This would not, in fact, be possible. In 1985 the daily estimated water use was 422 billion gallons with about half of it used in agriculture. To be generous we’ll say a tanker truck can hold 10,000 gallons, and that we’re conserving so much water that we’ll only use it to grow our food. Mandatory no-shower month, or something. So, every day, 21 million tanker trucks would need to fill their water, drive to their destination, unload, and return by the next day.
It might work as a stop-gap measure for small isolated communities, but any realistic use of water would require pipelines. Big ones. And lots. I’m thinking the only logistically feasible method would be massive conduits pumping from, say, the Great Lakes to the north and the nasty Gulf to the south, designed to use the lowest passes where possible, and huge excavations needed to bore through steep terrain.
Anyone care to back-of-the-envelope the energy needed just to move that much water the ELEVATION required? We’ll be chugging through uranium like Fallout 4: This Time It’s For Real.
No, it just means that the two of you are using different definitions of ZPG.
One of you thinks it means that whenever a sprog pops out from between a shelia’s legs, someone, somewhere in the world, winks out of existence and becomes worm food. (There’s a slight fudge factor in this equation, but let’s ignore this for now and go with a 1:1 formula for the sake of simplicity.)
This is the correct definition of ZPG.
The other one is mucking it up by going on and on about immigration, which is a red herring.
On your second point, gas & oil pipelines don't use wellhead pressure for transmission, albeit initially. There are compressors (gas) or pumps throughout the system, which run over all sorts of terrain with termination invariably at higher elevation . The gas systems are self fueled.
Well, I get that it will take in the neighborhood of 8GW to move that much water not including losses and not including what is required to desalinate it. Doable, I suppose.
According to wikipedia, the total amount of oil moved by the Alaska pipeline is 15 billion bbls since 1977. The pipelines in question would have to move that much every 4 days. I was wrong about it being moved down hill. Apparently the terminal points are both at sea level.
What’s the total capacity of that pipeline, though? I’ve seen pictures and it’s hardly a massive thing (and as we all know, it’s girth, not width that counts:eek: ) but I was under the impression that Alaska’s production is far below its potential maximum.
Despite engineering hurdles and funding issues, couldn’t such a pipeline be built with federal funds (a “water bailout”) under extreme circumstances? If our very survival was at stake as a nation, I think we would come up with something.
Someone cited a figure of 488bn gallons of water use a day… How much of that figure is unsustainable, i.e. pulled from aquifers faster than they can replenish themselves? I think that the figure would drop significantly, and would be a much more manageable amount.
As for where to get the water, there’s no point building desalination plants. Trillions of gallons of perfectly useable fresh water are being dumped into the oceans every day from all the rivers, and transportation costs would be reduced by cutting the rivers off further upstream. May as well use that instead of lining the coasts with desalination plants.
May not be the best thing, or the most ecologically benign, but if we were prepare to simply cut a river off entirely, there would be a lot of freshwater that wouldn’t have to travel very far.
There is no shortage of water on the earth. Hell, 71% of the surface is covered by water.
Granted - most of this is sea water, which is unfit for agriculture or human consumption.
But there are plenty of ways to turn sea water into fresh water. It just takes energy. A lot of energy. Both in the desalination process and in the transport of said water to humans and farms.
As the cost of fresh water rises proper desalination plants and infrastructure will become more and more attractive. Given that I think we’ve finally hit a point where most industrial nations are already attacking the energy problem, I don’t really worry much about running out of water. It might get more expensive, but the problem will eventually be solved. As fresh water gets more scarce its value will increase - thereby drawing in money that will build plants, pumps and pipes to “produce” fresh water.
Fuel at the point of the farm requires 2651 BTUs to grow enough corn to make a gallon of ethanol (industry average.) Total energy input is 81,090 BTUs per gallon. A gallon of ethanol contains 84,000 BTUs. Industry best figures are 1565 and 57,504 BTUs, respectively. The table is from 1995, so it’s reasonable to assume that processes, especially industry-average processes, have grown more efficient since then.
And thank you. Not interested in too much of a sidetrack about this, but that cite makes no mention of farm subsidy…though they do note (in the fine print) that they have ignored plant and equipment costs. Investors in ethanol plant here on the East coast quickly disappeared when taxpayers balked at subsidy, though they managed to ignore that local farmers can’t raise enough corn for their own livestock and would need to import from the Midwest.
Not sure where you are in Iowa, but given that the Mighty Miss causes hellacious flood damage in the millions, building pipeline distribution to more arid regions as flood control seems an almost reasonable fantasy.
If only the cost of continuing population growth in the U.S. would become obvious enough, if would become attractive to implement policies to counteract it. Unfortunately I doubt that this will happen until our situation becomes desperate.