Water Availability

>>8875550
Feel free to ask any questions about investing if you guys are interested in getting into it.

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is it really worth it?

>>8875560
If you want to keep the United States as the largest food exporter in the world, we're going to need a stable source of water other than aquifers, which I've heard are decreasing in size. Technological advanacement has allowed us to do more with less, making food more available than virtually any other point in history across mot of the globe. However, should we face water shortages, you can expect food prices to skyrocket.

>>8875550
Desalinization, small machines that extract water from the air, machines that extract water from feces and purifies it, etc.

There's water floating around you right now, all you have to do is extract it from the air.

>>8875575
How feasible is this as a long-term source of water? Could this be used to supply large-scale farming operations? It makes sense how you could tap into the water vapor in the air, but have there been any tests or articles on such technology? This is the first I've heard of it.

Desalination sounds good, but it seems like you'd have to invest in a lot of pipeline infrastructure to carry desalinated water from the coasts to the fertile soil of the Great Plains in the US or to areas like Vegas and the Southwest.

>>8875601
Desalinization is expensive but cheaper methods are being developed.

You can extract water from the air in the desert using plastic wrap and a hole in the ground. It's not the most efficient way but you will extract enough water to survive.

Another way of trapping water from the air would be to use a dehumidifier. This isn't very efficient energy wise though.

>>8875617
Also, is there anything other than infrastructure constraints stopping us from purifying the water in the Great Lakes and piping it out to the Great Plains as well? It seems like that would probably be more cost-efficient than desalination from the coasts, but I may be getting too /biz/ here.

>>8875550
considering we reached 'peak water' 30 years ago, this should be of critical interest to more people.

>>8875753
Very little of the water in the great lakes is refreshed every year, about 1% of overall volume.

It sounds like a good idea in theory but in practice it would just mean droughts for more people. Not to mention the water in some portions of the lakes is undrinkable due to pollution.

>>8875550
I'd be more concerned with water recycling. The vast majority of our fresh water supply goes right to agriculture, and the water people use is just discarded and not recaptured. The ISS recaptures about 97% of its water so something like that for homes and businesses would be a huge deal. Desalination to increase supply and GMOs to reduce demand are promising too, but not the only way.

water resources replenish themselves so we just have to use them sustainably but since that is very difficult considering the growing population and it's growing demands I say we develop desalination technology and/or have more sustainable forms of energy to power desalination plants
there's also the question of disposing of the brine leftover from the desalination process, currently we just pump it deep into the bottom of the ocean very slowly so it causes as little harm as possible but we may need to find a better method of disposal if we start desalinating more water

>>8875753
The environmentalist would kill you.