[HN Gopher] Ways to think about water (2015)
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Ways to think about water (2015)
Author : siruva07
Score : 48 points
Date : 2021-09-21 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
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| lmilcin wrote:
| > A man in a desert and a sailor at sea will think about water
| very differently.
|
| Maybe there are more sailors here and they may feel differently,
| but that's not true for me. For me open ocean is about as close
| to desert as possible and sea water is like sand.
|
| Probably the only thing different is that you can stuff a lot
| more fresh water onto a boat that you can stuff on a camel or
| expedition car. And the way it is stuffed means there is less
| chance you will loose it. And sailing is incredibly involved and
| technical compared to say riding a camel so you have other
| problems that occupy your mind. So it probably takes less space
| in your mind while you are sailing than while you are crossing
| Sahara.
|
| But if your boat quits on you in the middle of an ocean it is
| more or less as if camel or expedition car did.
|
| You lend your life to the elements and to your equipment. If it
| fails and you can't fix it, you die.
|
| ---
|
| I had a discussion with somebody that incessantly wants me to
| "save" water supposedly because many people have shortage of it.
|
| I tell her "Our water comes from local river. We don't have water
| shortage. Any water that I do not use will just happily flow to
| the sea. Any water that I use will get cleaned up and dumped into
| the same river from which it came, to happily continue its
| journey to the sea."
|
| Seems the argument doesn't work.
|
| People are strange sometimes...
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm not sure your dismissal of "saving water" makes sense, or
| rather, your dismissal would apply just as well to any
| situation where one's personal use of water will not directly
| cause a shortage of water for someone else.
|
| The whole point of recommending people to save water isn't that
| one's own water conservation will directly cause a measurable
| re-allocation of water to someone else. It's more akin to moral
| advice, something like "act in a way that would have good
| outcomes if everyone acted that way." I suppose it's okay to
| explicitly dismiss all moral recommendations of that form, but
| it's worth noting that this form is extremely common and not
| something I would call "strange." It's basically the same moral
| recommendation as "don't butt in line even if no one is going
| to stop you."
|
| To map that idea directly onto your situation, I guess it would
| be something like "if 10 million people moved to the vicinity
| of your small river, there probably _would_ be a water shortage
| that would require everyone to be conscientious about their
| water usage."
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's a harmful way of thinking. That's the kind of
| rationale that shames fat people for leaving food from
| single-sized meals because somebody far away lacks it, for
| example.
|
| The GP saving water would have no impact at all on the people
| that miss it. It's not a "do your small part", it's simply no
| part at all.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I wouldn't say it is harmful (just like that). If you do
| you would have to apply the same to all tradition as
| repeating things regardless of whether you know the
| benefits of it.
|
| In the past, tradition was one of ways to pass knowledge.
| There was no youtube or google available and people were
| generally were not able to read or attend classes.
|
| Even today you teach your kids certain things they just
| have to do before they can have knowledge of why. For
| example brush their teeth.
|
| Even then, repeating things like that is still one of the
| ways we cope with complexity of the world around you.
|
| I am certain you are probably repeating some instructions
| from somebody on how to do something just because there is
| no time in the world for you to evaluate every single
| simple thing and decision.
|
| On the other hand if somebody starts writing about it and
| discuss with other people, I expect them to put at least a
| little bit of effort into thinking about it if you are
| equipped for it (or shut up if you are not).
|
| Repeating mindlessly on the Internet things you learned
| from somebody else is one way the world is broken today.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Like I said, it's less "do your small part" and more "act
| in such a way that there would be good outcomes if everyone
| acted that way." It's basically the exact same reason to be
| polite in tiny interactions with strangers even though
| there would be no consequences if you were rude. If you
| disagree that there's any virtue in acting in such a way
| because of the apparent lack of direct positive outcomes
| then that's fine, but my point is simply that this is a
| common view about basic morality.
| lmilcin wrote:
| If people moved there would be reason to save water and then
| I would be doing it
|
| See, there is already a lot of stuff to worry about in life.
| If you can act on a hypothetical problem, why not redirect
| your effort to an actual one for some real world benefits?
|
| Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I
| lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous but so is
| saving water when there is no benefit from it.
| foobarian wrote:
| > Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I
| lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous
|
| I'll bite - it doesn't sound ridiculous because it is
| highly likely that there is going to be power hungry air
| conditioning equipment in use. I think it's an example of
| an unfortunate phenomenon where if you deviate from the
| accepted cargo cult practices you run the risk of missing
| some detail and making things worse, at which point you get
| the blame, but conversely you don't get the credit for
| doing things better than average. In fact it's likely there
| is a peanut gallery just waiting for you to make a mistake
| so they can punish you for being a renegade.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Sorry, I just can't parse your argument.
