This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Humanity May Face Choice By 2040: Conventional Energy Or Drinking Water
Submitted by Andy Tully via OilPrice.com,
A set of studies based on three years of research concludes that by 2040, the need for drinking water and water for use in energy production will create dire shortages.
Conventional electricity generation is the largest source of water use in most countries. Water is used to cool power plants to keep them functional. Most power utilities don’t even record the amount of water they use.
“It’s a huge problem that the electricity sector do not even realize how much water they actually consume,” says Professor Benjamin Sovacool of Denmark’s Aarhus University, one of the institutions involved in the research. “And together with the fact that we do not have unlimited water resources, it could lead to a serious crisis if nobody acts on it soon.”
The research, which included projections of the availability of water and the growth of the world’s population, found that by 2020, between 30 percent and 40 percent of the planet will no longer have direct access to clean drinking water. The problem could be made even worse if climate change accelerates, creating more heat and causing more water evaporation.
That means humankind must decide how water is used, Sovacool says. “Do we want to spend it on keeping the power plants going or as drinking water? We don’t have enough water to do both,” he says.
The researchers, also from the Vermont Law School and CNA Corporation in the US, a non-profit research institute in Arlington, Va., focused their studies on specific utilities and other energy suppliers in four countries: China, France, India and the United States.
First, they identified each country’s energy needs, then factored in projections of water availability in each country and its population level as far as 2040. In all four cases, they discovered, there will not be enough water by then both to drink and to use at electricity-generating plants.
So how to prevent this conflict? The studies agreed on starting with the simplest solution: Alternative sources of electricity that don’t require massive amounts of water.
The recommendations are improving energy efficiency, conducting more research on alternative cooling mechanisms, logging water use at power plants, making massive investments in solar and wind energy, and abandoning fossil fuel facilities in all areas susceptible to water shortages.
This last proposal may be the most difficult to implement because parched areas now include half of Earth. But Sovacool says it would be worth the investment.
“If we keep doing business as usual, we are facing an insurmountable water shortage – even if water was free, because it’s not a matter of the price,” he says. “There will be no water by 2040 if we keep doing what we’re doing today. There’s no time to waste. We need to act now.”
»
- 11914 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
2040 is rather generous. What will the population be in 2040? 10b? or 20b? Kinda hard to say...but either way we're fracked.
Availability of potable water is local. Generalizations are not informative.
As others have stated, cooling generator plants does not actually consume the water, they merely use it as a heat-transfer fluid. Otherwise all those generators on LAKES would have seen the lake run dry.
I thought this was going to be something about China and how they are all drinking the equivalent of fracking fluid.
But nope, we have this.
<facepalm>
pods
Precisely. You beat me to it.
We are surrounded by idiots. There is no escape for humanity...
What a stupid fucking article!
Like something Fonz wrote!
Bubble pops, population drops.
“There will be no water by 2040 if we keep doing what we’re doing today. There’s no time to waste. We need to act now.”
We're fucked. Humans don't act "now". Unless it's in McD's drive thru.
How about door No.3? - The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor http://youtu.be/ZsmezEOXDjUSo 30% - 40% of the world will not have access to potable water in the next 6 years? Right......................
I heard my landlord bitching about the price of water. Glad I dumped the 1/2 acre lot home I used to spend a fortune watering. 1000 gals. a day when sprinklers were on.
They're not idiots, they perform sensationalist "research" that predicts "dire" warnings, in order to request more research grants and get more money.
All this "research" is simply a way to extract more money from the government, nothing more.
Lately I enjoy gulping a fresh glass of oil as I eat my I Pad
Yummmm, crunchy
Oil is cheaper than bottled water, so you may be on to something. I'm confident when this becomes a crisis, the fed will save us.
Check THIS out.
http://www.offgridworld.com/crazy-looking-bamboo-tower-creates-25-gallon...
Fuck water. We can just drink Brawndo and cool power plants with Brawndo.
It's got electrolytes.
"Go away! Baitin'!"
Whodathunk that a low-budget, B-movie would be so prophetic...
owwww.... my balls!!!!!
Denmark’s Aarhus University
AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID......................................................................
