BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Serious about climate change...invest in something practical, right?


"We're establishing a baseline. We're looking for the normal pulse of a megadrought. How often do they occur? Do they happen more in periods of climate change?" asks Toby Ault, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead researcher. "We're examining things happening over the last 1,200 years -- including the period known as the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' from about 800 to 1300 A.D. -- and we're applying that understanding to see what could happen in the next 100 years."...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171214101843.htm

mongo Loc: TEXAS

When I lived in California, I would tell my wife and some friends
that building desalination plants would be a far better idea then
a high speed train. The rest of the country should get on board
with the idea as well!

SEMPER FI

silvereagle

California I believe has one plant.

Texas Truth Loc: Behind Enemy Lines

I watched a pretty serious video depicting a mega drought that happens every 1000 years and lasts for a hundred years basically the western part of the country. And for this reason the Native Americans would temporarily campout in areas in North America. They can see the signs in nature that told them the drug was coming some would migrate North as far as Alaska. Others would migrate south. Way South all the way to South America. And there is proof in the Native American languages that they all knew each other and would trade not just materials but knowledge. And there's a reason why there are no major ancient cities or any sign of a metropolis because this country would suffer a drought every Thousand Years for a hundred years and they would not build here. They knew their people would suffer into nonexistence. The birds and the animals would abandon the North American continent on the west side. And during the droughts the eastern part of the country would receive excessive amounts with moisture way too much. These ancient pyramids are found all over the world except North America. They would not invest their time here. Yes there is enough room in the deserts of our West to build desalinization plants the size of cities and that's what it would take to supply drinking water to the hundreds of millions of people. It appears this 100 Year drought is just getting started. Let's hope it isn't so but the Native Americans I have left it in there scriptures. I have read a lot about the Hopi Indians they weren't just Native Americans living off the land but they were the Great scientists of their time. What will happen when the western part of the country has to abandon and migrate East or north how do you relocate 150 million people set them up with a place to live. You can forget about California supplying America with fresh produce. It would make our great Dust Bowl pale into insignificance. People will have to learn how to produce their own food because you won't be buying it from the producers that we know of today. It wouldn't be difficult to run Pipelines from the oceans into the deserts and build desalination plants and produce fresh water and have enough sea salt to fill in the Grand Canyon. Just kidding about the Grand Canyon but this whole situation does not look good for North America. When will our leaders start talking about this? I believe the rich the elite will get out first move their vested interests and whatever they can reinvest in so they can get rich or richer off this devastating catastrophe and take advantage of the poor again as usual. Hold on to your farm lands if you're in the east because you're going to have a massive job of trying to feed tens of Millions or more of migrating people that will be nothing short of an exodus from the western part of the country. This whole thing is a very creepy notion. Pay Attention America. This is Tex out...

Texas Truth Loc: Behind Enemy Lines

I love the way the word assist likes to change words in sentences after you hit send like inserting the word drug in place of the word drought this stupid machine doesn't all the time. I'm sure you people know what I'm talking about.

Texas Truth Loc: Behind Enemy Lines

I want to kick some micro processing ass

archie bunker Loc: Texas

Did you have to correct it's correction of ass? I always do.

buffalo Loc: Texas

Hey, that might solve the problem of rising oceans due to climate change. Enviroweenies should love this idea.

Texas Truth Loc: Behind Enemy Lines

This is a short addition to the topic during these Mega droughts here there would be a change in the jet streams and bring massive amounts of water to the Sahara Desert and the Sahara desert would flourish. There is ancient evidence in the Sahara Desert of moving Waters. This evidence is found in small rounded stones of various sizes leaving evidence of Great Rivers and bodies of water. Really interesting stuff.

Texas Truth Loc: Behind Enemy Lines

Yes twice.

buffalo Loc: Texas

"We'll drink to that: Massive underground reserves of water found in some of Africa's driest areas - including the Sahara Desert"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2133339/Massive-underground-reserves-water-Africa.html

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

This is pretty well in line with what is going on in Cali about building such a plant..As is typical cost the major concern and then the effects of stripping our ocean of its water and how it will impact sea life..

Seems any alternatives has its own concerns of environmentally friendly issues and its impact..How do we extract the water without hurting marine life???

Droughts every 1000 years, lasting a-hundred years or so certainly confirms the cyclic nature of our world ..

Nation’s largest ocean desalination plant goes up near San Diego; Future of the California coast?

The crews are building what boosters say represents California’s best hope for a drought-proof water supply: the largest ocean desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. The $1 billion project will provide 50 million gallons of drinking water a day for San Diego County when it opens in 2016.

Since the 1970s, California has dipped its toe into ocean desalination –talking, planning, debating. But for a variety of reasons — mainly cost and environmental concerns– the state has never taken the plunge.

Until now.

Fifteen desalination projects are proposed along the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay. Desalination technology is becoming more efficient. And the state is mired in its third year of drought. Critics and backers alike are wondering whether this project in a town better known as the home of Legoland and skateboard icon Tony Hawk is ushering in a new era.

