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After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

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Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That’s a hydrological feature I’ve never come across in my studies. Thanks for sharing. Short tangent: I want to stop and admire that you shared an article in Portuguese and in seconds I could read it with Safari’s translation feature. It even translated labels on the images, and got the hydrologic cycle figure right! (However, I think “Rio de 28 Old Women” is probably an error.) This makes me feel connected wit…

I feel like machine translation is the unsung hero of the recent AI wave. Gone are the days of just barely being able to discern the meaning of Google Translate. Now I can just read it. I don't know how useful LLMs will ultimately turn out to be for most things, but a freaking universal translator that allows me to understand any language? Incredible!

Machine translation has certainly become better, and that's amazing and wonderful to see. Definitely an amazing thing that has come out of the AI boom.

However, it has led to many websites to automatically enable it (like reddit), and one has to find a way to opt out for each website, if one speaks the language already. Especially colloquial language that uses lots of idioms gets translated quite weirdly still.

It's a bit sad that websites can't rely on the languages the browser advertises as every browser basically advertises english, so they often auto translate from english anyways if they detect a non-english IP address.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#64

I am not saying there is no crisis coming, but I recall reading that Tehran will be out of water in two weeks, two months ago. What's up with that?

I read a similar prediction about Cape Town not long ago. It hasn't happened there despite the serious threat.

It was pretty dire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#65
post #5

I grew up in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a region full of natural resources and, thankfully, aquifers and natural water reservoirs. However, centuries of extraction mismanagement and, more recently, over exploration of mineral resources puts these water resources into jeopardy. (Other problems include mining in open pits and with sludge dams that led to two of the worse environmental disasters in the world i…

Wow. That’s a hydrological feature I’ve never come across in my studies. Thanks for sharing. Short tangent: I want to stop and admire that you shared an article in Portuguese and in seconds I could read it with Safari’s translation feature. It even translated labels on the images, and got the hydrologic cycle figure right! (However, I think “Rio de 28 Old Women” is probably an error.) This makes me feel connected wit…

Thanks for the kind words! And nice to know about the Safari translation, glad to know it brought us close together!

By the way, the name of the river translates to “River of the Old Ladies”. I don’t know where the label got the 28 from!

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#66
post #62
post #8

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple. - Bill Mollison

What simple solution are you referring to? Depopulating Tehran?

Use less water? Probably by recycling the water that is actually used. If las Vegas can survive in the desert, any city can. The problem is getting the money to apply the fixes required.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you read the article it talks about the viability of that very point

> I suggest you read the article I wasn't talking about what they were discussing (desalination for farming). I was talking about moving an entire city, as opposed to getting enough water to deal with just that city. I suggest you read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

Actually it says the desalinated water is too expensive even for farming, it’s only used for heavy industries, so it’s certainly not a solution for the domestic supply of 9 million people.

And don’t confuse moving the capital city with actually relocating Tehran. Tehran’s not going anywhere. What they’re proposing is building a new capital city, but it’ll be the rich and the political and religious elite who move there. The millions of poor and powerless living in Tehran will get left behind. Some will be able to migrate south, but many won’t.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#69
post #62
post #8

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple. - Bill Mollison

What simple solution are you referring to? Depopulating Tehran?

It appears the solution to most hard or intractable problems is to post pithy aphorisms on the internet.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clean water use for data center use has literally zero impact on water situation in Iran. Datacentres don't consume water.

Yes, they do. For example, only 60% of Equinix’s DCs use closed loop, non-evaporative cooling systems… https://www.cdotrends.com/story/4492/balancing-energy-and-wa...

And coal, gas CCGT and nuclear electricity plants to power them also use water to cool the steam.
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