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When water gets in short enough supply, we will burn coal, garbage, tires, anything to power desalination plants.
by linuxlizard 3y ago
When water gets in short enough supply, we will burn coal, garbage, tires, anything to power desalination plants.
- RC_ITR 3y agoOr (at least in the US), we will simply stop doing things like growing alfalfa in the desert to feed cows being raised in Texas. Sure beef will be a little more expensive but… You’re actually right. We’ll probably burn garbage and radio hosts will call people against burning garbage effeminate names.
- bombcar 3y agoBurning garbage may be one of the best things you can do with garbage - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/sweden-garbage-used-for-fuel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/sweden-garbage-us... As you can set it up to burn very hot and have all sorts of scrubbers on the outcomes.
- RC_ITR 3y agoBurning anything is never the right answer in a world of climate change. We are scrambling to find ways to capture atmospheric carbon and store it underground and burning garbage is literally the opposite of that.
- bombcar 3y agoIf handling waste and burying it costs X carbon, and burning it creates Y carbon, and Y is less than X, then burning is better than burying. You'd have to do the math, it's not manifestly obvious that it's not the case (especially once you consider all the transportation involved in sending waste around the country and across the ocean).
- RC_ITR 3y agoOn first principles, there's no reason that the cost of transporting trash to the incinerator is any less carbon intensive than transporting trash to a landfill. Maybe people prefer incinerators in their community over landfills in their community (unclear), but if that's the case, that's a policy decision and not one that seeks to minimize carbon emissions.
- bombcar 3y agoLots of recycling (has) been transported across the ocean to China. It's likely that landfill are the way to go in many cases, but people don't like them.
- tppiotrowski 3y agoDesalination cones should work in tropical climates. [1] http://www.watercone.com/product.html http://www.watercone.com/product.html
- pier25 3y agoThis is brilliant. The same designer made this Terracooler which is also a fascinating idea. http://www.terracooler.org/ http://www.terracooler.org/
- timerol 3y agoDoes this exist? The product page mentions that the planned price is "below € 20", but the news page doesn't have anything newer than 2007
- kzrdude 3y agoThat's a damn good argument for making sure we don't go into overpopulation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]