A friend pointed me to this article about California’s latest $1 billion seawater desalination plant. I’m wondering if Californians have discovered a method to drive infinite global warming:
- take all of your freshwater and sell it below cost/value to farmers who will then let it evaporate (in fact, sell it so cheaply that they will grow rice as though they were farming in monsoon-soaked tropical Asia)
- take an entire African country’s electricity budget and spend it to run desalination plants to replace the water previously wasted
Is there a reason that I have overlooked for why California is now going the same route as Qatar?
[Of course, desalination may make sense for Qataris. Qatar is much drier than California. Qatar is much richer per-capita than California. Qataris aren’t in the business of hectoring others regarding global warming, environmentalism, politics, etc.]
The answer could be idiotic green policies combined with progressive politicians in San Franscisco and Los Angeles. See, e.g., http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_1_california-drought.html and http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=7880
The winners were once again the lawyers, with 14 lawsuits against it. A better way is needed to deactivate & reactivate the plants as the rain comes & goes.
Saudi Arabia was growing Wheat in the 80s in the desert.
Today it is buy land in Africa instead.
Israel is having a green revolution since that time too.
So Don’t worry. Entire middle of United States is also a desert
where all the water comes from an aquifer that took millions of years
to form.
It too is depleting.
For 10,000 years, India has been the most arable land on the Planet.
US took over that only in 20th century.
Mind you farmers in North India used to get water from 100 ft well.
Today they water is contaminated with Pesticides and Fertilizer and the
Well is 1000 ft bellow. India too has plans for desalination planets
run by High Temperature Forth Gen Nuclear Plants.