Where's the Water, Waldo?

[RE]

A new thread for Water Woes Worldwide.

Desalinization:  A great solution to water shortage as long as the town is right on the coast, has plenty of money, gobs of surplus affordable electricity and you're not worried about fish, crabs or shrimp that coastal towns often have as a source of food and employment for the working class.

Oh, and don't forget those semi-permeable membranes with the 0.1 micrometer holes you force the salt water through under high pressure made from fossil fuel plastics which need regular replacement, or the pumps and their gaskets and pipes that get corroded by normally corrosive seawater on the way in and INCREDIBLY corrosive concentrated seawater on the way out you probably source from a factory in China.

For San Diego, CA, home of ecologically concerned citizens and the toughest EPA dept in the FSoA, the FSoA's largest desal plant does provide a whopping 10% of their water needs.  Technology to the rescue!

https://www.businessinsider.com/ocean-water-desalination-san-diego-us-drought-crisis-2023-10

San Diego temporarily solved its water crisis by turning ocean water into fresh water. But desalination won't work everywhere.



RE

[K-Dog]

Desal could never provide water on a scale agriculture needs.  But water needs to most people is filling a glass up.

[RE]

Desal could never provide water on a scale agriculture needs.  But water needs to most people is filling a glass up.

I'm all in favor of prepping with a personal desal pump like the ones they sell for Seasteads.  A definite prep you should buy to go with your 45' Ketch along with the solar pv panels to run it.



This is a must have for most low lying deserted atolls with no volcano.  You need that to collect rain from passing clouds.  Islands equipped with a volcano already have a population, generally now bigger than they can support.  Poor destinations when it becomes time to bugout.



RE

[RE]

I was already well aware of the electricity consumption pit of Bitcoin mining, however this is the first article I have run across that puts numbers to the absolutely ASTOUNDING consumption of WATER used for each Bitcoin transaction. It boggles the mind to comprehend that each time someone clicks the BUY button on a website and uses Bitcoin to pay for it, he is flushing a swimming pool worth of fresh water down the sewer to do it.  It's hard for me to grasp why these servers don't use the vast quantity of waste water coming from bath tubs or agricultural runoff for this.  Or closed loop radiator systems like ICE cars use.

This raises the question also as to how much water is used to run the ChatGPT3 servers each time you have it write 300 lines of code for a subroutine?  Not to mention the myriad of other applications AI is being thrown at.  Yet another reason the takeover of AI is not unstoppable.  Besides a shortage of power to run the computers, a shortage of water to keep them cool also will put a limit to its expansion.



https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptocurrency/each-bitcoin-transaction-consumes-4200-gallons-of-water-enough-to-fill-a-swimming-pool-and-could-potentially-cause-freshwater-shortages

Each Bitcoin transaction uses 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages

RE

[18hammers]

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the average US home uses about 7,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year 1. One kilowatt-hour is equal to the energy used to maintain one kilowatt of power for one hour 2. Therefore, 7,200 kilowatt-hours is equivalent to 7.2 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year.

To calculate the energy consumption of Bing per day, we need to divide the annual energy consumption by the number of days in a year. There are 365 days in a year, so the energy consumption of Bing per day is approximately 19.7 MWh (7,200 MWh / 365 days

Knarf, maybe it is just me but I do not understand your data.7,200 kilowatt hour a year is just that.I don't follow how you are saying it is equivalent to 7.2 megawatt-hrs? I am missing something?

[Nearings Fault]

I was already well aware of the electricity consumption pit of Bitcoin mining, however this is the first article I have run across that puts numbers to the absolutely ASTOUNDING consumption of WATER used for each Bitcoin transaction. It boggles the mind to comprehend that each time someone clicks the BUY button on a website and uses Bitcoin to pay for it, he is flushing a swimming pool worth of fresh water down the sewer to do it.  It's hard for me to grasp why these servers don't use the vast quantity of waste water coming from bath tubs or agricultural runoff for this.  Or closed loop radiator systems like ICE cars use.

This raises the question also as to how much water is used to run the ChatGPT3 servers each time you have it write 300 lines of code for a subroutine?  Not to mention the myriad of other applications AI is being thrown at.  Yet another reason the takeover of AI is not unstoppable.  Besides a shortage of power to run the computers, a shortage of water to keep them cool also will put a limit to its expansion.



https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptocurrency/each-bitcoin-transaction-consumes-4200-gallons-of-water-enough-to-fill-a-swimming-pool-and-could-potentially-cause-freshwater-shortages

Each Bitcoin transaction uses 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages

RE

I really do not get the water figure. So if I read the article correctly bit miners use water to cool their servers and then what? Destroy it? Remove it from the water chain somehow? I suppose if they evaporate it it would be lost to immediate use. I'll admit I find Bitcoin ridiculous but I did recently join a chat about using surplus solar capacity wasted in the summer time to run bitminers. The economics of it work even if it is still crazy ...

