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Into the ocean. The ocean covers the majority of the Earth's surface. The ocean is full of salt. Water which rains out over the oceans is unusable as drinking

by XorNot 3y ago

Into the ocean. The ocean covers the majority of the Earth's surface. The ocean is full of salt. Water which rains out over the oceans is unusable as drinking or irrigation water without expensive processing (desalination). If historic rainfall patterns change, there is absolutely no requirement that the rain land anywhere useful for our existing infrastructure or human habitation. Yes, the water won't disappear, but if the effect is rainfall hits the ocean, or say, flood-prone regions even harder then it normally does, it's still going to be coming down somewhere not useful to us. The problem is not that we can't solve these problems, it's that is is staggeringly expensive to do so.

phpisthebest 3y ago
>>it's that is is staggeringly expensive to do so. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and with Necessity also comes scale, and with scale comes less cost... Desalination has been expensive because it is not necessary, the second it becomes necessary I bet you will see the costs drop.. If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick
- excalibur 3y ago
  > If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick Make it so.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I think many of us working in software can be overconfident about how easy it is to scale things, probably because of the peculiar progress in the improvement of integrated circuits and the commensurate increased availability of raw compute for not that much more energy. But many processes (including desalinization, as far as I understand it) are energy bound. It is really hard to make exponential progress when a process is bound by how much energy you can muster up to put into it. That is why rockets haven't had an exponential increase in the amount of weight they can get into orbit in the last 100 years. With gravity you must pay the piper. I doubt scaling desalinization is as hard as hurling stuff into space, but it may not be easy to scale either. There are plenty of places on earth which are very dry, adjacent to salt water, and extremely rich and yet no great desalinization technologies have come from them.
  - MandieD 3y ago
    I think many of us working in software can be overconfident about how easy it is to scale things, probably because of the peculiar progress in the improvement of integrated circuits and the commensurate increased availability of raw compute for not that much more energy. You may have neatly (and politely) pinned down why we computer folks are so arrogant about how easy problems outside our direct field would be to solve, if only we were the ones “allowed” to solve them.
- XorNot 3y ago
  > If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick Why? Nestle just passes the cost on to the consumer, because where else are they gonna go?
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  There’s the rules of physics to consider. There are more than a few places where desalination is necessary, and we still haven’t come up with a way to make it cheap. The current issue is that there is just no way that we know of to reliably desalinate that isn’t super energy intensive, so it comes down to trading energy for water. That’s why desalination is expensive.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    It seems that solar energy has gotten real cheap in recent years, especially in places without clouds and rain (deserts). So maybe that will work out in the end if the economics make water expensive enough to trade energy for water.
HPsquared 3y ago
Not staggeringly expensive, about 38 cents per day per person, apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs Although that doesn't include irrigation.. EDIT: can even be economical for irrigation in some circumstances: https://www.fluencecorp.com/desalination-and-agriculture-lessons-from-spain/ https://www.fluencecorp.com/desalination-and-agriculture-les...
- XorNot 3y ago
  Kind of leaving out the main point there. People don't use a lot of water. Industry and Farming do. We depend on both of those for...pretty much our entire society.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Water-intensive industrial processes can move to where the water is. Farming is more of a challenge but some crops need more water than others; there's a lot of scope for substitution.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Yeah maybe someday we can stop growing all our produce in the damn desert just because the weather was slightly more profitable.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      Because all of that's going to be cheap right? In a nation which loses its mind even gas prices go up 20c?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    People use water directly and indirectly. And water is "used" and "used" - it's not as simple as measuring a pipe, you need to know where it goes.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  Something like 600 million people live below the poverty line, which with current inflation is at $2.15 per day; so for them a 38 cent per day rate means diverting almost 20% of their income just on water. For comparison, that's a much larger share than what USA residents spend on food (~13% of their income).

by XorNot 3y ago

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>it's that is is staggeringly expensive to do so. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and with Necessity also comes scale, and with scale comes less cost... Desalination has been expensive because it is not necessary, the second it becomes necessary I bet you will see the costs drop.. If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick

excalibur 3y ago
> If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick Make it so.
nathan_compton 3y ago
I think many of us working in software can be overconfident about how easy it is to scale things, probably because of the peculiar progress in the improvement of integrated circuits and the commensurate increased availability of raw compute for not that much more energy. But many processes (including desalinization, as far as I understand it) are energy bound. It is really hard to make exponential progress when a process is bound by how much energy you can muster up to put into it. That is why rockets haven't had an exponential increase in the amount of weight they can get into orbit in the last 100 years. With gravity you must pay the piper. I doubt scaling desalinization is as hard as hurling stuff into space, but it may not be easy to scale either. There are plenty of places on earth which are very dry, adjacent to salt water, and extremely rich and yet no great desalinization technologies have come from them.
- MandieD 3y ago
  I think many of us working in software can be overconfident about how easy it is to scale things, probably because of the peculiar progress in the improvement of integrated circuits and the commensurate increased availability of raw compute for not that much more energy. You may have neatly (and politely) pinned down why we computer folks are so arrogant about how easy problems outside our direct field would be to solve, if only we were the ones “allowed” to solve them.
XorNot 3y ago
> If nestle had to use Sea water to fill their bottles I bet they would have a cheap way to do it right quick Why? Nestle just passes the cost on to the consumer, because where else are they gonna go?
dghlsakjg 3y ago
There’s the rules of physics to consider. There are more than a few places where desalination is necessary, and we still haven’t come up with a way to make it cheap. The current issue is that there is just no way that we know of to reliably desalinate that isn’t super energy intensive, so it comes down to trading energy for water. That’s why desalination is expensive.
- hnfong 3y ago
  It seems that solar energy has gotten real cheap in recent years, especially in places without clouds and rain (deserts). So maybe that will work out in the end if the economics make water expensive enough to trade energy for water.

HPsquared 3y ago

Not staggeringly expensive, about 38 cents per day per person, apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs Although that doesn't include irrigation.. EDIT: can even be economical for irrigation in some circumstances: https://www.fluencecorp.com/desalination-and-agriculture-lessons-from-spain/ https://www.fluencecorp.com/desalination-and-agriculture-les...

XorNot 3y ago
Kind of leaving out the main point there. People don't use a lot of water. Industry and Farming do. We depend on both of those for...pretty much our entire society.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Water-intensive industrial processes can move to where the water is. Farming is more of a challenge but some crops need more water than others; there's a lot of scope for substitution.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Yeah maybe someday we can stop growing all our produce in the damn desert just because the weather was slightly more profitable.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Because all of that's going to be cheap right? In a nation which loses its mind even gas prices go up 20c?
- bombcar 3y ago
  People use water directly and indirectly. And water is "used" and "used" - it's not as simple as measuring a pipe, you need to know where it goes.
PeterisP 3y ago
Something like 600 million people live below the poverty line, which with current inflation is at $2.15 per day; so for them a 38 cent per day rate means diverting almost 20% of their income just on water. For comparison, that's a much larger share than what USA residents spend on food (~13% of their income).