"Conventional electricity generation is the largest source of water use in most countries. Water is used to cool power plants to keep them functional. Most power utilities don’t even record the amount of water they use."
I must be either losing my mind or I am witnessing an accelerating descent into sheer idiocy...
What happens to the water that is used to cool power plants? (actually the turbines/condensers to keep efficiency high) Is it gone forever as suggested or does it return a little warmer to the lakes and rivers from whence it came?
Wait a sec...would you drink it? That's the question.
$100 says all of us already have at some point.
water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink...
This is a variant of local governments screaming theft because someone has a water collection barrel fed from their roof. The water will go back to the local water table evenually, they aren't exporting runoff to another state. They're just watering their gardens, it actually evens demand for municipal water.
In many cases those with rainbarrels are actually SAVING water from being lost to runoff.
In a large rain event, after the ground is saturated, the water runs-off to the ocean and is "lost". If we catch the water in a barrel instead of letting it runoff, later when we apply it to the dry ground, it will soak in.
This slowing down the water cycle will also prevent erosion caused by runoff.
good point
Not only do power plants not destroy water, they create it. If you burn a molecule of methane, CH4, it will combine with two oxygen molecules O2 and produce two water H2O and 1 Carbon Dioxide CO2. Unless I'm way off, all they should need to do is recondense the exhaust.
People only need to drink maybe a gallon of water per day. Meanwhile, it takes over 1000 gallons of water to grow a pound of corn or rice, so you'll run out of food way before you die of thirst.
Contamination seems to be a bigger issue. We may be going into a drier cycle on the planet, too, with the lack of sunspots and who knows what other stuff going on.
Actually, this is an artifact of the economics of potable water to date. A rising price would alter these dynamics at some point. However, we can kill two birds with one stone. Since pseudoscience tells us the ice in the polar caps is melting, why not begin mass desalination?
Mass desalinization takes tremendous amounts of energy.. Quite expensive.
"Since pseudoscience tells us the ice in the polar caps is melting, why not begin mass desalination?"
I thought you were going to suggest we fill tankers with water in Antartica. Probably cheaper than desalination, at least until someone makes forward osmosis or some other more efficient technique.
I think just creating areas along ocean shorelines that increase evaporation may be a better solution, just create more rain.
Well the good news is we don't have any contagious diseases in the US that would reverse population growth
Like aids?
Or are you refering to a disease that hasn't killed anybody so far?
You know how it works if you don't have the right skills you just import what you need. Hey any news on those 2 Ebola patients?
2?
OH MY GOD!!!
EVERYBODY!!!
TO THE BUNKERS!!!!
Nice way to inforce more controls on the people. Why not let everybody come in for a dna sample?
Look what happened after 9 11 in america and europe.
You had draconian security measures and you can't enter a door without a patdown and a radioactive scan.
Here in Europe? We decided to keep on living like normal people and said: if we will die, let's do it in a normal way.
And our lives are not impacted by something that happened a decade ago.
Why life in fear your whole life for something that "might" happen?
You think Mericans are living that way by choice? Choice denotes knowledge of the situation. Most Mericans haven't a clue what is going on. They mostly think everything is normal.
these days
"clueless" is a choice.
as is believing someone will "save" you
be it govt or gods.
self-awareness informs the self-reliant.
The bunker is not a bad idea... the sensation of a shock wave arriving before a sound wave still troubles me, and it's Swiss National Day. Perhaps I should go down to the blast shelter, sit in corner, and hug my rifle for a few hours... until the blasts stop. Perhaps if more Europeans actually fought in wars these days, they wouldn't be so quick to let their idiotic leaders keep leading them into and facilitating more of America's insane wars.
10B? 20B? Could just as easily be 2B or 500M.
Exactly what Ebola was designed to do.
I love idiots who pretend to know what the world is going to be like 25 years or how entrepreneurs will react. Here's a solution: desalination with gravity & graphene, but likely it will be something even easier. Water problem solved.
How does one remove Benzine from the water exactly?
RO removes it...
Carbon, RO, distilled. Lots of ways.
http://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/
http://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/studies/la-lab-results-organic/
Gravity fed too.
pods
Cesium-137?
Boron/Borax bath, then on to distillation, etc - - at least I hope so if it comes to that!