| sbakzbsmx wrote:
| Some places have no need for heating or cooling. Like my
| rental in Santa Barbara.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Where would that line be though? Would you never consider
| reducing your water usage by a liter per day until there
| was literally someone near to you that was dying of thirst
| who you could directly give the liter of water to?
| gilbetron wrote:
| I live in a place where fresh water is all over the place, and
| have had this same discussion with "environmentally conscious"
| people more than once. Me taking shorter showers, or not
| watering the lawn, or not letting the tap run until it gets
| cold will not affect other people's ability to get water. At
| all.
|
| However, it does cost energy, I realized. And that's at least
| something to consider. Although minimally so, but at least it
| made me think a bit :)
|
| Also, people love to talk about water as if it is a limited
| resource - it is only a limited resource in the local sense. On
| the global sense, we aren't changing the amount of water
| available, just the energy needed to get it.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Excellent article!
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Odd quote from this article:
|
| "One interesting idea that has emerged in dry places (notably
| Australia and Israel) is water markets. These make sense on a
| pretty basic level: if something is scarce and valuable, I should
| be able to buy, sell, and speculate on it."
|
| Given that water is a fundamental necessity, it's supply should
| not be subject to rigged markets and monopolistic pricing, which
| is the norm when private investors try to take over natural
| monopolies (i.e. there's no 'competition' in water supply
| systems, rather like electricity markets.)
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| Water bottles are much cheaper than batteries.
|
| For example, suppose that after a natural disaster some people
| are left without water and without power. It makes perfect
| sense to load some water bottles into a truck and drive over
| there to help them, but it would be very impractical to load a
| truck with enough batteries to make even a tiny bit of
| difference.
| porb121 wrote:
| literature on water system remunicipilization suggests little
| difference between private and municipal ownership of water
| systems, at least as recently as when I looked a year ago
| hammock wrote:
| >Given that water is a fundamental necessity, it's supply
| should not be subject to rigged markets and monopolistic
| pricing
|
| How do you feel about land? Zoning restrictions, property
| taxes, etc?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I tend to think in terms of competitive markets vs. natural
| monopolies when it comes to private vs. public ownership and
| management.
|
| So, for property, well, is all the property owned by one
| entity? If there's one bank that owns all the farmland,
| that's not a competitive market for farmland.
|
| Water is like electricity is like fiber optic routes,
| however, and those should be public utilities - but the
| equipment they need to build and maintain those systems
| should be provided by the private sector, in a competitive
| bidding manner.
| hammock wrote:
| >So, for property, well, is all the property owned by one
| entity?
|
| In the case of a municipality, and in thinking of
| landownership as a "bundle of rights" such as water rights,
| air rights, mineral rights, development rights, leasing
| rights, etc... So many of those rights are controlled by
| the local municipal authority.
| jpollock wrote:
| Water isn't a fundamental necessity (as in required for life)
| for 70-80% of the water used.
|
| Water markets aren't typically (maybe there are some?) aimed at
| individuals, they're aimed at commercial users (farms, power
| plants, data centers, factories).
|
| For example, see the : https://youtu.be/druiwE_GjRI?t=559 and
| the last section where they talk about waste.
|
| Pricing encourages factories to do things like recycle water on
| site.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, but pricing lubricates the slope towards the setup where
| Nestle owns 100% of the water because they bid a pittance and
| the nearby town can't afford to outbid the pittance. Markets
| are a two-edged sword. One edge is "rich people can pay for
| factories to recycle water on site" but the other edge is
| "rich people matter, poor people don't." There's nothing
| wrong with trying to use edge #1 -- that's what capitalism is
| all about -- but edge #2 exists, is sharp, and has cut plenty
| of fingers off. People are leery of it for a reason.
| TuringTest wrote:
| How would you handle that 20% - 30% that is essential for
| life, if the rest is purely market-based?
| 21eleven wrote:
| Here's a different way to think about water:
|
| There is the theory that evolution is a process by which genes
| advance and proliferate. That livings things are just the pawns
| for their genes, life is a medium for a genetic super organism.
|
| But the genetic super organism is just a middle manager. Life
| does not exist for itself or for genes but for water. Living
| organisms were created within water and by water to be a vehicle
| that H2O can use to transcend the tyranny of gravity and explore
| space.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Can probably take that a bit further and say it's all for heat.
