted partisan agenda?
* (That $3,500 becomes a $7,000 annual out-of-pocket max if I got stuck with using an out-of-network provider)
Believe it or not, once upon a time people had jobs. And the jobs frequently carried decent insurance.
But two things happened since 1980. First, jobs stopped being "permanent" and benefits went out the window. Secondly, medical rates skyrocketed because people didn't pay for health care, insurance did. Well, the second item I'm pretty sure predates 1980, actually.
That's where the whole deal from "Hilarycare" on down came in. If you can't keep a job, you get jacked around by the insurance. Worse, for those of us where the inter-job intervals are fairly long, there were intervals where insurance wasn't easy to come by - especially with no income to speak of. Plus you'd get nailed on "pre-existing conditions" when you changed jobs and insurance companies. It's going to take a LOT of Obama-theft to equal what was already done to me via that particular scam.
You always had money "stolen" from you for medical care - it was just mostly invisible pre-paycheck theft. Now we're cranking the honesty up a notch. The only real way to avoid being "robbed" was to be in good health, not involved in a health insurance program, and be willing to play Russian Roulette ... with 3-4 bullets in the gun instead of 1.
Does the current setup suck? Yes it does. It just sucks a little less than continuing to operate under a system based on an employment scheme that died when they invented the word "perma-temping". Most of the faults people find with Obamacare are faults that existed already but were hidden under the carpet, such as people using emergency rooms instead of preventitative care, thereby tapping your tax bill by stealth.
You'd think it was the freaking Apocalypse the way people go on about this. Should we bleed to death slowly or make mistakes and try to correct them? I don't care what party does what, as long as they do something constructive. Predicting the end of the world and vetoing everything - or more commonly, poisoning attempts to make progress (however misguided) is worse than anything we're likely do do wrong. When did helplessness become so fashionable?
Pre-tech we had about 6 billion fewer people... and still the migrations caused epic wars.
The Old Testament tells the story of a people migrating to a new land, and genocidally wiping out the people who already lived there.
The Hunnish and Mongol invasions of Europe are the story of people migrating to a new land, and waging vast and epic wars with the people who already lived there.
The American conquest of the West was the story of people moving to a new land, and waging ferocious and genocidal war with the people who already lived there.
World War 2 is the story of some countries (Germany, Japan) wanting more land for their people to occupy.
The Great Wall of China was built to discourage the Mongols from migrating southwards, because the Chinese emperors knew what would happen if they did.
The best parallel in the modern world is present-day Israel. That's what happens when a large population migrates to a new land and doesn't massacre every last man, woman and child of the indigenous population.
Won't a desalination plant like this be too slow/need an enormous amount of land preferably close to the sea?
Individual people can migrate from California.
If the whole population tried it, there'd be a problem. Two problems, in fact - where would they go, and what would happen to California?
heh... just heard on the radio that someone's gone started moaning about fledging a viable biodiesel industry in the States, claiming that it'd exacerbate the "food crisis". Like every other "crisis" we face, the cause isn't the amount we have but how it is DISTRIBUTED.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
1. As far as I'm aware desalination plants use pumps to move seawater into the evaporation plants.
2. There's your chock for desalinisation. People want clean water but they don't want to know where it comes from. Or they're ignorant of the process to the point where they think it magically falls out of the sky! (wait, what?)
3. Post treatment for turning distilled water into drinking water on a commercial scale adds mineral salts and gases to the distillate. I don't know where you got the FUD about distilled water being deadly from; hospitals use distilled water all the time in intravenous drips which might also contain salts, glucose, and drugs. I use distilled water from a homebuilt plant in my greenhouse. I also keep and use personal water treatment equipment which purifies water using filters, ion exchange resins and chemicals. That said, *too much* water (of any flavour or lack thereof) at once can be toxic - and it's a lot easier to recover from dehydration than from hydrotoxicity.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
No, yes. The larger the better, for obvious reasons (in case they aren't, one is the potential to capture more solar energy overall, another is to produce more water). Oman is probably the world's largest greenhouse desalinisation producer. For those without that kind of patience, there's reverse osmosis technology (as used in Spain), nuclear heat exchange distillation (Russia), cogenerative plants (which use traditional methods to generate their own power and the waste water is purified for circulation), vacuum distillation, multi-stage flash distillation (Bahrain), and freezing.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
erm.. .what?
