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Water shortages expected to fuel conflict, social unrest and migration

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By Anastasia Moloney

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Naturally, the boffins don't mention population control as the best, perhaps only, solution. Once again, they're arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

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While I concur with JeffLee, changes in rainfall and water use will still create local pressures. Population control is undoubtedly part of the solution but not all and education/improved living conditions/healthcare which are the precursors to effective long term population control are also what is needed to facilitate the other changes to manage the water shortage situation.

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Or the attempted Arab genocide of the Israelis attempted on at least three occasions since the Holocaust?

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/

The link above is to an article in Scientific American magazine about new technology in desalination that is reportedly very cheap and easy. A couple of takeaways from the article: over half of all water consumed in Israel today is desalinated water, and the cost of the water from this new technology is cheaper than what we here in Southern California are currently paying to move water from Northern California down to here. There is currently plenty of ocean, and there are plenty of coastlines, so desalination would not be affected by a shortage of either of those.

An observation or two: large desalination plants require a stable government. So, the once-in-a-thousand year drought currently happening in parts of the Middle East, such as Syria, would not be addressed because the corrupt and incompetent government of Assad is primarily interested in keeping him in his position of dictator for life, and is not worried about taking care of the problems of the people. The more than 5 million Syrians who have fled their country might not have had to if the government of Assad cared to try to meet their water needs. The people of Syria might not have rebelled against the central government if that government had tried in the least to meet their minimal needs to stay alive.

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Thanks 1genn for the link, fascinating and informative.

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Naturally, the boffins don't mention population control as the best, perhaps only, solution.

That's because it isn't. It's a centuries old debunked pile of nonsense.

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he link above is to an article in Scientific American magazine about new technology in desalination that is reportedly very cheap and easy.

There are two major problems with desal not addressed in the article that are show stoppers for many. Number one, that giant intake pipe mentioned in the article is a major source of fish mortality. On the US west coast coastal power plants are being required to replace seawater cooling with air cooling (evaporation towers) to reduce the high fish kill associated with these power plants. That is the first show stopper. The second is what to do with the waste stream. The water Israel is taking may be free of pollutants but the waters off the US west coast are heavily polluted with surface street runoff, farm run off and the outfalls of several huge waste treatment plants that don't treat the waste water to tertiary standards. What would come out of a system like Israel's on the US west coast would be a concentrated mixture of both brine and all those pollutants removed by the desal process. It is toxic and cannot be dumped back into the ocean. It would have to be dried out and disposed of on land. There aren't sites available for this waste and the expense would make desal in a US west coast context too expensive to consider.

What is possible and indeed what is being done in So Cal now is to treat waste water to a potable standard and pump this now purified water back into aquifers for mixture with groundwater. LA is building a huge treatment plant to remove several dangerous chemicals in its groundwater, the legacy of Cold War defense plants in the LA Basin which badly polluted the aquifer there. Their plan is to combine groundwater recharge with purified waste water with these treatment plants to allow the LA Basin's groundwater to be used again as a drinking water supply, reducing or possibly in some years eliminating their need to use water from the Owens Valley.

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Tortoise, the fact that The USA on the Pacific coast has fouled its own nest is irrelevant to the efficacy of the technology.

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An observation or two: large desalination plants require a stable government. So, the once-in-a-thousand year drought currently happening in parts of the Middle East, such as Syria, would not be addressed because the corrupt and incompetent government of Assad is primarily interested in keeping him in his position of dictator for life, and is not worried about taking care of the problems of the people. The more than 5 million Syrians who have fled their country might not have had to if the government of Assad cared to try to meet their water needs. The people of Syria might not have rebelled against the central government if that government had tried in the least to meet their minimal needs to stay alive.

It must also be noted that waters, irrigation and rivers are what led to the history of civilizations thruout history. The first civilization sprung up in Mesopotamia where the Tigris and Euprates are. It's always has been contested by nations such as the Macedonians, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Romans, etc. And now it's in what we call 'Iraq'. The Ganges River figures prominently in India and its history. The ancient Egyptians based their civilization on the Nile. The Romans even tried to conquer all of that. Chinese civilization sprang up around the Yangzee River. There's the Congo River. And so on.

And its led to various wars as well and continues to today. Sometimes climate change affects it too. The Anasazi and Pima civilizations in the American Southwest practiced extensive irrigation but the region turned more arid.

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Tortoise, the fact that The USA on the Pacific coast has fouled its own nest is irrelevant to the efficacy of the technology.

How many coastal zones are pollution free today? The Red Sea might be one of the only such places in the world.

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