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More than 100 French towns without drinking water amid 'historic drought'

Brexit is already doing that in Britain.

As for rain, the local weather station reported zero rain in the month of July. A couple of weeks back I noticed a faint dewy sensation on my skin one evening as the dew fell, but that's not enough for their recording equipment, or the vegetation!

I've never been to Britain - always wanted to. When I worked overseas, I worked with many from 'Blighty' and knew many from other countries who had lived, studied, worked in London and Manchester. Nearly all commented on how gloomy, cloudy, rainy the weather was, so to see these kinds of atmospheric conditions persist for as long as it has is indeed nothing less than shocking. I've been to Continental Europe a few times, where they are dealing with the same extremes, obviously.

I guess the equivalent here in the States is the rainy Pacific Northwest, which is also known for its 'depressing' climate, as I can attest to having lived there for a few years until moving on. But there, too, as in the UK, the NW has in recent years dealt with searing heat and less and less rainfall.

I'm afraid that this is the terrifying opening act to decades of horrors that we will see unless we have much greater degrees of global cooperation, not only on measures to prevent climate change but also on how to cooperate globally on its near-term consequences (like massive shortages and dislocation). This is a really, really bad time for brewing rivalries between the West (particularly the US), China, and Russia. We need global cooperation now more than ever, but this period of decoupling and nationalism is horrifyingly reminiscent of Europe and Asia in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. We know what happened next.
 
It's SALT fer chrissakes. Salt has value, salt has usefulness, salt can be dealt with rather easily once it is viewed as a commodity, which it is.
OR .... even tossed right back into the ocean, if it's quantity becomes impractical to deal with!
 
We have a number of uses for water. One of the most important is its use in farming. At day's end we h. sapiens have three basic needs: food, clothing and shelter.

In a number of sections of the world changes in climate are placing the amount of water available for farming in danger. This, in turn, could reduce the amount of food produced. We are profligate with food, wasting a large percent of it.* Reducing food waste can go far to compensate for reduced food supplies. The problem in democratic societies lies in getting people to change their habits.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

* Ref: https://earth.org/facts-about-food-waste/
We could save a shit-ton of water here in the States if we stopped "farming" lawns.
 
We could save a shit-ton of water here in the States if we stopped "farming" lawns.

Hi, Gateman_Wen.

There's quite a bit of space between 'could' and 'will' in a democratic society.

Consider how we can slow the spread of airborne infectious bacterial and viral diseases through the simple procedure of wearing a mask in public spaces. 'Nuf said.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.
 
Hi, Gateman_Wen.

There's quite a bit of space between 'could' and 'will' in a democratic society.

Consider how we can slow the spread of airborne infectious bacterial and viral diseases through the simple procedure of wearing a mask in public spaces. 'Nuf said.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.
I didn't say we would, although it would be the smart thing to do.
 
And the push should be on solar powered desalination, by the way, because cogeneration is an idea whose time has come.
Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water in the world. In 2011 the volume of water supplied by the country's 27 desalination plants at 17 locations was 3.3 million square meters or
871,767,771 gallons. And that's 2011, so I suspect they may have almost doubled the output more recently.

With a scaleup that large, it makes no sense to portray desalination as a difficult and expensive thing because what's way more expensive is civil and economic collapse due to water scarcity.
And I don't want to hear crying and moaning about the harm from excess salinity in the output.
It's SALT fer chrissakes. Salt has value, salt has usefulness, salt can be dealt with rather easily once it is viewed as a commodity, which it is.
Water desalination is HUGELY energy demanding and expensive. Only reason Saudi Arabia can do this, is because of oil.

Large scale desalination is not a viable option for most countries at the moment.

Not to mention it is just a band-aid on the over all problem of climate change. This week in Denmark.. 35 degrees one day, and 20 degrees and monsoon like storm with rain the next..
 
The extreme temperatures we are seeing are most unusual for a temperate zone, but the sceptics are still telling us there's no global warming, it's just normal climate fluctuation etc.
Normal climate fluctuation is just something you have to be able to rule out in this region because it is historically normal for this region to fluctuate between unusually warm and unusually cold periods.
 
There are three phenomenon which are at times misused in posts. They are:

1. Global warming. This is the slow increase in the average temperature of the earth's surface over an extended period of time -- many decades.

2. Climate change. This is a deviation from 'normal' for an extended area -- either hotter, cooler, drier or wetter or a combination of these -- also lasting for a period of at least several years.

3. Weather. Weather is what we experience on a given day. The day may be sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, hot or cold. There are more possibilities.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.
 
It's also time to radically rethink our economics. An economy that aims for perpetual GDP growth on the assumption of resource abundance is dangerously at odds with the realities of growing resource scarcity.

There are some alternatives emerging right now. Like for example the doughnut economic model that consider both economical and social sustainability.


That at the same time countries, regions and organizations are joining the Well Being Economy Alliance.

 
It's also time to radically rethink our economics. An economy that aims for perpetual GDP growth on the assumption of resource abundance is dangerously at odds with the realities of growing resource scarcity.
That’s also a large business metric. “How much did we do this month compared to the same month last year?” Given the size of the business space and the number of employees the tally will have max out. At some point the only variable is the charge for the product/service that is produced at that location.
 