Yeah - major cracks in global infrastructure are already widening.
Ah, yes, now its peak water.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Has ZH turned into a fear mongering site?
before ebola 40 bil, after ebola.............
"There's no time to waste! We need to act now!"
Um, isn't this the same crap we were told about oh, everything when Obama and the Marxists wanted to pass all their nonsense (and did successfully, bringing us to... this.) back a few years ago? And the same thing we were told to get us into a war with Syria (which we thankfully pushed back againt and stopped) And the same thing we've been told every day about the environment/climate/hot/cold/wet/dry for the last 45 years?
She"ll be right mate!
Most power plants simple recirculate river water to cool and or convert to steam then return to the river.
Most don't really "use up" the water.
Never the less, it's clear we need to TAX it more...
True, true!
You can't use up the water because destroying water in any practical sense on planet Earth is just about impossible.
The H and the 2O just naturally want to join.
Even if you spend the considerable energy to split them, like teenage lovers they will find a way to reunite!
Except if you pump it deep underground for fracking or other oil extraction methods, then it is gone. The total amount of surface water on planet earth would be reduced. Probably for thousands of years... until some major geological event (massive earthquake) exposes it to air.
Are some people so fucking stupid that they do not understand this? They act likke the water is consumed and then it vanishes - lost forever. Morons. Complete and total morons.
"olde" saying, London's water passes through seven folks before you imbibe.
given the high incidence of pharma-feeds in amrka,
the *tap* is off limits for drinking.
Ok, water is used to cool the power plants. Well the water doesn't disappear does it? It is toxic, I presume, after the cooling process. Then why can't we clean the water and reuse it, especially for an industrial process?
We do, it's not toxic but might be a little warm, and this is mostly a bullshit, alarmist story, probably paid for by someone with an interest in people being freaked out over water supplies, or selling generating plants (like PV) that don't use water.
There's a few plants and proposals that do retarded things with good water (like a solar power tower proposed for AZ that would literally boil off groundwater equal to something like 25% of the state's consumption), but it's nowhere near the crisis these guys are presenting. There are other much larger threats to freshwater than this, and plants can use saltwater for cooling -- one of the reasons you find nuke plants on coastlines.
Water become of us?
Very droll.....
By 2040, there will be no water to drink,
If in 2014, we had only stopped to think!
Alas, no, we thought only of ourselves,
as we prepped and stocked ammo on shelves.
So, now we sit alone in our shelter,
Nothing to do, but sulk and swelter.
Oh no! But I thought our problems were all due to Bush and Obama's fault, not actual resource constraints!
NO PROBLEM!!!
I'LL JUST DRINK BEER!!
...and young kids (5yrs to 12yrs) to drink beers? Think about that.
Root beers
Relax, houserule is "no beer if you're not 12 yrs old"
My own parents where even more strickt than that!
I couldn't drink coffee before I was 10!!
Middle ages man...
So by 2040 it's going to stop raining and snowing?
The hysterics never cease.
You just had to be the partypooper he?
Let's keep concentrating on what might happen in 26 years from now and forget about now.
The Maya's have spoken!
I have a completely insane idea. Instead of putting the UN in charge of this, why don't we let the free market sort it out? You know, that whole demand and supply thing? Of course, this means we would have to return to a free market economy.
"Water is used to cool power plants to keep them functional". My local plant uses the water that goes down the drain to cool the plant. It gets turned to steam and goes back up into the clouds. So how exactly is that destroying the water again?
LOL!!!
Amazing people buy this tripe on a planet that is 2/3ds water.
I challenge you to take a cup of water and destroy it.
If you cannot then you should understand this is yet another case of false scarcity.
(HINT: Even if you do electrolysis the hydrogen will rapidly join with the oxygen molecules in the air to reform- water.)
MOREOVER.... there is a very easy way to purify it as well: Let it evaporate (or boil it) and then collect the water vapor.
Go ahead.
Give it your best shot! Destroy ONE CUP of water.
Bet you can't do it.
