Comment by FredPret

Comment by FredPret 3 days ago

If it's the same molecule but downhill and mixed in with some other ones, it's just x number of joules and y number of dollars' worth of infrastructure away from being among its own kind and uphill from your tap again.

We get blasted with an uncountable number of these joules from above (the sun) and below (nuclear). Our economy is generating an exponentially increasing number of dollars.

I understand wanting to be careful with resources, but not to the point where frugality becomes a goal in and of itself.

Manuel_D 3 days ago

That's like saying fossil fuels don't actually pollute or emit greenhouse cases, because we're just X joules away from sequestering it back from the atmosphere.

Desalination, and pumping water over thousands of miles is extremely expensive. Sure, you're not wrong, but the values of X and Y are uneconomical.

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FredPret 3 days ago

I don't think they're uneconomical. Fresh, clean water is astonishingly cheap; of course people are using it to grow almonds and alfalfa in the desert.
Just charge people what the water is worth and they'll stop, or water companies will be able to afford much more treatment capacity.
You have a point about sequestering CO2 molecules, but:
a) I'm sure this will get cheaper over time, just like every other technology
b) we should be using solar and nuclear for everything

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- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3 days ago
  
  People grow almonds in the desert specifically because they have access to artificially cheap water. In the U.S. lots of land comes with water rights: e.g. if a river or creek passes through your land you can use x% of the water to irregate your crops. Some of these water rights date back to the 1800s and they're locked in.
  The water rights can be clawed back a couple ways: if they're unused for X years, or in times of drought.
  There's an exception for droughts though: farmers with trees (that would die if unwatered) still get priority, while people that grow crops that replenish each season (like wheat) don't.
  So this leads to perverse incentives where these farmers need to find a way to use ALL of their water, every year, or they'll lose access to their absurd water rights from the 1800s, and they need to use it on trees so it doesn't get clawed back during a multi year drought.
  So, they end up planting the most water-hungry trees they can grow on their land (almonds), then they get to sell them to the world at artificially low prices because the water that was used to grow them is almost free.
  
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- close04 3 days ago
  
  > Fresh, clean water is astonishingly cheap
  Because you can find it in "concentrated" form (think entropy), all in an aquifer or a river, and these are everywhere. But these dry up because of our usage and the climate, and when they do you still have the same amount of water on the planet, it's just not as easily accessible. It's super spread out, it's too far away, it needs a lot of expensive processing to make usable, or all of the above.
  What's cheaper and easier for you, to condense a cup of water from the air or to just turn on the faucet?
  > we should be using solar and nuclear for everything
  Why solar? Energy is not lost/consumed in the universe, so why not collect it from anywhere else. Energy is astonishingly cheap, that's why we use so much of it. If you know what I mean...
  
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  sydbarrett74 a day ago
  
  Energy is never lost, however, it’s transduced into less and less useful forms due to entropy.
  
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- Manuel_D 3 days ago
  
  While I do agree the hysteria around water use is unfounded, it's just patently false to say that fresh water cannot be wasted, pointing out that the molecule is just in a harder to access state is pedantry.
  
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  FredPret 3 days ago
  
  But the reason I hammer on about this point is precisely due to the hysteria. In the popular imagination, we spray x million gallons of water onto a golf course, and it just evaporates, never to be seen again. It is the alarmism that alarms me.
  
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sydbarrett74 a day ago

There’s nothing wrong with frugality as an end-goal as long as it’s not coerced.

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