Water.

[Loren Pechtel]

huh,

You do realize that in about 500 million years the sun will get hot enough to make almost all multicellular life extinct? It would take intelligent life of the time to make the Earth go further out in orbit to ameliorate it.

At any rate, I need to start going back to websites like resilience.org that talk about getting ready for the shit to hit the fan. It is as about as positive and mainstream as those types of sites get.

If by some miracle humans are alive in 1 million years they sure would be able to deal with a bit of more sun, launching bunch of mirrors in space or something.

Agreed. The warming of the sun as the years go by is not a meaningful threat to mankind. If we are around as a technological species we can deal with it.

It's important in the global warming debate, though, because one of the false rebuttals is to point out the higher CO₂ levels in times past and pretend that means higher levels now will have the same effect as they did back then.

 

[bleubird]

Texas should bottle all that rain for the next drought.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Texas should bottle all that rain for the next drought.

I've heard honest appeals for this. Not certain people understand a concept called volume.

 

[thebeave]

It's funny...Texas was in the midst of severe drought just a few years ago (still is?), and even Gov. Rick Perry started calling for prayers to God to send rain. So, maybe all this sudden rain is proof that God listens to prayers. He's just a little slow on the response time. Maybe God was off in another solar system writing another Bible or helping some alien kid with his math test, when the Texas drought prayers finally reached him. In his panic to the dire situation, he probably overreacted. I think God should use his powers to increase the prayer velocity.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, maybe all this sudden rain is proof that God listens to prayers. He's just a little slow on the response time.

There is that day-1000-years thing. God's place in plot continuity is pretty random.

Maybe the rain is a sign of God's approval for the Roe Vs. Wade decision?

 

[bleubird]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0R4Q714BGEAJFDKJ95KP

 

[bleubird]

http://readingeagle.com/ap/article/...rationalize-water-use-instead-of-rationing-it
If you can pay the price for a scares commodity,than the market is the best way.

 

[bleubird]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/08/entertainment/feat-tom-selleck-droughtshaming-water/index.html
I always thought Tom was an ass now I know.

 

[TSwizzle]

In an era when California is in the midst of a crippling drought and #droughtshaming has become a social-media buzzword, overuse of water is a distinct no-no. There are even apps available to share photos and information about apparent water wasters.

Good grief, what a sorry state of affairs. The fucking Stasi are everywhere.

 

[bleubird]

You live in a fucking desert,deal with it!

 

[bleubird]

Ok Magnum, did pay for that water.
Still a case of elitism.

 

[Playball40]

A lot less than the cost of ground systems amortized over a hundred years or so and the costs of negotiations with countries and states through which such a system would be constructed. Probably a lot less than oil being shipped for Saudi Arabia.

But still vastly more than desalination. Modern desalination plants produce drinking water at a total cost of less than a tenth of a cent per litre. You can't collect, treat and ship water from a few thousand km away that cheaply.

Hell, just the wharfage fees for bulk liquids at most major ports are more than that.

You think you could help the desalinization plant here in Tampa? It's been wrought with problems (mostly political I suspect) since day one. It is STILL NOT OPERATING.

 

[bilby]

But still vastly more than desalination. Modern desalination plants produce drinking water at a total cost of less than a tenth of a cent per litre. You can't collect, treat and ship water from a few thousand km away that cheaply.

Hell, just the wharfage fees for bulk liquids at most major ports are more than that.

You think you could help the desalinization plant here in Tampa? It's been wrought with problems (mostly political I suspect) since day one. It is STILL NOT OPERATING.

If your diagnosis of the root cause is correct, then I am afraid there is no engineering solution for that.

Perhaps 'not living in Florida' might help?

 

[Valjean]

Desalinization: What's to be done with the salt?

Usage: We could try switching to more drought tolerant crops, and cut down on meat production in arid regions.

 

[bilby]

Desalinization: What's to be done with the salt?

The usual process is to pump the brine back into the ocean. The amounts of fresh water we can extract are literally a drop in the ocean, and make no appreciable difference to the salinity of the seawater.

Usage: We could try switching to more drought tolerant crops, and cut down on meat production in arid regions.

That's a good idea; the easiest way to make it happen is to charge farmers the full cost of purifying and supplying the fresh water they use - if they can stay in business without making those changes once they are paying full price, then no further action is needed.

 

[bleubird]

Golf?

 

[bleubird]

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/07/15/3722877/golf-courses-water-conservation.html
Golf.

 

[fromderinside]

A lot less than the cost of ground systems amortized over a hundred years or so and the costs of negotiations with countries and states through which such a system would be constructed. Probably a lot less than oil being shipped for Saudi Arabia.

But still vastly more than desalination. Modern desalination plants produce drinking water at a total cost of less than a tenth of a cent per litre. You can't collect, treat and ship water from a few thousand km away that cheaply.

Hell, just the wharfage fees for bulk liquids at most major ports are more than that.

What I'm reading is that desalinated water costs about $2500 per acre foot (about 45000 cubic feet) or about twice what you claim. Then one adds treating, adding impurities to make it taste like water, bottling or shipping whatever. The greatest shipping cost is getting the water into the container in whcih it is to be transported, then getting the stuff out and into another container at the other end. Trains can ship, so the adds go, 500 tons for less than ten cents per mile.

