Well, I can't find a news story for it, but... As some of you will know, much of Australia is experiencing a severe drought. It just so happens that one reservoir holds an enormous amount of water, and the owner has auctioned it off in various amounts to land-owners of the area. They buy a certain volume of water, then they all set up their pipes and such.

Many people have suggested that wars in the next century or so will be fought over water, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. As we can see here, water is becoming a commodity which can be bought and sold between individuals, rather than simply supplied by state-owned reservoirs.

Would anyone care to make predictions about the value of water over the next century or so?

Food for thought.. Even in the land of the long white cloud the international coporations are queueing up to buy our water supplies..

Control of, that is ..

Feudalist china had an interesting stratagy. Whenever there was a rebellion in a western province they shut off the water to half of it. They wait 3 days and kill the now half dead people in that half. They take all of that half's food and goods and give it to the other half, buying their loyalty.

This might apply once again, in a few years time.

There never will be a shortage of water supply in the world as 72 % of the world is coverd in water, the real issue is weather or not humans decide to work for the beeter of each other, by using the technology that exist, of which they have gained by years of working togeather in various ways. invention!
the event of provideing water to any land mass which would include the sahara desert is a mattter of piping the water. where in sea water can be conveteed to fresh water simpley by running sea water over porus rocks for X number of miles. the requirement is that a trench is dug by use of tractors, the trench is x number of miles long, the trench is then filled with porus rocks and then sand, it is preferable to run the water from the hottes region to the coldest, but it can operate the oppostie, after the trench is complete the wall holding back the sea wter is opened or tore down, and the water travel the length of the trench, as the water travels the length of the trench the impuities are removed after x number of distance travelled, the saline or salt weights it self out of the water during the night hours and is abosobed as is the inpurites. at the end of x number of miles the water is pure water.
the same procces occurs in nature, called mountian river water, moutian river water in addtion to falling from the sky and melting from ice, flows over miles of mountiain rocks called river rocks which make it some of the purist water avialable, this is true above a certain elevation, where much of the river ways are coverd with rock instead of silt, as you get father down the river the water picks up impurites from the silt and later must be fliterd and clorine or florine added to it as well it must be filtered and then placed in reseviors, however if you pipe the water from the upper elevations there is no need to filter the water as it is clear craytal montain water.
The same proccess that occures in nature can be used for sea water, once you come to the fact of how water pruifcation occurs naturally on earth, the procces above is a major advancement, and would be the procces of fresh water in the future, it will eleiminate the advent of any desert on earth, regardless of how large the desert is, run water to a desert is a good circumstance because deserts are exstremmly cold during the night, causing saline or salt to sink in the river trench and seperate from the water, later the salt can not re enter the water as it can not gain enough tempture as the water refelcts the sun light from the bottom therfore the water just keeps getting purer with less saline. what is even better about the proccess is that when the trench has say aborbed a large amount of salt and impruirties, the sea inlet can be closed and treactors can clear out the trenc and you have concentrated layers of many minerals that can be used by industry or private persons, such eleiminates strip mining and refine procces by X precent. later the sea inlet can be opened and the proccess began again. such a practice would produce tons and tons of mineral resources, example some rivers have gold bottoms which is why early gold panners would pan rivers.
A goverment investment in new technology regarding filters developed by several companies and individuals, would be a good cause as some of these fliters clean sea water in to fresh water with just the use of a filter and water at high pressure.

In end result it is a matter of those countries that are willing to build twenty mile trenches 100 mile trenches, even the great wall of china size trenches to have a endless supply of fresh water for agriculture needs and whatever. failure to make use of this natural technology can be moer costly than a commitment to national water suppply by the metahod. after all it is not exspensive to run a tractor and dig a ditch or to find rocks on the earth. lastly it up them to decide.
DWAYNE D.L.RABON

I'm not an expert on desalinization, but I do believe the various methods of salt and contaminate removal are a bit more complicated and energy intensive than just running salt water over porous rocks. You're not just removing salt, but all sorts of contaminants, to make the water potable.

A large part of the Middle East already use desalinization for much of their fresh water, and it'll probably be more and more common as tappable water supplies get drained. Natural filtering is extremely slow.

To "answer" the question, Adam, the value of water will depend on who controls the methods of getting it. The more complicated, costly, or isolated the source, the higher the price can be set. I remember in the Y2K days looking at resources on how to insure safe storing of drinking water, and it's amazing and scary how water will go bad very quickly. The civilized world takes for granted what water we do get without effort on the public's part.

Once the rock became salt saturated it stops working. Normally desalinazation involves boiling salt water and condensing the vapors.

every year... the oceans water level is replenished by "ice comets." The problem is that fresh water is not because the comets usually land in the ocean. Only by rain do lakes become refilled. I agree that there will be wars in Africa, but i doubt that there will be wars in Austrailia. Aussies are advanced enough... have you heard about their new Solar Power plant???????
THANK YOU AUSTRAILIA... I CHERISH YOUR GOOD HEARTEDNESS

It would be nice if we could genetically engineer plants, farm animals, and if you go the extreme ourselves to be able to drink salt water. It wouldnt be that hard to do because some animals and plants can allready do it so we just transplant genes.

every year... the oceans water level is replenished by "ice comets." The problem is that fresh water is not because the comets usually land in the ocean. Only by rain do lakes become refilled. I agree that there will be wars in Africa, but i doubt that there will be wars in Austrailia. Aussies are advanced enough... have you heard about their new Solar Power plant???????

