What $ price for water.

[ZenOps]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/us/drought-widens-economic-divide-for-californians.html?_r=0

“Water is a necessity of life,” said Mr. Sears, the retired food-company executive, whose bimonthly water bills regularly run $400 or $500 but went as high as $756 last September. “It should not be sold as a commodity.”

Obviously there are people who pay big $ every two months for water, and even more this year.

They will probably be shutting off the taps for five days out of each week in Brazil very soon.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/25/sao-paulo-brazil-failing-megacity-water-crisis-rationing

"In Itu, a city 100km from São Paulo a desperate water shortage in late 2014 led to fighting in queues, theft of water, and the looting of emergency water trucks, which are now accompanied by armed civil guards."

Oil schmoil.

[vengie]

Fresh Water will be the most precious commodity in the next 50 years.
Unless de-salination of sea water becomes commercially viable.

[jwslam]

As I said before, I still don't get why nobody has invented some sort of cloud vacuum yet. Flys up and condenses clouds into semi-fresh water, and you effectively eliminate the need for snow removal services...

[wesleyl]

Originally posted by jwslam
As I said before, I still don't get why nobody has invented some sort of cloud vacuum yet. Flys up and condenses clouds into semi-fresh water, and you effectively eliminate the need for snow removal services...
Because this could play hell with our global climate. Clouds are an essential part of our planet's water cycle and it should stay that way. Leeching resources from different areas of the earth is not the way to go, especially considering how much would be needed to sustain the massive overpopulation.

[ExtraSlow]

Originally posted by vengie
Fresh Water will be the most precious commodity in the next 50 years.
Unless de-salination of sea water becomes commercially viable.
Water desalinization is already commercially done on a massive scale in many parts of the world. It's just very energy intensive.

The technology is well proven and understood.

[vengie]

Originally posted by ExtraSlow

Water desalinization is already commercially done on a massive scale in many parts of the world. It's just very energy intensive.

The technology is well proven and understood.

This is a good point. I read up on it after I posted.
However it doesn't seem economically sustainable? Pretty cool concept nonetheless.

[BavarianBeast]

Singapore has a good handle around desalination.

[mr2mike]

Didn't Bill Gates just piss into a machine and then drink it 1 min later?

[jdmXSI]

I guess our gov't is just prostituting our water out at $2~ per million litres... Maybe a higher premium would help reduce the deficit if water is in such short supply.

[Xtrema]

If the trend is we are losing glaciers and getting dryer with global warming/climate change, desalination tech is our only savior.

[Cos]

.

[ercchry]

Originally posted by Cos


It is if the price of water goes high enough. Build a nuke plant and plunk it next to desalinization. Operate the plant and sell excess electricity.


http://usvsth3m.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/LZKkTzD1.jpg

[ZenOps]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/food-water-footprint_n_5952862.html

Vanilla beans need 15,159 gallons of water to produce one pound.

I always wondered why real vanilla extract was so expensive.