What you're saying is ridiculous. Unless you use electrolysis you can't "destroy" it. You CAN contaminate water in such a way that makes it irreparable using standard, inexpensive ways of treating it. Hence why you aren't allowed to pour hydrocarbons, paint, pharmaceuticals, etc. down the drain. You're missing the point entirely. And unless you've just patented some desalinization technique that will revolutionize the extraordinarily expensive process of removing salt from OCEAN water I highly doubt you have a serious idea of the severity of water consumption issues facing many regions in the world.
LOL!
So you mean you don't think you can separate water from pollutants but you can separate the hydrogen from oxygen... You didn't think that one through....
You obviously didn't read what I said. I'm not explaining it again.
Already been invented. It's called distillation. And no - you don't need a huge amount of power to do it... just set the scummy mix out in the Sun, vent the volitiles, and collect the water vapor for condensation. OR if you're feeling vigorous, you can make a hand crank centrifuge, spin the mix down, pour off the lighter stuff, pour off the water, then take the heavier stuff (oils, fuels, etc) and toast your marshmallows over it... if you like oil flavored marshmallows.
there is exaclty the same amount of water since last 4.5 billions years.
at the very tear drop . total amount is exaclty the same. it only change form from liquid to ice or vapor.
but it is also thrue that changing form do not purifiy itself. chemicaled water intothe freezer only gives chemicaled icecube.
i also dont wanna be in china where oyu see textils river totally contaminated by pigments, those fmaous red rivers like blood.
scary. those mentals are killing the planet
Actually the amount of water is constant changing. Have you ever heard of electrolysis or chemical reactions? Water is a compound, not an element. Please take a 10th grade chem class and get back to us.
"HINT: Even if you do electrolysis the hydrogen will rapidly join with the oxygen molecules in the air to reform- water." -
FAIL. Hydrogen gas does not sponteneously react with hydrogen gas to form water. You are a fucking moron.
Do us all a favor and fill a room up with hydrogen and oxygen gas and then light a match.
The article says 'use' not destroy water. Also, any cooling water that evaporates and ends up in the ocean is no longer drinkable. That is the concern..
The article says 'use' not destroy water. Also, any cooling water that evaporates and ends up in the ocean is no longer drinkable. That is the concern..
This is why we must NEVER have a sanction against Russian vodka!
Yeah, like we are going to make it to 2040. Somehow I think we have bigger more pressing issues to worry about. This is a stupid fucking article, and it's my guess that Andy is pushing one of the global conglomerates' memes in order tohelp them corner..... errr...... preserve water for future use.... for a small profit of course. Nestlé has something to say about this issue:
http://youtu.be/TPY64EJcsG4
Drain the great lakes. I know, there are legal restrictions for doing such...for now. That will change. Unfortunately.
Many a true word ......
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/obama-allows-great-lakes-water...
the sailors lament- Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
While drinking water might be scarce, there be mucho agua here.
We've been having monsoon rains for two months, put out a bucket fer cryin out loud.
"Sovacool"? "Aarss University"? "Non profit research institute in Arlington, Va" ? Yeah right.
All that is missing is the Gates Foundation.
Bullshit. For starters I can harvest a day's worth of drinking water out of the air at any time using a dehumidifier. If you are a prepper and have a basement it is great way to gather fairly clean water to store in tanks.
Which requires electricity to run, and a lot of it.
Which costs absolutely nothing extra than you are already paying right now if you have a basement, right down to dumping the full bucket into some sort of storage tank instead of the sink or toilet.
You can also do it naturally using rock salt in a bucket. Then putting bucket on top of 3 other buckets making a natural gravity feed water purifier with the other 3 buckets containing gravel/sand/charcoal (in that order from top to bottom).
There are other options but that is just one of them.
So what? It just comes out of the plug, right?
So water will just leave our planet? - riiight...
Yes it does. The Russians are pumping our water to their secret missile base on the far side of the moon.
2040? I'll be old enough then they will just liquidate me.
Tesla figured these problems out long ago, and was quickly banished by the Luciferian elite.
Another great adderall!
“If we keep doing business as usual..."
We won't, so another crisis averted!
Coal, gas and oil fired power plants use water to cool the water existing the turbines, but that water is not wasted. Power plants are built along bodies of water like lakes and rivers and the water in the lakes and rivers is used for condensing the steam from the turbine. The water doesn't leave the lakes or rivers. The turbine water is in a closed loop. Whoever wrote this article has no idea what they're talking about.
