Is there any way to use ocean water to help california?

[starving student]

filtering technology etc.... to help with the water issue?

[LoopStationZebra]

no.

[LoopStationZebra]

yes.

[starving student]

better start building some big ass tanks now

[beats me]

The media elite of SoCal and tech elite of NorCal have already figured out the solution. Have it trucked in from other states for an astronomical price for their personal use. The rest of us can go fuck ourselves and will either move or die. FACT.

[infernal.machine]

As someone working in the water recycling field, I know how annoying it is that we have this huge ass body of water right next to us, yet we can't use it for drinking water.

The problem with desalination isn't just that it consumes a lot of energy; there is the environmental impact as well. When you purify ocean water, you get pure water, but you're also left with a sludge of salts, organic material, etc... and what do you do with that? If you throw it back in the ocean, you'll fuck up the ecosystem... if you truck it away to bury it in the desert, you have an additional cost and are really just postponing the problem. But in the end, desalination will work... it's just expensive.

There are a few desalination plants already built in CA, and a bunch more proposed... but people don't want their water bills to go up. We have all the technology to produce clean water, but until people accept the fact that they have to PAY for it, that technology will go mostly unused.

[starving student]

ok so it takes power to do it, why can't we use water power from the same massive source, and instead of what beats is saying why can't we build water plants right next to the ocean, create jobs and truck the water out to tanks around the state... isn't the ocean enough source for power to keep the water bills down, even make them cheaper than what they are?

[beats me]

Another part of the problem is rich people and hippies live on the coast and the one thing they can both agree on is "you're not ruining my view with that shit!"

And hey, let's debate piping oil all over the country from thousands of miles away but not have the same debate in relationship to water.

[starving student]

i disagree, as long as there are pretty murals on the water plants they'd love it.

[Pitch Black]

Why don't they simply truck in powdered water and...



oh wait...

[yur2die4]

This might sound silly, but I think that it'd be nice to raise awareness by making a phone app game which reveals the challenges and potential risks of the situation.

More people are tuning the real world out and tuning the phone in, not giving a second of thought to their habits. If you've been playing a game that involves conserving water, using it responsibly, the impact it has on the community, and the difficulty of finding a resolution, you might glance up from your phone for Just a second, and see your sprinkler and think 'hmmmm... That's not right'

Although, the tricky part would be to make such a game without scaring the shit out of children. The point is not to scare people, but for them to realize the seriousness of the situation they are in, and how to be responsible.

Awareness is a surprisingly useful tool, and gets the conversation actually Happening

[Styles Bitchly]

As someone working in the water recycling field, I know how annoying it is that we have this huge ass body of water right next to us, yet we can't use it for drinking water.

The problem with desalination isn't just that it consumes a lot of energy; there is the environmental impact as well. When you purify ocean water, you get pure water, but you're also left with a sludge of salts, organic material, etc... and what do you do with that? If you throw it back in the ocean, you'll fuck up the ecosystem... if you truck it away to bury it in the desert, you have an additional cost and are really just postponing the problem. But in the end, desalination will work... it's just expensive.

There are a few desalination plants already built in CA, and a bunch more proposed... but people don't want their water bills to go up. We have all the technology to produce clean water, but until people accept the fact that they have to PAY for it, that technology will go mostly unused.

Most if not all of the development in central-southern CA should've never happened in the first place. It's desert. Read up on the whole Mullholland back-story to get a feel for the lunatic fringe regarding water.

As for the excessive energy requirements for desalination, that's only relevant as long as big oil maintains it's death grip on alternate energy source development. It's no secret that there's an endless source of cheap energy from that big orange thing in the sky, or even from water itself - and the technology exists to harness it.

Lastly, ocean salts can be harvested from desalination instead of digging them out of the earth and fucking up the landscape - aside from that, any saline/organic effluent returned to the ocean isn't going to put a dent in the balance of ocean salinity/ph when you consider that oceans cover 3/4 of the planet. Earth is a closed system and except for the net addition of inorganic minerals from meteorites, everything works it's way back to where it came from - where do you suspect that the consumed water byproduct of desalination ends up at the end of the day?

Oh...almost forgot to mention that the word for the day is pussyfart.

[beats me]

It’s hilarious that people would be outraged to pay more for water as a life necessity but have no issue paying a premium for water in a bottle cause “the tap water tastes icky”.

[Styles Bitchly]

It’s hilarious that people would be outraged to pay more for water as a life necessity but have no issue paying a premium for water in a bottle cause “the tap water tastes icky”.

Imo, the entire bottled water phenomena of the past couple of decades or so is THE most pretentious hallmark of rising western affluence that there is. If you live in a 3rd world country or in a region surrounded by malarial swamps and raw sewage dumps, then by all means....drink up, otherwise, tap water is good enough for all of the narcissist cuntswabs out there.

[beats me]

It’s hilarious that people would be outraged to pay more for water as a life necessity but have no issue paying a premium for water in a bottle cause “the tap water tastes icky”.

Imo, the entire bottled water phenomena of the past couple of decades or so is THE most pretentious hallmark of rising western affluence that there is. If you live in a 3rd world country or in a region surrounded by malarial swamps and raw sewage dumps, then by all means....drink up, otherwise, tap water is good enough for all of the narcissist cuntswabs out there.

Agreed. And soon bottled water will be butting heads with the massive anti-plastics movement in CA. I’m sure they’ll probably just switch to glass bottles, up the price even more, and there’ll be a loud chorus of WORTH IT!

Don’t get me starting on the people who have modern fridges with built-in filtrated water dispensers but still stock it with bottled water.