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I am wondering if mass-scale manufacturing & construction can solve this problem. Imagine large greenhouse-alike setups which spur vaporization, siphoning fresh

I am wondering if mass-scale manufacturing & construction can solve this problem. Imagine large greenhouse-alike setups which spur vaporization, siphoning fresh water off into a lake. The sun would passively vaporize incoming salty water. Reaching m³s/minute of freshwater throughput would without doubt require massive scale. Since freshwater demand is increasing and supply decreasing, the economics of such project become more interesting every month. Will such plan work at all?

ojbyrne 9y ago
This sounds like it has the same problem as salinization does. In most places conservation is cheaper.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  Not to mention that conservation doesn’t use a ton of energy, most of which will be from burning fossile fuels. It’s a bit counterproductive if your plan to save the world burns a ton of coal, oil, etc to build and maintain.
- candiodari 9y ago
  ... in the sense that the costs can just be imposed on people who can't defend themselves. And at that point, cheaper, more expensive ... ah what's the difference ? I mean, that's a slightly different wording of the argument you're making. In other words: this needs an economically viable solution. We need an absurdly cheap way to refill the lakes. Conservation isn't that, but everybody proposing it knows where the costs will go.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    I’m curious who do you think is suffering now as a result of drought and diminishing ecological resources? Who is going to suffer through famine and drought? Your point is valid, but only insofar as people who can’t defend themselves always suffer. Every course of action hurts the group you’re concerned about, but the most likely to succeed and least damaging is conservation.
    - candiodari 9y ago
      Well the problem is the large cities taking up all capacity in the rivers and the people who suffer are the people on the coastlines of those lakes. The capacity in the rivers, by and large, is not taken up by people on those coastlines. And conservation, I bet, "somehow" misses this reality. So it attempts to protect things like tourism income at the further expense of the victims. But nobody, absolutely nobody is talking about denying cities the water they depend on (which will dry up anyway, but not for a while yet ...). You see the problem is not global warming. The problem is those cities and countries that take away the resources these lakes depend on. If you calculate the resulting change in precipitation from the 1 degree or so of temperature change we've seen, that's not what's making the difference here. The difference is those cities. But of course, we "need to conserve". And what do we mean by that, exactly ? Why, the victims of it, the people living on that coastline, those need to be forced to abandon their lives, because otherwise the tourism that the rest of country profits from (but not so much those people), could get hit ... first a bit, then a lot. That's what we mean by conservation.
      - IntronExon 9y ago
        You didn’t even come close to addressing my question. I pointed out that your concern for the helpless is an obvious canard in this context, and you took that as a opportunity to engage in more ideological chatter.

ojbyrne 9y ago

This sounds like it has the same problem as salinization does. In most places conservation is cheaper.

IntronExon 9y ago
Not to mention that conservation doesn’t use a ton of energy, most of which will be from burning fossile fuels. It’s a bit counterproductive if your plan to save the world burns a ton of coal, oil, etc to build and maintain.
candiodari 9y ago
... in the sense that the costs can just be imposed on people who can't defend themselves. And at that point, cheaper, more expensive ... ah what's the difference ? I mean, that's a slightly different wording of the argument you're making. In other words: this needs an economically viable solution. We need an absurdly cheap way to refill the lakes. Conservation isn't that, but everybody proposing it knows where the costs will go.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  I’m curious who do you think is suffering now as a result of drought and diminishing ecological resources? Who is going to suffer through famine and drought? Your point is valid, but only insofar as people who can’t defend themselves always suffer. Every course of action hurts the group you’re concerned about, but the most likely to succeed and least damaging is conservation.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    Well the problem is the large cities taking up all capacity in the rivers and the people who suffer are the people on the coastlines of those lakes. The capacity in the rivers, by and large, is not taken up by people on those coastlines. And conservation, I bet, "somehow" misses this reality. So it attempts to protect things like tourism income at the further expense of the victims. But nobody, absolutely nobody is talking about denying cities the water they depend on (which will dry up anyway, but not for a while yet ...). You see the problem is not global warming. The problem is those cities and countries that take away the resources these lakes depend on. If you calculate the resulting change in precipitation from the 1 degree or so of temperature change we've seen, that's not what's making the difference here. The difference is those cities. But of course, we "need to conserve". And what do we mean by that, exactly ? Why, the victims of it, the people living on that coastline, those need to be forced to abandon their lives, because otherwise the tourism that the rest of country profits from (but not so much those people), could get hit ... first a bit, then a lot. That's what we mean by conservation.
    - IntronExon 9y ago
      You didn’t even come close to addressing my question. I pointed out that your concern for the helpless is an obvious canard in this context, and you took that as a opportunity to engage in more ideological chatter.