Ever hear of condensors?? All you have to do is to dump the heat and you keep the water. When with these assholes stop pumping their "green" shit and say things that are true?
by the I would have chosen a rock to die on so I ant 2 bothered.
reverse osmosis
The problem is that there is no free market for water. We simply don't know how to value it. That leads to wasting it.
If an industry is using too much, water would become expensive to buy, because they would have to bid the water away from another user. This leads to conservation, cutting their use saves money. Buying less water would pay for any capital equipment necessary to reuse the water. But, industries have no incentive to do that now, because everything is political. Their costs don't change.
Most of the water wasted is used up by inefficient farming methods. If you live along a river, your use tends to be grandfathered in. There is no incentive for not using your allotment, because you can't sell the extra to someone else.
The upper latitude states will be under 150 feet of ice by 2040. We are entering a solar minimum or worse at this time.
You idgits
It will be okay
Nestle has a solution
Here we go again. Another lame excuse for a global tax in the guise of fear mongering. Isn't it grand to live in a world where only the stick is used?
Desalianization and pipelines are old tech. We will NEVER drink the oceans dry with even 100 B middle class consumers on this planet.
Desalianization requires energy, for most water consumers their water costs are dependent on energy costs to move the water and clean the water.
Smitty in LA - Research "Tidal Power". Your argument supports a new global tax. Do you think this wise?
Another dire prediction that is unprovable and uses fear of catastrophe to make a headline. Scare tactics surrounding overpopulation, food shortage, peak oil, ice age, global warming, water shortage etc... Whatever disaster one can dream up gets predicted. I just wish the outcome would occur during the predictor's lifetime and that some punitive damage could be assessed for being wrong. At some point humans have been warned that we will run out of every resource we need to survive. I predict the next phase will be a couple of Senators decide how to monetize (tax) the situation.
Go back 100 years, find a news source and someone will have predicted the destruction of man kind if we don't do something different. The boy who cried wolf... Perhaps more people would sit up and take notice if doom and destruction weren't the the norm when predicting future global events.
The only thing that can be predicted with any certainty is that we will all die at some point. Father Time bats a thousand. No one gets out of here alive.
oh look it's the next global warming
I was wondering what excuse they would use to tax water...
FUD. Ever heard of desalination?
I'm more worried about the iZombies after a Carrington event. We're past due...
I am personally going to send more freedoms and wealth to Gore. He'll fix it.
Mother Nature does a pretty good job recycling and purifying water - it's called rain!
Who drinks water any more? Ever see what water does to pipes?
mass immigration has its consequences, one is water rationing by price, voting for open borders is a vote for drought forever.
Water is a constant resource. However, it is not always distributed evenly. Water does escape through the atmosphere into space in very tiny amounts but the amount of water on Earth is relatively the same on a geological time frame. There is also a hydrological cycle which emits water to the surface. A geologist claimed a few years ago he had proven that all water cycles through the planet on a massive time scale. The supposed proof was elements found in deep ocean vents. I don't know if this has been confirmed and I probably butchered some of the details but the gist of the claim was that the earth recycles all water.
So my conclusion is that it's not a matter of quantity but a matter of distribution. And if we can't overcome that maybe it's natural selection?
ground water folks...ground water: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-242
but I am sure I will get junked and down voted for citing NASA, since they are all "illuminati" and shit.
I junked you because NASA has become the Ministry of Propaganda's "science" wing.
From the first paragraph in your article, "The extent of groundwater loss MAY pose a greater threat to the water supply of the western United States than previously thought."
"May" means they have no actual proof to back their assertion, but it makes for FANTASTICAL alarmism, don't-cha-think?
i stand corrected. thank you for your insight. The more I look into it the more it comes up as alarmism.
You have to read between the lines.
Scientists are people too. They have biases. Biases tend to be self-confirming. The only way to mostly eliminate biases is through double blind studies.
Here's a clue:
" Jay Famiglietti, senior water cycle scientist at JPL on leave from UC Irvine, where he is an Earth system science professor. "There's just not enough information available from well data to put together a consistent, basin-wide picture.""
