After Googling, API (medium grade products) is made from evaporated sea water.
This is the place that couldn’t wear masks during a pandemic. Don’t expect too much from us.
Well, not all of you… 
What we’ve innovated so far has damaged water resources all over the place.
Occasionally we manage to think ourselves out of some mess we thunk ourselves into. But often our bright innovative solutions turn out to be problems of their own.
That announcement came the day after Douchy signed a bill banning other energy companies from coming to AZ.
Usually these kinds of bills are not just random things, but rather a response to some threat. So what company is this bill aimed at? Who’s threatening to take part of the AZ power market?
There are a lot of new solar and wind power generating companies who were trying to move in. We don’t need no stinking clean energy when we have gas and oil to burn!
That’s what I thought.
Local Milwaukeeans would be very disappointed to lose their source of good Bavarian pretzels, etc. Their pretzel buns are delicious.
I cannot find a post that mentions how much water is required for almonds. I wonder how someone arrived at that number.
This article (not shilling for the industry) discusses water needs by the top water-consuming crops in California…
1. Pasture (clover, rye, bermuda and other grasses), 4.92 acre feet per acre
2. Almonds and pistachios, 4.49 acre feet per acre
3. Alfalfa, 4.48 acre feet per acre
4. Citrus and subtropical fruits (grapefruit, lemons, oranges, dates, avocados, olives, jojoba), 4.23 acre feet per acre
5. Sugar beets, 3.89 acre feet per acre
6. Other deciduous fruits (applies, apricots, walnuts, cherries, peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, prunes, figs, kiwis), 3.7 acre feet per acre
7. Cotton, 3.67 acre feet per acre
8. Onions and garlic, 2.96 acre feet per acre
9. Potatoes, 2.9 acre feet per acre
10. Vineyards (table, raisin and wine grapes), 2.85 acre feet per acre
Many people also question how much water cannabis takes to grow. The Department of Water Resources didn’t track water usage for cannabis in its 2015 data, but The Washington Post reported in 2015 that the crop uses 1.4 acre feet per acre.
I’m trying to find the water needs of crops per yield but not having any luck. All the sources say that the tree nuts are pretty much the highest dollar/gallon. Interesting that pasture takes so much water–pasture and alfalfa of course pretty much only go to feed stock. California beef and lamb is using a LOT of water.
It would be an interesting exercise to try to figure out what crop is the ideal use of irrigation water in a given climate, dollars-wise as well as nutritionally. I could imagine, given the invisible hand of the market (-externalities and subsidies), that we’re not far off right now.
The post I search for said several quarts of water for a single almond.
Oil is pumped for long distances, how difficult would it be to pump ocean water to an area like the salt flats or a borax mine where the salt residue could be disposed of?
Could a very saline mix be pumped away from the distillation plant to a disposal area?
Surprisingly enough it looks like you wouldn’t need to draw unsustainable fossil water from the lakes in order to get that magnitude of water. Using the Niagara River as a proxy for the Great Lakes watershed, it carries 300 billion gallons of water a day. More than enough to skim 38 billion from somewhere and not contribute to a widespread ecological disaster. (It could be a more localized disaster, though, depending on where you are drawing that water from.)
Which isn’t to say that the project is feasible. Rather than creating an unprecedented pipeline using untold amounts of resources, it would be much more feasible to simply build and grow stuff elsewhere. (A second large downside would also be the precedent it would set: who would be the next customer to want to skim off another 30 billion?)
There are a few online references, but generally they align to about a gallon of water per almond. Here is one reference.
If you are going through all the trouble and expense to deal with the salt water and salt waste disposal, you may as well just pump fresh water from one side of the Great Divide to the other. In either case there will be huge mountains of red tape to clear.
Sorry, I’m lost in this conversation. Are we discussing desalinating seawater right beside the ocean? Why wouldn’t that salt just be washed back into the ocean? I understand you can’t concentrate the waste product in just one place all at once but there should be plenty of time let it disperse over a larger area.
The poster mentioned salt flats and borax mines. I assumed they were thinking Death Valley or other desert salt flats, which are no where near the ocean and would require extensive pumping of seawater hundreds of miles.
I noticed a recent report of a new way to desalinate water:
Increasing its size to something that would produce enough for a small town would probably be a challenge, And of course, you still have the salt disposal issue.
Thanks, snowthx.