| newyankee wrote:
| It is my genuine hope that desalination becomes cheap enough in
| the next decade that most coastal places will depend on it
| instead of any other source for domestic and industrial use.
| Taking that as a baseline i hope transporting water in flat
| topography inland up to 100 to 200 km inland from coasts also
| becomes cheap enough. All depends on material science
| breakthroughs, cheap renewable energy, technology sharing and
| scaling.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| To me the ideal of using technology like this is a brute force
| solution. I'm always suspect of the scientific credentials
| behind the permaculture movement but I suspect that they have
| got this one right. Slow water down high in the landscape, let
| it absorb into the ground, build leaky damn structures and many
| of the water security issues go away. I think this has been
| proven fairly well in a number of semi-arid areas such as parts
| of India.
| martin_a wrote:
| > I think this has been proven fairly well in a number of
| semi-arid areas such as parts of India.
|
| I've recently seen a video on YouTube where they did this.
| They dug a "hole"/artificial lake with a capacity of over, I
| think, 140 million litres.
|
| They used that to create "a wet spot" which slowly started to
| transform the surrounding landscape. Plants, trees, bushes
| obviously started from around that lake but moved farther and
| farther from it as the soil became better.
|
| This does not solve any problems with salt water, but it
| could possibly a solution for areas where there's "only" very
| little water available.
| coding123 wrote:
| It is already super cheap and transported automatically. We
| just need to catch more of it. Rainwater capture will be the
| next big thing. Right now our idea of rainwater capture is
| letting it go back into the ground. That's fine, it kinda
| worked but not really. Now we need to capture more. Finally,
| yes, maybe everyone should get an RV style toilet, have no
| dishwasher and get their pressure reduced to 30 PSI.
| billfruit wrote:
| What about atmospheric water extraction/harvesting? Is it a
| viable alternative with current technology?
| newyankee wrote:
| For remote locations without any other alternative. Mostly
| for drinking and high value uses, still very expensive.
| [deleted]
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not really, since water vapor must eliminate huge amounts of
| energy to turn back into liquid water - each kg of water
| vapor will dissipate 2.27MJ to turn into a kg of water at
| 100C. Since this is a thermodynamic limit, there's no
| enginerring around it.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Ostensibly, heat pumps could dual-purpose as AC and
| dehumidification, but if you have enough water for a heat
| pump, the condensation you collect probably isn't going to
| be very significant.
|
| Edit: My point being you don't have to _supply_ 2MJ of
| energy, you need to _move_ it. That can be done for less.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > My point being you don't have to supply 2MJ of energy,
| you need to move it. That can be done for less.
|
| Understood, but the point is still that you need to keep
| something cold enough for vapor to condense, while the
| condensation of 1 kg of water is dissipating enough heat
| to bring 5.4 kg of water from 0 to 100C. Even if just
| moving the heat around, there's just too much of it.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Also it seems like a lot of agricultural water use doesn't
| actually get to the plants. It just goes around the roots and
| sinks into the ground.
|
| Could we grow things like almond trees in large concrete basins
| and collect any water not used by the roots?
| pstuart wrote:
| At least aggressive drip irrigation should be a default mode.
| beerandt wrote:
| Ground infiltration is the least bad thing to happen.
|
| Keeping the water near the surface just results in more
| evaporation loss, and side effects for soil quality like
| concentration of salts.
|
| Water infiltrating the ground will keep the soil "primed" for
| water absorption and storage, and prevent runoff and erosion
| and flash flooding. (Think about watering a potted plant with
| completely dried out soil.)
|
| Plus it will just go towards recharging the water table.
| tedjdziuba wrote:
| Desal is inefficient and hugely destructive to the environment.
| This old saw comes up in California every now and then, but if
| we were able to build the most efficient desal plants available
| today, it would take 500 plants along the California coastline
| to supply all of California's water.
|
| Aside from being an eyesore, it would ruin the coastal ecology.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's a fundamental energy demand for removing salt from
| seawater and creating drinkable water that can't be avoided.
| Hence, desalination is fundamentally tied to the price of
| energy. These costs can easily bankrupt cities that try to rely
| on desalination to meet demand (for example, California
| droughts cause hydropower to go offline right when water demand
| is highest). Using fossil fuels to power desalination in the
| global warming era is also a really bad idea.
|
| It might work in certain locales (lots of sunshine plus solar
| panels, perhaps), but the costs will always be high, and it's
| going to be very uneconomical for agricultural-scale needs.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| People seem to always forget about nuclear. Pairing nuclear
| plants with desalination is perfect because you also need
| water in most nuclear reactor designs.
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