So this is what, about $10^11 of GDP out of 10^11 gallons of untreated freshwater? Am I the only one with scope sensitivity, or are people valuing natural water

So this is what, about $10^11 of GDP out of 10^11 gallons of untreated freshwater? Am I the only one with scope sensitivity, or are people valuing natural water at +∞, or what? Because I'm not even slightly outraged. edit: The 10^11 gallon water figure is "since 2011", so maybe 30 trillion cubic feet of shale gas since then, eyeballing this chart [0]. That would have been around $100 billion, at the (insanely depressed) price of $3/thousand ft^3 [1]. You could replace (literally) that water at a cost of <1% of the shale gas. Literal as in, that's the energy cost to desalinate ocean water in the Gulf of Mexico and ship it to the center of the continent by freight rail. Going by the least efficient numbers in [2], the desalination cost is <150 billion ft^3; and by the numbers on [3], for 400 million tons of liquid cargo, and a 1,500 mile distance [4], is about the same. I mean this is completely insane of course, it's just for perspective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Natural_Gas_Production_1990-2040.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Natural_Gas_Production... [1] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Freight_transportation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport... [4] https://www.google.com/#q=distance+from+fargo+to+gulf+of+mexico https://www.google.com/#q=distance+from+fargo+to+gulf+of+mex...