My water supply comes from the Severn basin. My local basin is the Trent which drains into the Humber. Before the installation of the municipal water system, there were no flood plains where I live. Now there are hardly any floods in the Severn basin (which used to flood regularly), and the Trent breaches its banks several times a year. I think I know something about water.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Individual people leave California every day.
The whole population would not try it at the same time either. It would be over the course of several years I would think.
My point was the infrastructure could handle it. Where do people go now? I would think Las Vegas, Phoenix, Utah, etc. Anywhere they can find work or relatives. Not much different than how people move now, except there would be a lot more people doing it a shorter amount of time.
Not only is there readily available resources for transportation, but there are means to provide shelter, food, clothing, hygiene, etc. along the way to their destinations. Plenty of places available in the US for people to go as well. California has nearly 40 million people. In contrast, Texas has 25 million people. There is more than enough room in the rest of the US to accommodate 40 million people without a tremendous strain on local resources. Certainly not an insurmountable strain that would break down civilization.
There exists the infrastructure to handle not only the migration itself, but the resource requirements when they get to their destination.
All of this is assuming that everybody leaves. There does exist infrastructure and technology to transport water into California. There would be massive adjustments, most likely experienced as high prices for services and commodities.
People would not be starving en masse. California is an example where the people would be able to cope without society breaking down.
India, OTOH, already has problems just providing reliable power and is overcrowded as it is. Just where are 200 million people supposed to go? If not some other place in India, what other country would accept them? Pakistan? Maybe the more affluent Indians could relocate in another country. We could have an Indian Town someplace in the US. Not a fan of some Indian cuisine, but the northern provinces can kick some serious culinary butt.
Migration is not a solution for most places in the world when those regions become inhospitable.
Deforestation and the killing of wild animals faster than they can reproduce is the reason why water doesn't replenish quickly enough. Killing animals deprives their predators from food and so on, this affects the whole ecosystem in which these animals live. Deforestation prevents water from remaining in the soil and so on.
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California has some of the best farm land in the world. The only question is how to get water to it. You know, it takes more than water to grow food, right?
The problem you're having is that you're trying to solve a problem that's too big for the free market. It's like going into space (which is why you have Satellites and Internet btw). It was just too expensive for private enterprise to do. Socialism was needed. We got it, and it worked.
BTW, before you trot out the USSR and/or China (like your kind always does), they we not ever socialist. Canada is socialist. France is socialist. The USSR & China were fascist dictatorships that happened to borrow 'ole Karl's books. Christ, for want of a good (government enforced) copyright law...
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it's just that the ones that aren't are a very, very vocal minority. Most of them are fabulously rich, which helps make them more vocal. It's easy to be a vocal minority when you own the media, and the media is only liberal on social issues, not economics
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There is no water shortage. The earth is awash in the stuff. It is an energy shortage that makes reverse osmosis unprofitable. We should build more nuclear power plants.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Aquifer depletion has been known for decades
The central valley of California is practically a desert. Not as bad as LA, but still... An important source of water for the central valley has long been a pipeline from the Columbia River. Without this water source, one of the world's major food sources becomes ineffective. You can thank environmentalists when a dry central valley results in massive death by starvation.
