people should realize, humanity currently is experiencing the knock on effects of living way beyond the Earth’s natural systems supply ability
said another way, people should not be too surprised at all the problems humanity is causing itself
let’s ponder the “self inflected” drought wound in the south western USA by specifically looking at (for example) what is happening in the imperial valley from a birds eye view
it should not take a genius to recognize that verdant green fields is unnatural,… AND the only reason there are wide swaths of unnatural green all over the south western USA region is because humans withdrew ground water from aquifers (which took eons to form)
basically using ground water from aquifers is akin to an irresponsible person having access to credit cards to live it up over the short run AND not having any means whatsoever of making enough money to pay back the “principal borrowed” along the “interest payment” charged by the bank
bottom line, the party is ending AND people have to wake up to the fact that ‘infinite economic growth on a finite planet is impossible’ because of depletion of natural resources
since most don’t have a multidisciplinary scientific understanding (or have the inclination to actually read the scientific texts to understand the graph),… here is the issue in a nutshell
[quote=an][quote=barnaby33]Pumping water is insanely expensive, so is desalination. Maybe with fusion the cost will drop enough that you can have your acre green lawn and 20 minute showers along with fresh fruit and veg from half a state away. I am terrible at predicting the future. I have however studied water somewhat, having grown up on a failed apple farm in Valley Center. [/quote]Again, your definition of expensive is different than mine.
[/quote]
sigh,… fusion
seems people have no clue about nuclear power plant technology (or knock on effects costs),… when I was in school fusion was 30 years away,… well 30 years has passed (and fusion is still 30 years away)
BTW ever wonder about the millions of pounds of spent fuel left on the beach at San Onofre (basically spent fuel is left on the beach simply because democratic politicians ignored the science)
long story short,… back in the 1980’s yucca mountain was designated to be the nations official designated site to contain spent fuel BUT what ended up happening is Democratic Party politics killed off funding for the project AND the unintended consequences of de-funding yucca mountain is there was no repository where to specifically store spent nuclear fuel assemblies,… so the spent fuel assemblies from the decommissioned San Onofre reactors were essentially abandoned right by the shoreline
anyway here is an interesting fact,… the spent fuel left on the beach at San Onofre can be an asset (if one thinks like a nuclear physicist),… this is because high level spent fuel can be used as nuclear kindling in a reactor designed to burn thorium
India FYI has lots of thorium but very little uranium,… so for 70 years india had to first construct uranium reactors in order to build up a stockpile of ‘nuclear kindling’
just sayin for a brighter future w/ jobs and stable energy in the USA, the best long term investment (in the nuclear power plant space) Americans should seriously throw resources at,… is molten salt thorium reactors
sadly stable nuclear power is viewed by scientifically illiterate ‘woke’ liberals (AND their political leadership) as something to be feared,… so FWIW here is a BBC podcast about nuclear power AND includes a segment about an environmental activist who started off protesting nuclear power, but eventually was awakened to the fact that nuclear power is a carbon free “base line” source of electrical energy
