7 ms·
Fresh water cost $1 per cubic metre. The availability of fresh drinking water in some countries is a political problem not a technological one.
by salty_biscuits 4y ago
Fresh water cost $1 per cubic metre. The availability of fresh drinking water in some countries is a political problem not a technological one.
- PakG1 4y agoDecentralizing technology has a history of enabling the disenfranchised to get what they couldn't get before. This could enable that. Admittedly, technology also has a history of enabling tyranny. But that doesn't make it untrue that technology has an ability to enable the disenfranchised to make better lives for themselves either.
- hackerlight 4y agoThat's the point. Devices like this are a way for people to be able to make their own fresh drinking water without needing a functioning state around them.
- salty_biscuits 4y agoThis is a good point but a sad situation. Without a functional state there are many other problems as well.
- doctor_eval 4y agoNone of which will be solved while the people on the ground are dying of dehydration.
- Adiqq 4y agoEven with functional state, lack of access to clean water might be new risk due to climate changes and general world instability. What if, prices of clean water will rise due to some events? Today we have energy crisis in Europe and who would expect 5 or 10 years ago that situation will go that bad, that rationing of energy will be considered? There are already some predictions that water scarcity problem will get worse, so it's very good that there are already prototypes that might provide cheap conversion of salt water to clean water. Future seems to be about minimizing costs and decentralization, so we can better sustain all people and save environment.
- blackshaw 4y ago> There are already some predictions that water scarcity problem will get worse That's putting it mildly. I recommend the book "When the Rivers Run Dry" if you feel like you don't have enough reasons to despair.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoPossibly the main problem, as alluded to by the original comment, is political in nature and, is that 'rationing' was never considered possible, even for expensive, polluting, imported materials. If it had, we'd have used less of them and used more alternatives like insulation. Just like farmers would use less water if they had some incentive to use less than every bit they could get their hands on.
- afarrell 4y agoMaking a functional state requires solving logistics problems. Or as Napoleon said: “An army marches on its stomach”.
- AstralStorm 4y agoAs long as you're living on the coast. The saltwater piping (and especially pumps if needed) does not build or maintain itself, and this filter is unnecessary for river, well or rain water. It may be useful for salt lakes, but these are likely to go first. If you really need it for some reason, solar or other distillation is good enough on small scale.
- chmod775 4y ago>Fresh water cost $1 per cubic metre. That really depends on where you are, infrastructure, and economies of scale. The statement is ridiculous by itself. If I pumped a cubic meter of drinking water here and mailed it to you, it would cost much more than $1. If I instead built pump and piping from scratch to provide you with a single cubic meter at your location, it would also cost way more. Especially if I could source neither parts nor know-how locally and instead had to ship them around half the globe.
- salty_biscuits 4y agoThis isn't high tech stuff. People all around the world know how to make clean water. It doesn't require specialised equipment or knowledge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter
- adrianN 4y agoA slow sand filter requires water that is not salty. A desalination device serves a different purpose.
- dtech 4y agoI don't expect this to work in areas were typically desalination is used, since there is no freshwater available there.
- POPOSYS 4y agoAre you an expert in the field of desalination? Are you sure that a sand filter is a good tool for desalination?
- baq 4y agoBreakthrough technologies are required to solve political problems.
- collyw 4y agoGuillotines are not breakthrough technology.
- baq 4y agothe French Revolution didn't really solve any problems, just moved them around
- afarrell 4y agoIt did introduce the metric system.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoWell by that logic the American civil war 'just moved problem around' too
- defrost 4y agoAnd the non vailability of adequate supplies in many other places is a fact of growing water scarcity issues that cannot be waved away by a vote or a regime change. Even within the US aquifers that millions of Americans rely on for freshwater are being depleted at an accelerating rate. There comes are point where these are empty and the ground collapses.
- Datagenerator 4y agoMad max?
- markdown 4y agoThat's insanely expensive. It should be close to $0.10 or less.
- oaiey 4y agoThat is insanely cheap. A cubic meter costs roughly $3 in Germany but only if you ignore grey water fees .. .which brings the price up to something like $6. And that was before climate change has completely hit us. Utilities fees for far distant water supplies (think 100 miles +) and their creation will add some more dollars to that equation. Prices of water are very regional and can become very costly.
- upsidesinclude 4y agoYour comment is absolutely true and yet the lightest shade of gray
- rbanffy 4y agoIt may even be $1 on average, this doesn’t change that it’s not $1 everywhere and it’s not easily available everywhere.
- hackerlight 4y agoThe comment isn't true because political dysfunction is only the proximate cause but a lack of cheap decentralized technology is also a cause. The problem can be solved either politically via functioning government, or technologically via innovations like this. It is therefore both a political and technological problem. Saying it's just a political problem isn't accurate.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago> Fresh water cost $1 per cubic metre. The availability of fresh drinking water in some countries is a political problem not a technological one. Your logic is not sound. A perfect anologue is the resent post regarding famine. Famine is a political failure. Yes, certainly, technology could prevent famine. If everyone on earth had a synthesizer to generate food then it wouldn't be an issue! So it must be a lack of technology keeping people hungry. Or, hear me out, what if the politicians stopped starving people to death through failures in governance ?
- hackerlight 4y agoIt is sound if the technological solution is easier or of similar difficulty to the political solution. Famine has no technological silver bullet, but water purification might.
- upsidesinclude 4y agoYou're leveraging a lot on that "if" and downvoting my comment. Almost exclusively in the modern world, famine is caused by politicians. So the answer lies in removing the cause of the problem. Developing technology to counteract the cause of famine, a cause that should solve the problems of food distribution....? It makes very little sense. Merely convincing the populous that food could be in short supply has caused people to hoard food, thereby making a short supply. This caused people to starve to death while the hoarders looked on the starvation as evidence of the need to hoard food. Technology cannot correct stupidity
- SixDouble5321 4y agoThe price of an acre-foot of water has doubled in some places in the last year.
- amelius 4y agoGlobal warming will drastically reduce the access to fresh water for many people.
- bismuthcrystal 4y agoThe real question is: to whom? Global warming melting siberia seems like a really big jump in fresh water supply.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoHow does that help anyone who is struggling with acces to water today? meanwhile melting permafrost releases methane, destroys buildings, and creates swamps. It does not create viable, drinkable rivers