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We already can drink seawater the process to make it drinkable is merely too expensive to make most places consider doing it rather than draining the local aquifer for pennies. They are building a desalination plant in California and the estimates are that water from it (which can support 10% of the local water-need) is 80% more expensive than the water shipped in from the colorado river basin. There are other places that already use the technology, but it's universally because logistically speaking they don't have any other choice. Once again the bottom line is in the way of progress.
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Mar 7, 2015 10:54
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Frykte posted:My bedroom flooded because my grandpa got too much toilet water on his bathroom floor. I wish his water were more scarce hahahah. Really though general consensus seems to be everything will be alright in regards do being able to drink water. Thanks Haha. "SURE IS COLD THIS WINTER" screams the global warming denier into the faceless storm. But it's correct in the case. Unless we somehow manage to pollute all the worlds oceans to the point that they can no longer take their proper part in the world's water cycles, we'll be fine due to desalination. It's merely expensive, not undoable. That said it isn't looking good for inland cities in many parts of the world. Here in San Antonio and Austin for instance, we're only set to see slightly drier weather in the coming decades but we've already close to capped out our use of the local and very tasty edwards aquifer. It's a limestone sub-aquifer which means in everyday parlance that it owns fuckin' bones, but almost every summer now we use it right down to the red line of springs and poo poo drying up. Luckily we have environmental regulations (yes I know most texans won't believe this. its fine, gently caress you) that protect an endangered species of... I think its algae or something? Not sure.... anyway it lives in the springs that would dry up. So we kick in pretty hardcore regulations when that's about to happen. But the bad news is that the population of the areas that use the aquifer are still growing with no signs of slowing down. Meanwhile, pretty much everywhere north of here up to what is REALLY loving cold in canada at the moment is set to experience significantly drier weather. Unless we develop free, instant water transporting technology its going to necessarily involve either significant amounts of money or significant population movement. But keep in mind, this is not unique in the history of humanity. Our understanding of climate change's effect on history is certainly no where near complete, but we know of at least several large-scale events that have required similar levels of change to societies. The hope is that with more mobile populations and modern planning/technology we can avoid the worst kinds of consequences like millions of people dying.
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Mar 15, 2015 00:34
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Nintendo Kid posted:Well yeah, settling in deserts and near-deserts is pretty stupid. That's not so much the issue here. It's that formerly moderately wet places are going to be turning into near-deserts. There are other currently dry places that are also going to get wetter, but thats up north where the population is currently thin. These places that are going to be drying up include the current breadbasket of america.
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Mar 15, 2015 00:50
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Nintendo Kid posted:If you live somewhere where you've had to rely on fossil aquifers heavily, you likely do not reside somewhere that would have been considered "moderately wet" by an ecologist within living memory. If you try to call San Antonio/Austin "desert" or "near-desert" you're an idiot. It's in the green area of that map and gets 30 inches average annual precipitation. That's more than Kansas, for instance, and pretty much the same as the wet parts of michigan. It's not the wettest place in the US but it's certainly not bone dry. Use of fossil aquifers is not indicative of how hosed a place is: many places like here keep their recharge zones empty and use them similarly to ground-level water holding areas. It's true that excessive human habitation plus the likely drop in local precipitation means bad things in the future but your posts do not string together to form a coherent argument.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:15
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Squalid posted:Not to defend nintendo kid or anything but when you're talking about water availability you also have to account for evaporation, which is in large part a function of heat. So comparing two places, one with an average temperature of 68.7°, and another with an average of 42.8°F, even if rainfall is identical there's going to be a lot more water available in the place averaging 42.8 No doubt. There are also other factors at play like the water retention of the soil and porosity of the underlying strata. Nintendo Kid's argument probably holds water (tee hee) when you're talking about irrigating the Californian central plains for commercial use, for instance; but my posts have been dealing with a separate category of hosed: places that might have enough water to exist sustainably now, but almost certainly will not in future.
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Mar 17, 2015 06:33
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