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How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#41

Post by silisili »

antonvs wrote: post #30
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #21

Can't they get water from the ocean?

No. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-o...

...the article says otherwise, that we can, do, and increasingly will.

> can cost from just under $1 to well over $2 to produce one cubic meter (264 gallons) of desalted water from the ocean. That's about as much as two people in the U.S. typically go through in a day at home.

What am I missing here? Even if you triple the cost, people will pay a $180 water bill before living in a water scarcity situation.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#42

Post by littlecranky67 »

antonvs wrote: post #30
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #21

Can't they get water from the ocean?

No. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-o...

Article is outdated (2008) and makes a single argument: Desalination requires too much energy. Becaues it is outdated, it doesn't account for the excess energy a lot of places and countries have from wind and solar. Water desalination is a prime candidate (along with Bitcoin mining and AI model training, sigh) for using available excess energy from renewable that cannot be stored otherwise. Clean/drinking water can be stored easily - it is called a freshwater lake.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#43

Post by tempfile »

helqn wrote: post #20
arrowsmith wrote: post #6

No mention of the fact that our population has grown by 20% (by official statistics, likely much more) in just 30 years?

So it’s easy to fix. There is just no political will. I see the same in my own country. Population growth with no end in sight, infrastructure thoroughly stressed, nobody does anything about it.

What's the "easy fix"? Mass deportations?

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#44

Post by Revisional_Sin »

ACCount37 wrote: post #27
Nursie wrote: post #7

> Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. Seems like there's most of a solution here, just staring us in the face, no? Problem being of course, that the privatised water companies have little incentive or investment in order to tackle the problem. Are we ready t…

In a free market, if clean water gets expensive enough, then infrastructure overhauls to actually cut down on the leaks become economical. If everything is nationalized, you're relying on political goodwill instead to pay for those overhauls. I have no clue how UK's "privatized water companies" work though. I'm not going to be too surprised if UK's system somehow manages to combine all the disadvantages of private ow…

You can't switch water suppliers, so there is no such incentive to be competitive.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#45

Post by derriz »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #17
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

Too right, this is why I have switched to green hydrogen for my household heating. Sure, for now I’ve had to jerry-rig a hydrogen storage tank in my back yard and I’m piping the stuff over the roof, but I’m sure the govt will catch up soon. I’ve converted my car to run on renewable wood pellets, stop moaning start fixing. It’s all about individual choice, the oil companies are simply responding to demand. My next ste…

Why hydrogen? It has an extremely potent greenhouse effect and is obviously the leakiest of gases - the leakage alone could make it more environmentally damaging than actually burning natural gas.

And have you seen how hydrogen burns or how easy it is to trigger an explosion? I wouldn’t live anywhere near a “jerry rigged” hydrogen storage facility.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#46

Post by abenga »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #17
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

Too right, this is why I have switched to green hydrogen for my household heating. Sure, for now I’ve had to jerry-rig a hydrogen storage tank in my back yard and I’m piping the stuff over the roof, but I’m sure the govt will catch up soon. I’ve converted my car to run on renewable wood pellets, stop moaning start fixing. It’s all about individual choice, the oil companies are simply responding to demand. My next ste…

Yes, the people are to blame. The only way this changes is if governments that believe it is an issue to be fixed are elected and actually work to attempt to fix the problem. Do you get the sense that such governments are gaining ground politically anywhere in the first world?

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#47

Post by autoexec »

noduerme wrote: post #24
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

Meanwhile, the average lifespan in the UK has shot from 46 years in 1900, when the primary heating and power source was coal, to 81 years now. It's easy to forget how much worse things were before.

I wonder what Sweden was doing differently

> Take for example this distribution of age at death in Sweden in 1900. You will see, that in 1900, life expectancy was 52 years. However, the median age at death (the age above and below 50% of the population die respectively) is 63 years. Although the life expectancy is only 52 years, an individual has thus a chance of 50% to live past 63 years. Thus, if you went across a Swedish graveyard from 1900 (I'm not sure if the data relates to people born in 1900, or mortality data from 1900, but this is not the point of my comment), you would see that more than half reached an age past 60 years. (https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/zzy2bh/no_avera...)

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#48

Post by CommanderData »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

Don't worry about it. Just lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy and reduce regulations, the magic hand of the market will fix everything!!! :D

Consumer: upgrade our waterways please? hmm maybe don't dump raw sewage every day.

Thames Water: pooposterous! we must pay bonuses, or it'll affect investor morale! Haven't you heard, your water is the best in the world, be happy :)

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#49

Post by nine_k »

noduerme wrote: post #24
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

Meanwhile, the average lifespan in the UK has shot from 46 years in 1900, when the primary heating and power source was coal, to 81 years now. It's easy to forget how much worse things were before.

This is right. The discovery of antibiotics and many other medical advances somehow influenced this, too, though.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#50

Post by TomasBM »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #17
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

Too right, this is why I have switched to green hydrogen for my household heating. Sure, for now I’ve had to jerry-rig a hydrogen storage tank in my back yard and I’m piping the stuff over the roof, but I’m sure the govt will catch up soon. I’ve converted my car to run on renewable wood pellets, stop moaning start fixing. It’s all about individual choice, the oil companies are simply responding to demand. My next ste…

Sounds like real-life Factorio.
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