Why do they have an "Earth System Science Professor (new field)" answering a Geology question?
Here's another:
"Famiglietti said GRACE is like having a giant scale in the sky. Within a given region, the change in mass due to rising or falling water reserves influences the strength of the local gravitational attraction. By periodically measuring gravity regionally, GRACE reveals how much a region's water storage changes over time."
So they measured gravity, and gravity declined locally. Since gravity is associated with mass, they inferred that Mass declined locally.
How do they know which mass was lost?
They don't. They simply believed it to be water because they couldn't imagine a way that that much mass could have left the basin in that time period.
How long has this mass loss been going on?
They don't know. Maybe forever. Maybe it started during the study. But there is a clue from Geology: When the first explorers sent expeditions through the Great Basin and found the Great Salt Lake, they described a much deeper, less salty Lake than the one we have today. NOTE HOW MUCH LARGER THE LAKE WAS IN 1700 HERE: http://geology.utah.gov/online/m/m-73.pdf
This is pertinent because the Great Salt Lake is fed from run-off from the Colorado River Basin. See here: http://www.coloradoriverbasin.org/colorado-river-basin-map/
Here are a few ideas how mass could have declined that DON'T involve water:
- Surface water could have washed soil down stream = erosion. This is partilally how the Grand Canyon formed.
- The Great Basin was once a low-lying plain. In theory plate techtonics raised it. But certainly sub-surface geology raised it. The same force could lower it, and the subsurface movement of Lava could be a prelude to the lowering.
Even if it is WATER that is being lost, that doesn't mean people had anything to do with it.
The Rockies were covered with glaciers only a few centuries ago. The meltwater very likely would have run to ground.
Water runs down hill - Ergo the water is moving to the low lying areas around the Colorado River Basin.
Of course... there is also the possibility that they are all "illuminati"... and shit.
...yeah that too...Illuminati and shit. Glad I could bring something inconclusive to the table...my bad. After reading more into it I stand corrected.
Wouldn't it make sense that we will have an abundunt supply of water once all of the ice melts due to global warming?
Imagine the narrative that would be floated were this generation living through the Dust Bowl and Depression era. How many taxes could've been invented to punish the human for creating the conditions that resulted in the dust bowl. Yes we learned lessons about crop rotation. Nothing wrong with learning lessons through intellectually honest research. The last adjective I would used to describe the current environment would be "intellectually honest".
How could the dust bowl happen without the selfish use of fossil fuels by man? God forbid we experience another period of tectonic plate shifts. Just imagine the headlines, blame and new tax schemes that would be attached to an event like that. Politicians would be having a field day with those events as we all know that they are not allowed to let a good crisis go to waste.
Humans are so arrogant to believe we can and should control all outcomes. Many species faced extinction before mankind decided to assume responsibility. Perhaps there are evolutionary reasons that species go extinct, lands shifted, weather patterns change are unpredictable. Imagine Pompeii 2.0. No way that would be left as a naturally occurring event. Man would blame man.
Hell if walking upright became a new phenomenon we would find a medicine or surgical cure. The thumb just appearing for the first time would be cut off. Physical evolution is not allowed today. If we started growing a working 3rd eye in the back of our heads, which would be a huge advancement in my opinion, we would cut it out and repair in order to keep to our beliefs in norms.
Are you kidding? Water is not "consumed" in the electrical generation process. And even the amount that evaporates from the cooling process eventually comes back to Earth as rain.
But if it rains into ocean then it isn't potable anymore.
It evaporates from the ocean and comes back to land. Just like it has for millions of years.
Thats right. Even boiler operation doesnt consume the water just recycles it. Some is lost to blowdown, but that goes.back into the environment to ultimately become a cloud again.
The real problem is growing metropolitan areas such as Austin. Lake Travis is 50 ft low, but building permits still get issued.
3/4 of the planet is water. We'll runout of land first.
But you can't drink sea water!
Author is an anti-hydrite.
Conventional power generation uses almost no water, as a dozen messages already point out, it warms some up but it's perfectly reusable, plus or minus some minor cleanup.
I thought the article was going to be about desalination.
Since the whole Global Warming thing has fallen apart, now we have the Water Shortage for them to profit from.
