The Mediterranean sea is full of water and desalination exists so the problem is solvable given enough energy - the sun is known to be quite reliable in this region so that part of the equation is taken care of - and infrastructure. Israel shows this is possible so like in so many ways they can be the good example to follow in the area. No need to speak of a 'collapse', there is enough panic porn as it is already. Solve the problem, don't whinge about it.
The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
41–50 of 75 posts
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
For cypress its half as much water in the reseviours compared to last year: https://www.moa.gov.cy/moa/wdd/Wdd.nsf/page18_en/page18_en?o... what data are you looking at?
Italy, Spain... eg. https://embalses.net shows maximum historical levels after a sharp bump these past 2 years... pretty sure it's the same story in many EU countries. Droughts are there until they aren't. Normal fluctuations if you check an actual chart going 50-100 years back. Can you post a historical chart of Cyprus? maybe it tells a different story
Droughts are there until they aren't. Now you see it, now you don't. That's just a perspective of the annual situation, but there's an emerging pattern of recurring drought at shorter and shorter intervals. It's right there in the article: "'We used to have drought cycles every 20 years,' according to Cyprus Water Development Department data. 'Now it's every two or three years.'"
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#43Solar is so cheap that desalination is cheap enough that the only thing that will get appreciably more expensive is water intensive products like beef.
Desalination is not just about power, you've have to build and maintain the thing. There are consumables as well.
The Saudis don't seem to have a problem getting it done.
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why they have allowed sustained high immigration rates for decades recently its because we need skilled and cheap labour to fill the holes in our health and buisness system. Housing shortages is not a direct immigration issue[1], its a policy issue. People of a certain type do not want high rise buildings near them. people of another different type are really happy because they can now build less and sell for more.…
Britain has a very generous welfare system it cannot afford and appears to be unable to even reverse its expansion. According to the Center for Migration Control, there are 1.15 million foreign born individuals claiming some form of in-work benefit. Irrespective of one's views on the migrant question, this is unsustainable. For instance, the National Health System (NHS) has recently been sending patients to Poland an…
> According to the Center for Migration Control, there are 1.15 million foreign born individuals claiming some form of in-work benefit.
Isn't the relevant statistic more just how much tax income foreign born individuals give the government vs how much they take out?
I don't have a source on hand, but I thought immigration was a net positive in terms of tax revenue minus social assistance, at least in the US.
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desalination is not just about power, you've have to build and maintain the thing. There are consumables as well.
The Saudis don't seem to have a problem getting it done.
How much fruit and vegetable agriculture (topic of the article) are they doing with their desalinated water? Hopefully none as they generate 99+% of their electricity from oil+gas and the climate impact from it would be atrocious.
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Saudis don't seem to have a problem getting it done.
How much fruit and vegetable agriculture (topic of the article) are they doing with their desalinated water? Hopefully none as they generate 99+% of their electricity from oil+gas and the climate impact from it would be atrocious.
I don't know. Here are some numbers to plug into your calculator:
"The country's water needs were estimated at 24.8 billion m³ in 2015, with an average fixed annual growth rate of 7 percent. With 84 percent of the total water demand, the agricultural sector is the largest consumer of water in the country."
"In 2015, these plants had a total production capacity of 6.28 million m³ per day, which increased to 7.4 million m³ per day by 2020. By 2024, the combined production from both public and private desalination plants reached approximately 11.5 million m³ per day."
https://saudipedia.com/en/article/2549/government-and-politi...
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#47Are more northern countries able to take over some of the production? I'd guess maybe as water declines in southern countries, the temperature rises so more northern latitudes might grow the same crops. Of course it's going to take time for different agriculture regions to get set up.
They are having the opposite problem. For instance, this year, crop failure is rife in the Baltics, as the warmer atmosphere means it has Not. Stopped. Raining. - and so fields are either too waterlogged for machinery, or crops have drowned in the ground.
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it a pyramid scheme where we import younger people to pay for older people's pensions and benefits... unlikely to end well, like all pyramid schemes.
Not necessarily in this case. You have those who pay in, but die before they fully collect. Then the collectors do die off, they aren’t expected to get returns in perpetuity or crazy large returns. Then you have a constant supply of new payees into the system. Only a devastating collapse of the population would cause it to go tits up
And in your comment lies a possible solution. Support people into their mid-70s, and then the only medical care they get is palliative, so they don't suffer from whatever takes them out. Half of their estate is allocated to the social welfare fund.
Another solution is to increase the sources of funding. For example, in the United States, your Social Security contributions are capped once your income exceeds approximately $160,000. Eliminate that cap, and include income from other sources (i.e., taxes on estates, capital gains, and buy-borrow-die) in the Social Security tax calculation.
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
For cypress its half as much water in the reseviours compared to last year: https://www.moa.gov.cy/moa/wdd/Wdd.nsf/page18_en/page18_en?o... what data are you looking at?
Italy, Spain... eg. https://embalses.net shows maximum historical levels after a sharp bump these past 2 years... pretty sure it's the same story in many EU countries. Droughts are there until they aren't. Normal fluctuations if you check an actual chart going 50-100 years back. Can you post a historical chart of Cyprus? maybe it tells a different story
We had an exceptionally wet winter - reservoirs which I have not seen full in a decade are suddenly at capacity - or were, a few weeks ago. There’s now a rapid draw-down however as the weather has shifted to unseasonably hot almost overnight.
The main problem isn’t reservoir levels, however, as most agriculture in Iberia doesn’t use reservoir water, rather, on-site boreholes - and the groundwater is getting seriously depleted.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that folks do here that doesn’t help matters, however - olive groves and other arboriculture, which is a large part of agriculture in Iberia, are kept with bare topsoil, as the belief is that the grass steals the water, and irrigation is done with broadcast rather than drip, and it all evaporates almost as fast as they can spray it. We don’t plough or irrigate ours, and we get a crop - we just cut the grass at the end of spring to reduce the fire hazard. There’s also a tragedy of the commons affair going on, where people pump as much as possible from their boreholes in the spring to keep in open black plastic lined storage ponds, because they feel that if they don’t their neighbour will get the water and there won’t be any for them - so water which would have been safely stored underground is brought to the surface and put in perfect conditions to evaporate.
None of it is sustainable, and it’s going to end in tears.
Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desalination is not just about power, you've have to build and maintain the thing. There are consumables as well.
Also, the brine. Though I assume if water becomes scarce enough, we'll just dump the brine back into the environment and nature be damned as per usual
Doesn't brine contain appreciable amounts of lithium—which is highly in demand?
Couldn't it be further dried out to harvest that lithium for sale?