4 ms·
With cheap enough power, it might well be possible to desalinate water from the nearest ocean and pump it to wherever it's needed. (Disclaimer: I haven't trie
by dctoedt 8y ago
With cheap enough power, it might well be possible to desalinate water from the nearest ocean and pump it to wherever it's needed.
(Disclaimer: I haven't tried even back-of-the-envelope calculations about other costs of doing so, e.g., capital- and operating costs of pipelines, pumps, etc.)
- maxander 8y agoBecause I’m bored- Googling “cost to desalinate water” gives $2k per family of five, and googling “population of California” gives roughly a population of 40 million. 40mil/5 * 2k == 16 billion (if I’m counting zeroes right.) So it’s in the ballpark of a percent of California’s total GDP (which is roughly 2 trillion, IIRC) for non-industrial uses. (But industry, including agriculture, is responsible for that GDP- how easily a “dry” Californian economy could support desalination can’t be inferred from these numbers!)
- pm90 8y agoThat's why "cheap enough" power. Conceivably, using offshore wind turbines to power a desal plant could perhaps be cost-effective.
- maxander 8y agoI mean, are you expecting power in the future to be a tenth as expensive as it is now? A hundredth? With “cheap enough” energy anything is possible, but I don’t see where we would get order of magnitude improvements there anytime soon.
- sologoub 8y agoI’m still hoping for nuclear fusion within my lifetime.