Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Joined: Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 225 Location: West of Chicago
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 9:35 am Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
Sure...and the cool thing would be to use those solar-powered engines (Stinson? Stilson?) to move the water. I wonder if one could do it electrically with wind / solar...
We could also use the platforms to farm fish like they do with oil rigs.
I wonder if there is anything here. Hm.
What are the drawbacks? As our water dries up cost becomes less of a factor...engineering the collectors...cost/revenue model...permits...locations...
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:57 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
canis_lupus wrote:
katkinkate wrote:
My brother and I were discussing this subject the other day. I was commenting on how there seemed to always be rain showers into the ocean off Moreton and Stradbroke Islands and if they sent tankers out with folding screens attached to the sides of the boats, they could harvest a lot of rainwater and ship it back to Brisbane once the tanks were full.
Then my brother got the idea that if you you made them of clear plastic, carbon or perspex with drop down walls with channels around the bottoms you could also distil from the ocean surface using the sun's energy, so you could get some water even when the rain wasn't falling. Of course there would be problems with storms, that's why I thought attachments you could pack up when the weather was rough were better than a permanent site.
Or you could have a basic permanent platform set up with a shelter for storing the water gathering equipment and use smaller boats to tow the tanks around with floats attached.
Wow. What thinking!
Why not use a small series of pipelines to pump it to shore for filtration? Catch the water with a group of collapsable screens around a platform --like an oil platform -- and pump it via underwater pipeline to shore.
Run the screens out when it rains and obviously let them float and collect water to the pumping station. Solar powered maybe?
Draw the screens in to the sides, accordion style when not in use.
Hmmmmm
LOL
Ok say it works perfectly and is cheaper than a desal plant(s). If eventually 9-12 billion humans their farming, livestock and other industry are sucking vast amounts of evaporation out of the atmosphere think (LARGE SCALE)....
Do you think that would alter weather patterns and decrease rainfall, affect glacier growth and rivers...
Who would have thought that when the industrial revolution first began we could alter the environment by pumping so much heat trapping gas into the atmosphere.
Hahahahahahaha I flush clean water down the toilet too, this stuff is great. The best thing is I've been told all I have to do is not worry sit back and wait for a "free market" solution. _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
I also got to thinking what if large scale collectors were erected in the suburbs and other land regions. This would significantly halt plant growth in areas where rain fall does not touch terra firma.
Could it be that even the oceans require rainfall to maintain their ecosystem?
It's interesting to say the least especially when you start factoring in the enormous scale of activity and impact on the environment humans could have. _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
Carrie wrote:
For crying out loud, we live on a planet that is 70% covered in water, and we have water problems? 98% of the total water on Earth is locked up in the oceans. Why can we not figure out a low-cost way to desalinate it?
Unlike peak oil I think with peak water, technology could help out here.
Carrie, that 70% water you refer to is salt-water (brine). You know it's toxic to drink.
Desalinization doesn't work because it requires gobs of energy. There's simply too many people using too much water. Look up the stats for your area to get a feel for the volumes of water consumed. The town I live in has about a quarter of a million people and consumes about 50 million gallons of water a day.
People use gobs of water, and even more if you factor in what's used for ag purposes.
Some info on the Tampa Bay desal plant, currently the largest under construction in the US. If it ever comes completely online it will product 25 million gallons/day.
Thing is, the entire Tampa bay plant has been an economic boondoggle. Something like 50% of the operating costs are for the electricity to power the plant. This should not be a surprise.
http://www.hotpolitics.com/desal1.html
I was hard pressed to find any figures on the actual electrical usage, though I did come across a link stating a california desal plant consumed between 11-15 kwh per 1000 gallons produced. Scaling this up to 25 million gallons is something like 300 megawatt hours (per day).
So desal is just another microcosm of the PO/population bomb. There's no way we could desalinate enough water to make a difference at this point. The energy requirements alone are extreme.
