Many people discuss about the shortage of drinking water.

Nature has such a good arrangement to have the formation of cloud and have rains.

Just donot allow this water to go to sea.

Store in lakes. Make artificial lakes/ borewells

Then water can be pumped for a long distance.

Considering the volume of rain water , we should not face the shortage of water anywhere on the earth.

The point is proper efforts are required to store the water received from rain.

P.J.LAKHAPATE
plakhapate@rediiffmail.com

Okay, You stated a fact and made a point. Nothing to disagree. Great! What is it that you want us to reply on?

Store in lakes. Make artificial lakes/ borewells
Then water can be pumped for a long distance.

Cost? Who pays for that?

Considering the volume of rain water, we should not face the shortage of water anywhere on the earth.

Cost of treatment to make it potable? Who pays for that?

I think you should do a better, and more indepth study of the problem in a more realistic mode ...and not in a spark of sci-fi fantasy.

The problem of potable drinking water is a major, major problem over the entire world, not just under-developed nations, either. But unless you research the problem, and understand economics, you can't or shouldn't make snap judgements about solutions.

Baron Max

The OP expressed HUGE ignorance on his behalf. Beside drinking, water is used for a couple of things. Irrigation comes to my mind. Also you can go to the Sahara and hope for a good rain.

Read up on water shoratages in the West and come back tell us what you have have found...

We already have big waterproblems and this is just going to get bigger in the future...

There is also the problem of "Floods", when you have too much water and the Sewerage system can't cope with it, so your drinking water gets polluted. In bad floods people are told to use bottled water or have aid in the forms of trucked water.

There are also ground water pollutants that can occur, Old landfill sites that never had the linings placed into them for one perhaps nearby are mines which means the potential for pollutants form there.

Then of course there is the obvious deserts in the middle of continents which might or might not have rainy seasons. Can you balance a couple of months rain with ten months of intense heat, where water is drunk by the gallon per day on an individual basis?

This original post reminds me a lot of the old French aristocrats who, upon hearing that the peasants had no bread, they said, "Well, let 'em eat cake!"

It's so easy to overlook the major obstacles in the search for potable water. It's also easy to overlook that the very places that need lots of water are the places with huge, almost unmanageable populations.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we should look into the problem of localized over-population instead of trying to bring all of the necessary services to that huge, overly gluttonous population?

Baron Max

Mankind has all the fresh water we'll ever need, even for billions more people.

It's just a question of infrastructure and getting the water to where it's needed. This is compounded by excessive consumption by a growing population.

We've located our cities where the climates suitable and we're near everything we need, now the climate is changing and our populations have been swelling. We're screwed. Prior to the invention of agriculture and subsequently started living in towns and cities, humanity was nomadic. Likely the result of the ice ages and a shifting climate, we moved to where the grass was greener.

Vegas wasn't very well situated.

Baron, I agree with you!

Baron, I agree with you!

Oh, stop, stop my throbbing heart!!! :)

Baron Max

woh, woh, woh, hold the phone. do you have any idea how much sea life is sustained by the debris washes out of rivers? you can't just say, eh, lets kill 90% of coastal marine life and expect it to be less of a problem that the minor water shortage.

overpopulation is the key to solving most of the worlds problems, but nobody has the balls to really limit their population. mostly due to the economic problems it causes, just ask italy.

overpopulation is the key to solving most of the worlds problems, but nobody has the balls to really limit their population.

Well, I sure as hell do, but no one will give me the nukes!!!!

It's amazing to me that humans have virtually fucked themselves, and they keep right on fuckin'?! Then worse than that, a whole bunch of people are against abortion. And worse still, there are millions who are trying to save all of the sick and elderly, too!!! Geez, sick, man, really fuckin' sick.

Baron Max

Then water can be pumped for a long distance.

Cost? Who pays for that?



Cost of treatment to make it potable? Who pays for that?

I think you should do a better, and more indepth study of the problem in a more realistic mode ...and not in a spark of sci-fi fantasy.

The problem of potable drinking water is a major, major problem over the entire world, not just under-developed nations, either. But unless you research the problem, and understand economics, you can't or shouldn't make snap judgements about solutions.

Baron Max

Even if we have unlimited water, we do not have unlimited clean drinking water. There is a huge difference.

