this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Good thing we aren't running out of fresh water or anyth-
https://www.earth.com/news/satellites-reveal-a-sudden-drop-in-global-freshwater-levels/
Fuck.
"Running out of fresh water" narration is a complete lie. I don't know why, but these articles are implying its like oil that will run out some day. No, fresh water is a manufacturable good. Worst case scenario it gets more expensive as more of it needs to be produced out of salt water ect.
A big consumer in the fresh water market is agriculture. Whenever articles talk about demand exceeding freshwater supplies, it's referring to agriculture demand, which usually draw from dams, rivers, or lakes.
City water treatmant plants also usually start with pulling water from a river or water reservoir.
The costs with these consumers suddenly spinning up a saltwater or other advanced purification plant, that could perhaps function without a large freshwater reservoir, is prohibitively expensive. Especially for developing countries, where agriculture could be a large part of the economy
You do understand that the more expensive it gets, the less people can afford it, right? That's basically the same as running out. Sure, you can desalinate the whole ocean if you want to spend the resources on it. No one is suggesting that there will one day literally be no more fresh water within the foreseeable future. That doesn't really matter to the farmers in developing countries that can't afford to irrigate their fields and thus can't feed the people there.
And then there's the fact that desalination is a huge environmental disaster.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/desalination-pours-more-toxic-brine-ocean-previously-thought
You know, all these arguments avoid answering the question about how much more expensive water could be. And I suspect the general answer is: not much. Mass producing fresh water is well understood process. It's also a potential source of sodium for sodium-ion batteries, cheaper alternative to lithium-ion.
I'm fully aware of that - what's missing there is proper regulation by local governments, preventing excess salinity of water dumped back to the ocean
Where are you gonna get the energy to desalinate water from? What about areas that are thousands of kilometres from the ocean?