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 4:20 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
A good way to solve this problem is to trade water. It's an old idea:
1. where is most water available? Correct, in the tropics - 2500 mm precipitation per year and up
2. grow biomass there, which embeds the water
3. export biomass (and count as global water credit)
4. biomass-as-water can then be converted into anything (into food or fuels or plastics or whatever)
Simple. Each person on the planet gets a minimum credit and if you happen to live in a region where you have a lot of water per capita, (like Congo, Indonesia or Brazil), then good for you, you can sell your excess credit to people who want more water. _________________ The Beginning is Near!
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
There are 2 main ways of desalinating water:
1) Reverse osmosis
and
2) distillation
RO basically involves pumping water up to very high pressure and filtering it through a molecular porous membrane which is too fine for the salt to pass through. RO is pretty efficient in terms of overall energy use (needing about 3-6 kWh / 1000 gallons) but the energy has to be provided as electricity.
Distillation is much more energy intensive, but it only needs energy as heat. One advantage is that low-grade heat can be used - you don't have to boil the water, just get it warm. You can then collect the fresh water on cold/cool collector plates. The total amount of energy needed is higher (13-18 kWh / 1000 gallons) but 90-95% of that can be provided as waste heat from industrial processes (e.g. power generation, chemical processing).
There is a lot of interest in co-locating power plants and desalination plants on the coast. The waste heat from the turbines which would otherwise be diverted to cooling towers could instead be used to power the desalination process.
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 6:44 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
Mmm, but desalination is quite energy intensive isn't it?
The question is: what's more efficient, physically transporting water embedded in biomass or desalinating ocean water?
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:04 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
ChumpusRex2 wrote:
There are 2 main ways of desalinating water:
1) Reverse osmosis
and
2) distillation
RO basically involves pumping water up to very high pressure and filtering it through a molecular porous membrane which is too fine for the salt to pass through. RO is pretty efficient in terms of overall energy use (needing about 3-6 kWh / 1000 gallons) but the energy has to be provided as electricity.
Assuming 5 kWh / 1000 gallons the Tampa plant would still require ~125 megawatt hours per day. It's better than distillation, but it's still a lot of energy. I just can't see it being used on a large scale anytime soon.
Joined: May 17, 2004 Posts: 293 Location: San Jose, CA
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:10 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
eric_b wrote:
Carrie, that 70% water you refer to is salt-water (brine). You know it's toxic to drink.
Desalinization doesn't work because it requires gobs of energy. There's simply too many people using too much water. Look up the stats for your area to get a feel for the volumes of water consumed. The town I live in has about a quarter of a million people and consumes about 50 million gallons of water a day.
Yes, of course I know it's toxic to drink. That's why I brought up the nanotechnology technique as a possible way to desalinate it. According to this article, using nanotube-based membranes could reduce the cost of desalination by 72%, compared to reverse osmosis. It would also require less energy. The only question is if they could scale it up to the capacity needed.
I don't think it has to be used as the sole source of water for a populated area - I think recycling should also be used wherever possible.
Quote:
The new membranes, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), could reduce the cost of desalination by 75 percent, compared to reverse osmosis methods used today, the researchers say. The membranes, which sort molecules by size and with electrostatic forces, could also separate various gases, perhaps leading to economical ways to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.
The carbon nanotubes used by the researchers are sheets of carbon atoms rolled so tightly that only seven water molecules can fit across their diameter. Their small size makes them good candidates for separating molecules. And, despite their diminutive dimensions, these nanopores allow water to flow at the same rate as pores considerably larger, reducing the amount of pressure needed to force water through, and potentially saving energy and costs compared to reverse osmosis using conventional membranes.
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:29 pm Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
Carrie,
Assuming the new (nano) filter technology works I still don't see it as changing the water dilemma fundamentally. I guess every little bit helps but it's too little too late at this point, IMO.
Joined: May 14, 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Central Canada
Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:49 am Post subject: Re: World business group doomerish about water
So, if we solve our crude oil problem somehow, will soon face a water problem; should we solve that we'll certainlly run into some other apocalyptic issue.
The real problem is over population. Everything else is a symptom of that disease. _________________ “Your failure to be informed does not make me a wacko.”
-John Loeffler
“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you sick.”
-Unknown
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