The Demand for Water Will Increase Five Times By 2050

We have frackers here in Australia-we also have rice farmers! Can you believe it? Growing such a water hungry crop in the driest continent? We have a desalinator plant here in the state of Victoria -it was turned on this year for the first time.

 

I can believe it. I guess I'm relatively fortunate to live in the wettest county in England; Devon! We've still had hosepipe bans in times of little rainfall though. Back in the 70s when I lived in London we had a couple of years when water was in such short supply that you could only get it from a stand pipe in the street. Nothing in the taps at home.

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...ought-standpipes-and-shared-baths-478513.html

 

My mum was in England during the drought-she couldn't believe it.

 

Glad you enjoyed my humor.



Here's a little more. As you can see a rise in the ocean level in CA would do the state a lot of good

 

There are ways to desalinate water and create lots of electricity at the same time. KSA has been doing that for decades.

 

I don't know KSA , how do they do this ?

 

I apologize for my original post. It was short and insulting.

But I see these problems as being hugely complex. It’s hard to imagine desalinization as an answer to the water rise due to global warming. How could the plants handle anywhere near the amounts of water we are talking about — even if California were the only coastline affected (and it won’t be)?

If this happens there will be plenty of places that end up short of water, too. But there is no way to predict with certainty where shortages would occur or how severe they would be, or how far apart they would be, because we’ve never experienced anything like this.

And even if you had the desalinization plants in place how would you get the water to where it could be used? If the coastlines are flooding, money will be spent moving people, providing needed shelter, doing repairs, trying to prevent disease, etc.

Finally, our government has been in a partisan food fight for decades. The two parties can’t agree on what day of the week it is. They seem incapable of governing in any rational and effective way. If our coastlines go under water, it’s hard to imagine our politicians doing anything other than what they do now: point fingers and blame each other for the problems.

One thing we could have worked on for many decades that might have really helped us avoid or alleviate many of our present problems, is getting the world’s population under control. It’s a topic no politician wants to touch. And it’s a problem that apparently will be allowed to worsen until people are standing shoulder to shoulder all around the planet. Without control of population growth, it’s easy to see how the demand for water will also continue to rise. And when water grows short in any area, population shifts will be rapid — causing even more problems and conflicts. That problem is already here in some places. In a news report, a woman from an African country dealing with a severe drought (Somalia, I think), said in an interview, that people are even eating grass to help them survive.

And islands in the pacific are being flooded or lost because of rising seas, and people there are being moved as needed. Maybe our desalinization plants will have to work overtime to lower the oceans enough to save these islands.

Or maybe we can just send the Orange Twit in the White House a tweet, letting him know we may have a little water problem coming. He’s sure to know more about fixing water problems than all of our water experts and scientists. Lol.

We’re in deep shyte. And our government is a hopeless mess that seems only to get worse with each election. And since people seem to prefer fighting one another over working together, it’s hard to see where any real solutions will come from, or how we can get people to agree on how best to implement them.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/10/five-pacific-islands-lost-rising-seas-climate-change

 

Strange how we can build pipelines to move oil to where we need it, but can't build pipelines to move water from where its plentiful to where its needed.

All in the priorities we set.

 

All the give has been one sided for so long I don't see an answer either.

 

The Democrats have owned Sacramento for many years.

 

Well, they have been doing it for 50 years and produce more desalinated water than any other country. Currently most use natural gas or petroleum.. but the newer ones will be nuclear.

Jordan is building the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal .. and with a 1300 foot drop they will drive desalination and electrical power by using hydro.

We can do this.. we just need the will to do it.

 

Interesting fact: there is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America with one foot of water.

 

I didn't know about the Saudis producing such a lot of desalinated water-I had heard that Israel does.

 

Israel produces very little and mostly they are desalinating brackish water using reverse Osmosis.