All the above is horse radish since the cost we are comparisons should be that of from a fresh water source or from a desalination plant. Other costs are equivalent.

I take a more pragmatic approach. We get water from a stream here in good old speederfundus. Our water base fee from an ancient water system is base cost for 2000 gallons (about 7541 liters) is $32. So the actual cost is 0.4 cents per liter. Now if we add the basically free water - its paid for long ago with taxes and recovered in fees - and compute the fees and delivery,then add another .1 cent per liter (using your more inexpensive guess) we get 0.5 cents per liter (we'll disregard the new infrastructure necessary for the moment) an increase over current fees. Add to that the additional chemical processing to add salts and other minerals to the water which probably equal our costs for keeping the water safe in our system which is about $10 of the $32 fee. The .1 cent and, for convenience of computing, another the 0.1 cents for that brings the cost up to a 33 % rate increase. That might appear a bit hard for a town with average annual income under $20,000 per household to take for the privilege of desalinated water.

So no its not the irrelevant costs you post,. Rather, its the more relevant costs I just posted.

winding down, not under, again/

 

[fromderinside]

The usual process is to pump the brine back into the ocean. The amounts of fresh water we can extract are literally a drop in the ocean, and make no appreciable difference to the salinity of the seawater.

Usage: We could try switching to more drought tolerant crops, and cut down on meat production in arid regions.

That's a good idea; the easiest way to make it happen is to charge farmers the full cost of purifying and supplying the fresh water they use - if they can stay in business without making those changes once they are paying full price, then no further action is needed.

Given what I just posted the cost to farmers would go right through the roof since even while they don't pay for making water drinkable or essentially germ free they pay less than their rightful costs even good times. Their rates are about 0% of what cities pay by my quick calcs (about $2925 per acre foot in speederfundus versus about a maximum of $1000/acre ft. in the central valley (Fresno) down to $140 per acre ft prior to the drought. So speeederfundus people pay from three times to about 20 times what Fresno farmers pay.

Here's the part that important though. If we presume that water goes from about 5% to 20% of costs for producing food we can expect most food prices to jump by at least 50% even with increased foreign supply. Now speederfundus types have their grocery bills increased by about 40% or to over $400 a month for a family of three.

I believe we'd gladly pay a 25% ($5) bit more for water to get more water to the the farmers to relieve us of the added $15 a month we pay at Shittymart. So bring on the desalination micro plant.

 

[bilby]

But still vastly more than desalination. Modern desalination plants produce drinking water at a total cost of less than a tenth of a cent per litre. You can't collect, treat and ship water from a few thousand km away that cheaply.

Hell, just the wharfage fees for bulk liquids at most major ports are more than that.

What I'm reading is that desalinated water costs about $2500 per acre foot (about 45000 cubic feet) or about twice what you claim.

What the fuck are those units of measure worth in real money? I don't care what mythical, un-referenced sources you might be reading; my sources say $1-$4 per kL. That's AUD, so rather less than $0.001 per litre for the best modern plants.

Then one adds treating, adding impurities to make it taste like water, bottling or shipping whatever.

No you don't. I am comparing water shipped in from elsewhere, against desalination at point of use - say on the LA shoreline, and plumbed directly into the existing city infrastructure. There is only a shipping cost in one of these scenarios; and water output from a desal plant is ready to drink; those other costs are only relevant to water from some stream that might have a dead pig in the headwaters.

The greatest shipping cost is getting the water into the container in whcih it is to be transported, then getting the stuff out and into another container at the other end. Trains can ship, so the adds go, 500 tons for less than ten cents per mile.

All the above is horse radish since the cost we are comparisons should be that of from a fresh water source or from a desalination plant. Other costs are equivalent.

I take a more pragmatic approach. We get water from a stream here in good old speederfundus. Our water base fee from an ancient water system is base cost for 2000 gallons (about 7541 liters) is $32. So the actual cost is 0.4 cents per liter.

That's at the top end of what you might expect to pay from a deal plant. A new modern plant, well sited, might achieve a quarter of that cost.

Now if we add the basically free water - its paid for long ago with taxes and recovered in fees - and compute the fees and delivery,then add another .1 cent per liter (using your more inexpensive guess) we get 0.5 cents per liter (we'll disregard the new infrastructure necessary for the moment) an increase over current fees. Add to that the additional chemical processing to add salts and other minerals to the water which probably equal our costs for keeping the water safe in our system which is about $10 of the $32 fee. The .1 cent and, for convenience of computing, another the 0.1 cents for that brings the cost up to a 33 % rate increase. That might appear a bit hard for a town with average annual income under $20,000 per household to take for the privilege of desalinated water.

So no its not the irrelevant costs you post,. Rather, its the more relevant costs I just posted.

winding down, not under, again/

Except that none of the costs you mention apply to the scenario I was describing. You clearly either haven't understood what I was discussing, or have no grasp of the engineering details of the two scenarios.

Your objections are irrelevant.