Unlimited clean drinking water depends only upon energy. Systems, even cheap systems for making clean drinking water from any water, are not hard to make, but almost all of them are energy intensive.

-AntonK

Systems, ...for making clean drinking water from any water,....but almost all of them are energy intensive. -AntonKYou can remove the word "almost." The reason is that if the entering H2O has X in it and you want to separate the mix into H2O plus Y (where Y = X is included, but not necessary) then you need to increase the "order" of the dirty water input (its entropy decreased). This always requires energy and results in the net decrease of order in the universe. For example Carbon, C and Oxygen that were separate and thus more highly ordered become mixed as CO2 to separate the H2O and X

The reason I discuss this that this very general principle can be applied to current US economy, specifically its suburban infrastructure. That infrastructure is very dependant upon the cheap energy that existed during the last few decades during which it was build. This building produced a great deal of "order" - For example iron ore (Fe2O3) was first purified from many different "Xs" found with it in the ground. Then at even greater energy expense, the order was further increased to separate the Fe from the oxygen. Some of this iron was further ordered to have the thin shape of an SUV's fender or the nails in a suburban house etc.

That is a tremendous amount of cheap energy was used to construct the suburban infrastructure the US has, which is totally unsuited for the era of expensive energy (Basically this the reason why average Joe American is having such a hard time making ends meet. etc. I.e. He is trying to live in an infrastructure, which requires too much energy.)

As I see it, a very fundamental physical law (making a new infrastructure “order” for US economy requires great energy) is why the US will not be able to compete in the high energy cost era with the rest of the world, which has much less need to rebuild (make new "order" of material things) it infrastructure. Not only that, but even if the energy were affordable, it will take decades, which are not available, before the dollar collapses and/or China & India can pay more for the energy that is available.

the water we have today is the same water the earth had whent he Dino's were kickin' about. It's not an issue of amount of water, but the amount of clean, usable water - "potable".

Billy T I agree with you - The US is build on roads; this has made us powerful, but at a cost. It is in many places, impossible to live and work at any sort of common level without a car. Towns are too far apart, and are not self-sufficient; public transportation is limited, and in many cases, infrastructure was designed with the idea that building materials are cheap; instead of considering efficiency.

Water with no outlet ends up being called things like " Salt lake, Utah" and The Dead sea. Besides that Baron Max is right.

Who needs water when Coca-Cola has a vending machine at almost any point on the planet? :D

You can remove the word "almost." The reason is that if the entering H2O has X in it and you want to separate the mix into H2O plus Y (where Y = X is included, but not necessary) then you need to increase the "order" of the dirty water input (its entropy decreased). This always requires energy and results in the net decrease of order in the universe. For example Carbon, C and Oxygen that were separate and thus more highly ordered become mixed as CO2 to separate the H2O and X

Yes, you are right. I only prefaced with the word "almost" because I used the word "intensive". The word is really rather ambiguous and depends on the context. At one time, the energy output from a single car running on a single tank of gas could have run a small city. Now adays of course it cannot, perhaps one day we shall look at the MWatt outputs of our largest nuclear plants and think of how little energy they really put out.

So yes, all water purification will require energy input, but I have yet to see something proving a lower bound on how much energy. So while it will always require input, we may find more efficient ways, or we may just find better ways of producing energy in which case the amount needed for water purification just won't seem all that much.

-AntonK

I'd say that water purification is a three-variable equation: volume, energy, and time. energy*time=volume

You can have little volume for little energy and little time with one method, lots of volume with a little energy and a lot of time, or lots of volumn with lots of energy and a little time.

Diffusion or evaporation methods require a small input of energy (gravity and sunlight respectively), but are slow. Mechanical pumping through a ceramic filter is mightly fast, but requires alot of force (thus, alot of energy).

My point is technology is available.
If we need good quality drinking water , we will have to spend accordingly.
P.J.LAKHAPATE
plakhapate@rediffmail.com

Plakhapate,

That argument is completely false. We HAVE the technology for a variet of problems. Money is the real issue. Everything costs money, and you have to #1 be ABLE to pay for it and #2 be willing to pay for it.

So you can either say the problem is now that the people who need the technology need to get more money (not a big prospect for third world countries) or you can reframe it back into a technological problem and say what we REALLY need to do is invent cheap technology, such as ways of generating cheap energy.

-AntonK

.....I agree your statement


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