Will California — like Israel, Saudi Arabia and other arid coastal regions of the world — finally turn to the ocean to quench its thirst? Or will the project finally prove that drinking Pacific seawater is too pricey, too environmentally harmful and too impractical for the Golden State?
They went through seven or eight years of hell to get here,” said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. “But they stuck it out. They got it done. If it succeeds, it will encourage others to try. And if it fails, it will have a chilling effect.”

To critics, the plant is a costly mistake that will use huge amounts of energy and harm fish and other marine life when it sucks in seawater using the intakes from the aging Encina Power Plant next door.

“This is going to be the pig that will try for years to find the right shade of lipstick,” said Marco Gonzalez, an Encinitas attorney who sued on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation and other environmental groups to try to stop construction. “This project will show that the water is just too expensive.”

For the plant to be a success and copied in other parts of the state, Poseidon will have to deliver high-quality drinking water at the price promised — and not cause unexpected impacts to the environment such as fish die-offs.

“It’s a test case,” said Ron Davis, executive director of Cal Desal, an industry advocacy group. “We like to tease them: Only the entire future of desal is riding on this project. No pressure.”

High cost

Almost every discussion about desalination begins and ends with cost.

Desalinated water typically costs about $2,000 an acre foot — roughly the amount of water a family of five uses in a year. The cost is about double that of water obtained from building a new reservoir or recycling wastewater, according to a 2013 study from the state Department of Water Resources.

In Carlsbad, two gallons of seawater will be needed to produce each gallon of drinking water. And to remove the salt, the plant will use an enormous amount of energy — about 38 megawatts, enough to power 28,500 homes — to force 100 million gallons of seawater a day through a series of filters. The process, known as reverse osmosis, removes salt and other impurities by blasting the water at six times the pressure of a fire hose through membranes with microscopic holes.

After enduring severe water shortages during a drought in the late 1980s, Santa Barbara voters agreed to spend $34 million to build a desalination plant. It opened in 1991 and provided water for four months. When the drought ended, the city shut it down. Water from reservoirs and other sources was significantly cheaper.

Similarly, Australia spent more than $10 billion building six huge seawater desalination plants during a severe drought from 1997 to 2009. Today, Cooley noted, four are shut down because when rains finally came, the cost of the water became noncompetitive.

“We run the risk of building facilities that we don’t use,” Cooley said. “And that’s a waste of money.”
<snip>

http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/05/29/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near-san-diego-future-of-the-california-coast/

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

Mongo, what attracted you to the idea?

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

I was curious as to how many plants were active now~~

According to the International Desalination Association, in June 2015, 18,426 desalination plants operated worldwide, producing 86.8 million cubic meters per day, providing water for 300 million people... Pretty impressive!!
Followed by which countries~~

Desalination plants operate in more than 120 countries in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Cape Verde, Portugal, Greece, Italy, India, China, Japan, and Australia...

And the impact of these plants??~~

Waste Disposal
As with any process, desalination has by-products that must be taken care of. The process of desalination requires pretreatment and cleaning chemicals, which are added to water before desalination to make the treatment more efficient and successful. These chemicals include chlorine, hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide, and they can be used for only a limited amount of time. Once they've lost their ability to clean the water, these chemicals are dumped, which becomes a major environmental concern. These chemicals often find their way back into the ocean, where they poison plant and animal life.

Brine
Brine is the side product of desalination. While the purified water goes on to be processed and put into human use, the water that is left over, which has a super saturation of salt, must be disposed of. Most desalination plants pump this brine back into the ocean, which presents another environmental drawback. Ocean species are not equipped to adjust to the immediate change in salinity caused by the release of brine into the area. The super-saturated salt water also decreases oxygen levels in the water, causing animals and plants to suffocate.

Ocean Populations
The organisms most commonly affected by brine and chemical discharge from desalination plants are plankton and phytoplankton, which form the base of all marine life by forming the base of the food chain. Desalination plants therefore have the ability to negatively affect the population of animals in the ocean. These effects are further developed through the disadvantages caused by desalination "impingement" and "entrainment." While sucking ocean water in for desalination, the plants trap and kill animals, plants and eggs, many of which belong to endangered species.

Health Concerns
Desalination is not a perfected technology, and desalinated water can be harmful to human health as well. By-products of the chemicals used in desalination can get through into the "pure" water and endanger the people who drink it. Desalinated water can also be acidic to both pipes and digestive systems.

Energy Use
In an age where energy is becoming increasingly precious, desalination plants have the disadvantage of requiring large amounts of power. Other water treatment technologies are more energy efficient.

Are we that far behind??

mongo Loc: TEXAS

In the seventies when I was at Camp Pendleton, we were having a drought.
I was informed that California hadn't seen substantial rainfall for the last five
years. I mentioned a ship I was on with it's own freshwater desalination
system and that it would be a good idea to build a land based plant for the
state.
As the years went by, I ended up back in California with the same problem,
plus the rising cost of water. Again I talked about it with friends and family.
What I couldn't understand was why the officials in government voted to
have the runoff from the mountains rerouted to empty directly into the ocean
instead of creating more water sheds to conserve it during heavy possible
droughts. They were fully aware of the possible drought but thought Hoover
Dam would never suffer drought and always be capable of providing water.

SEMPER FI