How to speed up the demise of the planet, (1) set up a desal plant.

Oh thats it, by by.

How many of these things already exist?

Almost all your fresh water presently comes from a large desalination plant.
It is very inefficient.
Most of the water it produces is never used for anything to benefit anyone or anything.
Almost all the salt from this desal plant is just dumped into the sea.
The rest of it is dumped over the countryside salting up the land.
It's powered by a nuclear reactor.

It's been happening for millions of years and no one is doing anything about it.

Seriously now,
I think desal plants are the only real answer to our water problem.
I also think that they are about the only worthwhile use for wind farm energy simply because the end product, i.e water, can be effectively and cheaply stored for use for a long time after the wind stops blowing.
An excellent example of this is the wind powered desal plant at Coral Bay in Nth West WA.
When the wind blows we get power to run the town. Whatever is left over runs the desal plant. The water is stored in big concrete storage tanks.
When the wind stops blowing the water is still available. There appears to be enough storage for about 3 months or more. Certainly enough to last until the wind blows again.

It's probably one of the very few uses where wind power makes sense.

The other power source that would make it an excellent option is nuclear fusion.
Unfortunately we don't have any due to short sighted decisions taken over the last 40 years.
Hopefully it will come one day.
In the meantime we could make do with nuclear fission reactors. Not perfect but far better than burning oil, coal, anything at all really.

My advice is, don't protest.
You are just choking off the best long term option for guaranteed water security.

pweedas said...

The other power source that would make it an excellent option is nuclear fusion.
Unfortunately we don't have any due to short sighted decisions taken over the last 40 years.
Hopefully it will come one day.

Pweedas ftw!

Fusion is the answer to all our energy needs... once we have that then we can get a hydrogen economy going, bye bye greenhouse gases.

As for saline solution being a problem in the ocean... where do you think that the fresh water we've desalinated ends up? Back in the ocean of course, diluting the saline solution back to where it was before. There's no way humans could possibly affect the salinity of the ocean, even if they tried. Really hard. On a global scale, this is, wait for it, a drop in the ocean BOOM BOOM!

Hivolts said...



.....The Salt resdue must go some where and the no Brainers have decide out to sea it must go .Good Bye to the marine world as we know it. Good bye to beautiful beaches . Hello to Dumb Politicians

This is one of the key arguments against it? Or maybe just a badly thought out pitch to try to get members of a water sports forum to jump on your bandwagon? Do you really believe that putting the salt back in the ocean will do anything? By that argument you could suggest that heavy rain over the ocean will kill our saline reliant marine life! fortunately most seabreeze members are a bit more informed than your average "Dumb Politician" ......or environmental activist it seems!

I still can't work out the impact on beautiful beaches either...maybe some localised disruption when they bury the pipes, but that would be short lived.

Never let minor annoyances like reality and facts stand in a way of a good drum beating though.....

The only issue I have with desal plants is the amount of power they draw and therefore how much the water is going to cost - bring on the nuke plants Pweedas and Nebs, I agree they are the only long term sustainable option and there is too much missinformation and emotion surrounding them - generally stirred up by ill informed drum beating.....

Hivolts said...

Back in November Captain Bigh decided that a desla plant would be built at Marcoola . Communities against desalanation an be found at the web site below .

A few of you raised concerns about this Desal plant .

Keep in mind Desal plants use enormous amounts of energy to produce fresh water. The Salt resdue must go some where and the no Brainers have decide out to sea it must go .Good Bye to the marine world as we know it. Good bye to beautiful beaches . Hello to Dumb Politicians

Captain Bligh then plans to Pump the water to Bne and as we sailors know water is very heavy so she is going to use more power . She wants to destroy national parks by cutting Pipe lines through the forest .

http://cadi.org.au/

We need your support to stop this nonsence which has been largely bought about by poor planning and project deferral .

If you could hit web site and down load a form and scan back to cadi , all of us sea lovers will thank you.

Fair winds Hivolts

Yeah and the reason these desal plants are going ahead is because that dam that SEQ much needed and that Bligh was in great support of was barred. (It was going to inconvenience a few hundred locals.)

shark said...

PWEEDAS, CB is a great example, do you live up there?

No.
But it is on my annual pilgrimage route up north each winter.
I always stop in there for a few days on the way up and back again.

Up until two years ago, the only water available for anything except drinking was salty artesian water.
Fresh water was in short supply.
If you filled up your water bottles at the caravan parks without paying you were charged with theft. There were signs up to warn you.

What ammounts to three large fans stuck up on a hill outside the townsite supply power and heaps of fresh water for all.
Backup power is still by diesel generators which is not good but it is the standard option for small towns in Noth West WA.

elmo said...

Desal or recycled water

yes, in the UK they solved the problem with desal

NotWal said...

Nuclear fusion has been just 20 years away for the past 60 years.
I wouldn't count on it.
Maybe we should get FlySurfer to stop tinkering with that time machine and get him on to cold fusion

I think he is finished and onto a methlab, cold fusion wasnt making enough money

Lowering of the water table is not a problem on the east coast. The main issue is its basically impossible to build new dams for metropolitan water supplies but the population keeps increasing. Coupled to that is the illogical way in which water is sold in Sydney at least. My water bill normally comes out at $125 a quarter. Thats $120 connection fee and $5 for the water.

We would actually try and save water if we had a lower connection fee and reasonable charge for water use. This pricing system is not promoting conservation of water.