Our reservoir levels are very low here in Portugal, too. It's terrifying.

Sorry, there's only the 'like' button, not the 'I hear you' or 'I understand you' button. But yeah, this is happening everywhere. It's obviously now becoming increasingly visible in the developed world but this is also happening in many parts of the developing world, where people have less voice and where the margins for necessary output are much, much thinner.
 
Britain has had very little rain for months; reservoir levels are down, rivers are drying up and hosepipe bans are in force in several counties. The extreme temperatures we are seeing are most unusual for a temperate zone, but the sceptics are still telling us there's no global warming, it's just normal climate fluctuation etc.

Sadly powerful economic interests have spend enormous amount of money on creating doubt and delaying action on climate change.



 
It has everything to do with the water crisis. Our water misuse is driven by our overconsumption of land and water resources, premised on the assumption that the water will always be there so we don't need regulation and we can use it however the hell we want.
The poorest half of the world's populations have been responsible for 7 percent of global C02 emissions during the last decades compared with 15 percent for the richest percent of the world's population.

Something has to be done about this. The rich overconsume in ways that are strictly predicated on greed, not need.
 
That’s also a large business metric. “How much did we do this month compared to the same month last year?” Given the size of the business space and the number of employees the tally will have max out. At some point the only variable is the charge for the product/service that is produced at that location.

All of the metrics we now have for macroeconomic 'success' assume that growth should be the end game. So it's no surprise that if you want to attract investors, all companies in the exchange have to compete with each other based on their growth - completely and totally irrespective of the human and ecological costs borne to achieve these outcomes. Nowhere is socioeconomic equality accounted for. Nowhere is ecological footprint accounted for either. Our political systems, in theory, were designed to adapt to changing needs, but economic systems are political systems, and our economic systems were designed to maximize profits and wealth. The elite class has interests that are in stark contrast to many of those in the 'bottom half of the system, and that is, at least in part, how large, complex civilizations collapse.
 
France has, relatively speaking, huge coastlines on the Atlantic and the Med. It's time for inventive entrepreneurs to work on economical desalination designs, and it's long past time for governments around the world - ours included - to fund these desperately needed infrastructure projects.
I was thinking on how difficult it was to come up with brand new technology to build the James Webb Telescope, which was a collaboration of scientists from several different countries, certainly we can come up with economical desalinization methods.
 
And the push should be on solar powered desalination, by the way, because cogeneration is an idea whose time has come.
Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water in the world. In 2011 the volume of water supplied by the country's 27 desalination plants at 17 locations was 3.3 million square meters or
871,767,771 gallons. And that's 2011, so I suspect they may have almost doubled the output more recently.

With a scaleup that large, it makes no sense to portray desalination as a difficult and expensive thing because what's way more expensive is civil and economic collapse due to water scarcity.
And I don't want to hear crying and moaning about the harm from excess salinity in the output.
It's SALT fer chrissakes. Salt has value, salt has usefulness, salt can be dealt with rather easily once it is viewed as a commodity, which it is.
Yes when 'Sea Salt" is valued in some cases over regular mined salt.
 
I was thinking on how difficult it was to come up with brand new technology to build the James Webb Telescope, which was a collaboration of scientists from several different countries, certainly we can come up with economical desalinization methods.
I just can't buy desalinization as a long-term fix. It worries me greatly.

 
I was thinking on how difficult it was to come up with brand new technology to build the James Webb Telescope, which was a collaboration of scientists from several different countries, certainly we can come up with economical desalinization methods.

The technology is already present, but desalination isn't necessarily the magic bullet we think it is. Current desal plants typically take about 5-10 to plan, construct, and move online - sometimes even longer if there are municipal disputes about costs and who has to sacrifice to get them and so forth. And even if we decided to commit to total desalination policy, that would be trading in one problem for another, as they typically have major energy requirements. We'd be paying a lot more for water for everyday use, we'd be harming marine ecosystems that are already vulnerable, and we'd be contributing big time to global warming. None of these are really the kinds of outcomes that would really be worth 5-15 years of waiting for, particularly when we don't likely have 5-15 years to save some of our most precious freshwater reservoirs.
 
My wife loves to cruise. It’s my understanding that these boats, large and small process their own water on board. If it can be done for a group of 300 people or so, you would think that the process could be extrapolated? She likes the smaller, more intimate boats, as opposed to the floating cities.
 
Water desalination is HUGELY energy demanding and expensive. Only reason Saudi Arabia can do this, is because of oil.

Large scale desalination is not a viable option for most countries at the moment.

Not to mention it is just a band-aid on the over all problem of climate change. This week in Denmark.. 35 degrees one day, and 20 degrees and monsoon like storm with rain the next..

I mentioned solar at the top of my post. Cogeneration is the best way to do desalination. I'm sure that with the right plant design and adequate solar coverage there will be an electric surplus.
 
Not to mention it is just a band-aid on the over all problem of climate change.

Ummm, that may be a valid point but combating climate change and NOT using desalination is not going to erase the shortage of potable water.
In fact, a lot of knowledgeable folks think we may be too late for some parts of the planet and thus some weather pattern changes may be rather long-lived.
 
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