How many times can you mock someone living in the Sahara, because they mention their own REGIONAL shortage of water, by pointing out to them that there is plenty of water elsewhere on the planet, and think that you are making a profound argument?
“San Diego is a DESERT ~ they have a severe fresh water shortage and have to pump it in from hundreds of miles away.”
You appear to have fallen for this specious rhetoric. THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF WATER, especially for a town located ON the ocean. It is only a shortage of facilities to bring water of suitable quality to the user at a price he is willing to pay.
Israel desalinates sea water and it costs less per gallon than the water I buy from a co-op utility. In both cases, the customer can have all the water the customer wants to buy.
In fact, I can go to a local convenience store and buy as much water that I want from Fiji and from Iceland. It certainly costs more, but again, the folks who sell it are happy to sell me as much as I want.
They are in the throes of coming up with a desalinization plant in Oceanside ~ actually putting the San Diego county beach to useful purposes.
The eco-nuts opposed the project.
You sound like a liberal talking about solar energy, or wind.
Fresh water is not equally dispersed around the state, or the nation, or the world, and we use clean, sterilized drinking water for everything that we do.
Market forces have hindered the sell of expensive desalinated water, besides, that is only on the coasts anyway, water is still rare in place vast regions of the US.
As far as advances in technology, that goes for devices also, there is no rule that says that something has to use as much energy, or as much water, as it did at some point in the past, the problem is like you and desalination, it needs to be ready for the market and workable and cost effective, before you make it mandatory.
“”3. The Poseidon Carlsbad desalination project
Having just argued that desalination makes more sense than water transfers through the ocean from water-rich to water-poor regions, it turns out that not all desalination plants make sense. It is a proven technology – thousands of desalination plants are operating around the world – but it is a costly one to do properly. An effort by a private development group, Poseidon Resources, to build a plant at Carlsbad, near San Diego, has become the textbook case of how NOT to build a desalination plant (ironically replacing the previous textbook case of how not to build a desalination plant – Poseidon’s earlier venture with the Tampa Bay desalination plant in Florida). The Carlsbad plant was originally projected to cost around $270 million. A year ago, the costs had risen so much that Poseidon was trying to get $530 million in tax-free bonds to help them finance the project, on top of a massive subsidy from local water agencies. A month ago, they filed a new application for $780 million in tax exempt bonds, suggesting the cost is approaching a billion dollars. The company’s current estimate is that the cost of delivered desalination water has skyrocketed over the past few years to around $2000 per acre-foot, which is nearly triple San Diego’s current supply costs. And their design is still controversial because of concerns about location, environmental impacts, and financing. Moreover, the complete lack of transparency about contracts, permit decisions by local governments, Poseidon financial structure and funders, and the true economics of the plant have soured even strong proponents of desalination. This zombie refuses to die only because outside investors (either unbelievably gullible or incredibly smart) keep putting in money.””
How many times can you mock someone living in the Sahara, because they mention their own REGIONAL shortage of water, by pointing out to them that there is plenty of water elsewhere on the planet, and think that you are making a profound argument?