The Oil Drum

115 comments on Thursday morning at Clean Tech 2007

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thomas deplume on June 3, 2007 - 10:19am

Fresh water is not a finite resource. It is part of a cycle of evaporation, condensation, precipitation and percolation. The fresh water problem is one of people not being where the fresh water is and the miserly, militaristic attitudes of the very wealthy. Aquifers could be recharged during periods of heavy rain and stored for use during droughts years later. Fresh water could be manufactured from the ocean and saline aquifers via desalination and recycled from sewage using similar processes. Fresh water can be extracted from even desert air. It is just a matter of capital investment and compassion for the poor. Fresh water can also be used more efficiently especially by agriculture. Hydroponics could greatly improve the efficiency of water used in food production as well as producing more food closer to the point of use.

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CrystalRadio on June 3, 2007 - 11:23am

...and we could genetically alter the human head so that it would be flat and would give standing room for people with that increased carrying capacity of this shuddering world. Water is not a finite resource? Have you ever thought of talking to Rube Goldberg? You might just catch him there in his box of infinite time. But then does time have an end (another finite resource?) in an infinite universe, or is the universe warped and blowing smoke up it's derriere (allusion courtesy of J Kunstler) and finite as well? Oh mystery upon mystery. What fun.

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thomas deplume on June 3, 2007 - 1:14pm

Of course the Earth is finite but the the moon still has time to orbit the Earth another 60,000,000,000 times. Fresh water has gone through billions of cycles in the lifetime of the world and will go through billions of more cycles. Some of that H2O will be split by photosynthesis to make sugar and free oxygen. Later respiration will
oxydize that sugar and recombined water will be released.
Rube Goldberg has been dead for many years and I missed meeting that very imaginitive man in person. Problems need solutions and solutions come from imagination and scientific analysis of those imaginings.