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China is building a number of new dams up in the himalyas. And they are capable of diverting large amounts of water from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, etc. These do not look good since China denied that they were building dams, but then when shown the evidence from sats, they claimed that they are for flood control. Yet, the designs shows that they have NOTHING to do with flood control, but only as a diverting dams.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Again, the relative humidity is higher in India than it is in the Sahara. In my part of Arizona, a muggy day is like 30 percent humidity, when we get 'evaporain' during our 'monsoon season', 2 or 3 weeks every 6 months when the rain actually evaporates before it hits the ground. Most of the time it's under 20. A standing joke is our infamous '12 inch rain', where you get 1 drop every 12 inches. Needless to say, you'll still get something from the condenser, just not as much as you would in a wetter climate, all for about the same energy expenditure. Question is, would it support irrigation as well as drinking water for humans and animals? And if so, how many per unit?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
no it's not. at least half will die on the way there. Plus you think that water drank = water destroyed. it's not they will piss it on the ground and it goes back into the water ecosystem. If I use water it is not gone or destroyed unless I am splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. exporting the water out of it's watershed basin is what destroys water resources. for example. most of the desert cities away from a major river in the middle east. THEY are causing the damage in their area.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
preferably, by Sir David Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The restaurant industry is worried about ObamaCare. The National Restaurant Association notes that the law requires companies which have more than 50 employees to provide affordable health insurance or face steep penalties.
Then they should have lobbied for single payer when they had the chance.
Absolutely. It is disingenuous for those who argued for an individual mandate instead of a single payer to turn around and argue that individual mandate is unconstitutional.
Thanks, thats all been quite interesting. I always thought variable power sources such as wind would be quite well suited, I guess they are but maybe more in a pumping capacity than the actual process?
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no it's not.
yes it is.
Plus you think that water drank = water destroyed.
if "water destroyed" means "water that won't be available for use again by the time the rapidly increasing population of an area needs it" then yes, it does = water destroyed, in a practical sense.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Nope.
Watch out, we got a badass over here.
Future job ad: Exciting job opportunity lubing the backfill cornholes for water drilling.
Our water supply comes from Lake Ontario (which gets it's water from the other 4 Great Lakes in addition to watershed that makes it into Lake Ontario. As a result, I water my lawn like a mother fucker - and it's green - GREEN I tells ya after a hot summer with little precipitation. But people are all into this "water conservation" thing where I live so I'm living on a block of brown lawns because all of the tree huggers and bunny fuckers brainwashed everyone into thinking that using too much water is a bad thing - and as such we're stuck with 1.6 gallon per flush toilets that clog every time I drop a deuce and shower heads that give us a mere trickle of what we should be getting every morning.
But whatever - more water for me. No one wants to live here in upstate NY because it's too cold and snowy in the winter... so they'd rather live in a dry parched desert suburb outside Vegas instead. Dummies.
Must be young enough to still be a prospective taxpayer... my Canadian friend's mother died of bone cancer after treatment was delayed and delayed for some 5 YEARS, because she was retired and no longer a taxpayer.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Reverse osmosis might come out cheaper - look into it.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
yes, pumping is an integral part of pretty much all desalination methods at some stage or another, and for active processes (pretty much all but solar distillation) a HUMONGOUS amount of energy input is required. If that input can be made from renewable sources or at least partially met by them then the running costs can be reduced drastically.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
depends on a few factors: among them, the cost of building the plant, the energy input required for the process to work, the amount of water produced, and the unit cost (usually per tonne or cu.m) of the final product which largely depends on the other factors. There's also the problem of obtaining the technology which for some regions may be the subject of US sanctions.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Once again you are very wrong and knows nothing at all about the subject that you are attempting to look like an "expert" at. you do this a LOT here on /. and get modded down a LOT here on /.
I suggest you actually read science books on what lumpy is referring to and stop learning from Fox News.
As our environmentalists tell us there is more available water in the world now than in the last several hundred years. We are supposedly melting it, and the sea coasts are being absorbed in higher coast lines.
The problem is we don't have enough fresh (non-salty or contaminated) water where we want it.
Drilling is great, but with aquifers that are not refreshed sufficiently rapidly (this is happening in developed and under-developed countries too), live starts sucking if we can't find enough water for their needs, let alone desires.
We can use equipment to pull water out of the air, but that takes lots of capital and investments that we want to make.
We can handle it like oil. Pipe or truck it where we want it, but that takes more capital investments and fresh water doesn't go for $80/barrel for a long term, the economics aren't worth it.
People have from the beginning of time moved to where they CAN find fresh water abundantly. And we have figured out how to do with less. We just can't do with none.
It is just an economic exercise, those with the money will win, those without will loose. Life isn't fare. Life goes on.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."