Four-fifths of this planet are covered in water, and we still don't have enough? Come on!
Fearmongering must make lots of money, I don't get it otherwise. Invent any new threat, even of the most preposterous kind, get big grants, propagandize and to conclude, levy a new tax the masses will be happy to pay. As my lawyer friend said, "there's a sucker born every minute".
I'd like to see you drink only ocean water. The concern isn't about running out of water, it's running out of drinking water.
Chappy - If if i need drinking water I can collect from rain from my rooftop. Or I can head ten miles west into the swamp with a gallon of chlorine and wait for other idiots to die off.
In 2007 I posted a joke about political corruption on Seeking Alpha and how they will soon be taxing water. Do a search for "iThinkBig and Sir-Cheat-A-Lot" to verify. We laughed because it was funny and we laughed because it was true.
That same prescience will make sure you get the global water tax and I don't. Piss off.
I'd like to see you drink only ocean water. The concern isn't about running out of water, it's running out of drinking water.
"Fearmongering must make lots of money,"
Fearmongering isn't the moneymaker--arbitraging peoples best interests by convincing them otherwise is where the money is at.
Don't worry fool, draining the Ogallala aquifer to make Ethanol is a win win. It will be replinished by rainwater. -Warren Buffet et al.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html
it's not just power plants. Cooling towers for air conditioning use a tremendous amount of fresh water. That evaporated water ends up coming back to earth as rain but a portion will rain in the ocean and no longer be potable. the concern is the amount of salt free water available. how much is left and when it will run out who knows
De Salination Plant technology will become profitable at some point in the future.
It takes energy to desalinate water--not sure, but I think that is the point the author of this article was trying to make. Extrapolating the past 150 years of lower left to upper right on the charts of energy production and consumption indefinitely into the future is our problem. Our solution to our problem of larger numbers is to substitute fresh water and farmland for more energy. What else will we sacrifice to sustain the status quo of infinite lower left to upper right on the charts of energy production and consumption?
The bottom line is, once you reach a peak of energy production, consuming energy is no longer profitable and is only a cost.
You're chapping my ass, chappy.
You're chapping my ass, chappy.
Ever heard of a cistern? The Islands are using them for potable water.
it's not just power plants. Cooling towers for air conditioning use a tremendous amount of fresh water. That evaporated water ends up coming back to earth as rain but a portion will rain in the ocean and no longer be potable. the concern is the amount of salt free water available. how much is left and when it will run out who knows
So you.are.saying that sea.water doesnt.evaporate.to become clouds? What causes.sea.fog then?
Try navigating thru that sometime. I have and it sure.didnt.smell like smoke.
Sometimes fresh water is created on massive scale over the seas. Its called burricanes.
*COUGH BULLSHIT COUGH*
It is interesting that they chose 2040 as opposed to 2020 or 2060.
Had they used 2020, they would be found out in living memory (and hopefully strung up)
By 2060 all the boomers (the only ones with any cash/assets) will be dead or dying.
2040 is peak population time for western countries and china, after that there will be a rapid and accelerating fall, energy and water consumption will fall and the 'problem' as described will no longer be an issue (not that it ever was)
The authors are transparently grant propecting.
The "Libertarians" who have condescendingly repeated for decades that water that comes from fresh sources and evaporates in cooling towers will always come back as fresh water as "rain" but does it? How much of our freshwater that is evaporated from electrical generation, cleaning up crude oil based condensates, nuclear power plants, fracking, etc., etc. replenishes our streams and rivers? The Earth's surface is covered 75% with water so shouldn't common sense tell us that whatever is consumed from fresh sources will be returned to fresh sources?
The numbers don't lie, fresh water sources are and have been depleting at an alarming rate. Governments, central banks and apparantly, "Libertarians" would have you believe the world has an infinite abundance of everything, so why not infinite debt?
That's a hoot. We will be lucky to make it out of 2014.
Touche!
This article was clearly intended for the young, government schooled information consumer.
Running out of water.. really?
It isn't about running out! It is about reaching "capacity for growth". Why is it such a difficult concept to comprehend? I think that I have an idea--brainwashing by status quo loving governments and central bankers. Governments and their enablers do not need more things to tax other than your brain.