Where did you hear that our water is "replenished" by comets? There is the theory that much of our water came from comets in the early stages of earth's formation, but nowadays we are hit by a comet VERY rarely. By very rarely i mean, the last BIG one was probably 65 million years ago, it helped wipe out the dinosaurs. Because of evaporation and precipitation, the oceans do not need to be refilled by comets. Earth is essentially a closed system. We have a certain amount of water, and we keep that amount. Some places on the planet have more than others, but there is pretty much no more water coming to us from space.

Originally posted by Adam

Would anyone care to make predictions about the value of water over the next century or so?

After inflation adjustments, probably about the same overall as it is today.

Think about it, is there any reason to believe that the amount of water in the world is decreasing? It's just moving around from place to place as it has for millenia. That means that some places will begin to experience droughts that hadn't before and some places will begin to experience floods that hadn't before. People living in those areas will have to learn to adjust and find new ways of distributing water from the places that have it to the places that don't. Therefore, some people will have to pay more to get their water and others will be paid more to make use of their water, but overall it will probably balance out.[

NOVA 1021.

" have you heard about their new Solar Power plant??????? ".

No I have not !!.. Please tell me more. Is it available at my local Garden Nursery ??.. Has it a Latin Name ..

Nova,


Where did you hear that our water is "replenished" by comets? There is the theory that much of our water came from comets in the early stages of earth's formation, but nowadays we are hit by a comet VERY rarely. By very rarely i mean, the last BIG one was probably 65 million years ago, it helped wipe out the dinosaurs. Because of evaporation and precipitation, the oceans do not need to be refilled by comets. Earth is essentially a closed system. We have a certain amount of water, and we keep that amount. Some places on the planet have more than others, but there is pretty much no more water coming to us from space.

Read text under second caption... they still enter our atmosphere:
http://www.aip.org/physnews/graphics/html/snowball.htm

But i guess you are right, they still dont replenish our supply. I say that most of the earths problems are due to overpopulation... We now have bottled water in almost every country!! People buy that crap, it makes no sense to me.

adam,

The new solar power plant was designed by Austrailians and has a new type of reflecting material. It was rated in the top 5 best inventions of 2002 by Time:

http://www.time.com/time/2002/inventions/

Yes, that solar tower is indeed very groovy. :)

"On December 31, 1996, the NASA Polar spacecraft recorded this nighttime image of the light emitted by the breakup of water molecules from a small comet. This image by the Low-Resolution Visible Camera on board the Polar spacecraft is composed of three consecutive snapshots of the event taken about six seconds apart. These intense glows are created at an altitude of less than 2,000 miles above Earth when sunlight illuminates the oxygen-hydrogen molecules formed after a comet's water molecules have been stripped of a hydrogen atom. A view of Earth at the time of the event has been superposed onto the image as there are no detectable emissions from Earth's nighttime atmosphere at the wavelength where these oxygen-hydrogen molecules glow."

These are extremely small micro-comets that pass through the earth's atmosphere and are vaporized turning the H20 molecule into H0 as the caption above describes. You can see tons of these. The Leonid meteor shower for example.

Later
T:cool:

Originally posted by Adam
Many people have suggested that wars in the next century or so will be fought over water, particularly in Africa and the Middle East.

my dad says that all the time! and here i thought he was just an eccentric old wierd guy.

We all know we can't "run out" of water right? An area might go without for an extended period of time but water can't leave the planet unless we put it on rockets and send it out into space.

Originally posted by Andre
3. Build large greenhouses on the beaches of hot desert areas (could work in Australia) Fill them with sea water and collect the destilled water from the windows.
:confused:
Large green houses? Try astronomically enormous. Condensation is a fairly arduous way of gathering water, such small amounts, it is affective in saving a single human maybe, not in gathering enough water for a large population.
I think maybe people just shouldn't live in the desert, we weren't designed to survive there. Simple.

Originally posted by Adam


Many people have suggested that wars in the next century or so will be fought over water

the next war will be fought over mobile phones. Russia wants to invade finland to take over Nokia, but the USA doesn't like that because 3 years before Motorala went bankrupt and now the world is dependent on mobile phones from Nokia. Since a mobile phone is now the most prized personal possession the USA can't let the most important company in the world fall into russian hands.

NATO has been mobilized and troops are amassing in norway and germany. Several carrier fleets have been dispatched to the atlantic and the intercontinental nukes are warming up in their silos.

it's not too late though. Everybody should throw away their mobile and never purchase another one. Avert this war at all costs...please...for me?

^um. you're kidding right? cyz that sounded seriously fruity.


People buy that crap, it makes no sense to me.
take a drink of my tap water. then you'll understand.