[K-Dog]

The internet is a vast network of data centers, servers, and network infrastructure that consumes much energy. According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global energy consumption of data centres increased by 6% in 2020, reaching a total of 205 terawatt-hours (TWh). This is equivalent to the energy consumption of Spain, and it's expected to grow by another 3% in 2021. The IEA also estimates that data centres and networks will consume 10% of the world's electricity by 2030.

Search engines are one of the largest consumers of energy in the internet ecosystem. According to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the energy consumption of search engines in the United States was estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.5 terawatt-hours in 2016, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 200,000 to 300,000 households. The carbon emissions from this energy consumption range from 1.2 to 2 million metric tons of CO2.

If internet searches keep people from driving perhaps there is an offset in the calculation?

Regardless my personal carbon footprint was reduced by installing a heat pump last month far more than my personal internet searches pile on.

[Knarf]

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the average US home uses about 7,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year 1. One kilowatt-hour is equal to the energy used to maintain one kilowatt of power for one hour 2. Therefore, 7,200 kilowatt-hours is equivalent to 7.2 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year.

To calculate the energy consumption of Bing per day, we need to divide the annual energy consumption by the number of days in a year. There are 365 days in a year, so the energy consumption of Bing per day is approximately 19.7 MWh (7,200 MWh / 365 days

Knarf, maybe it is just me but I do not understand your data.7,200 kilowatt hour a year is just that.I don't follow how you are saying it is equivalent to 7.2 megawatt-hrs? I am missing something?

Yea, it makes no since to me....sorry, here is something that might give us some idea of the new search engines energy use.

While energy usage has not been disclosed, it's estimated that GPT-4 consumed between 51,773 MWh and 62,319 MWh, over 40 times higher than what its predecessor, GPT-3, consumed. This is equivalent to the energy consumption over 5 to 6 years of 1,000 average US households.

[RE]

What is the point of protesting against a water shortage?  It's not like protesting will make it rain more.  If a politician promises you more water if you vote for him, will you get it?

OK, there is some latitude in who gets the water, if it's going to irrigate farms and the produce is being shipped out, you can protest against that.   But if you are eating that food, you still are consuming the water.  Plus you need the money from the export bizness or you lose the farm jobs.

You can protest against climate change, but Mexico can't do anything about what is happening all over the world.  Mexico also has little control over how much water is left in the Colorado River after it has been drained on its trip down through the FSoA.  Protests in Mexico City won't change how much water they drink in Vegas or use to irrigate CA lettuce farms.

After a month with no water in your apartment in Mexico City, I would seriously consider leaving, although where you will go I don't know.  Is it better to trade that for a tent in a refugee camp in Brooklyn?

Climatic migration is going to be a big problem, and protests aren't going to be very effective for remedying it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-city-residents-protest-unprecedented-water-shortages-2024-01-31/

Mexico City residents protest 'unprecedented' water shortages

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[Knarf]

"Pi" my ai assistant who I will be quoting occasionally, because I want to see how these cchat-bots and image makers are behaving...how much truth can you get from them?

some solutions to the Mexico City water shortage...

Invest in large-scale desalination plants to provide a sustainable source of fresh water for the city.
Create and enforce strict regulations on groundwater extraction to ensure that groundwater reserves are not depleted at an unsustainable rate.
Implement water-saving technologies and programs, such as low-flow showerheads and toilets, to reduce water consumption in the city.
Encourage the development of green infrastructure, such as rainwater harvesting systems and permeable pavements, to help conserve water and reduce urban runoff.

[RE]

"Pi" my ai assistant who I will be quoting occasionally, because I want to see how these cchat-bots and image makers are behaving...how much truth can you get from them?

some solutions to the Mexico City water shortage...

Invest in large-scale desalination plants to provide a sustainable source of fresh water for the city.

Very expensive, energy intensive water.  Mexicans are POOR.

Create and enforce strict regulations on groundwater extraction to ensure that groundwater reserves are not depleted at an unsustainable rate.

The horse has already left the barn.  They are already depleted.

Implement water-saving technologies and programs, such as low-flow showerheads and toilets, to reduce water consumption in the city.

The showers & toilets are already No-Flow.  To have low flow, you would have to supply them with water.

Encourage the development of green infrastructure, such as rainwater harvesting systems and permeable pavements, to help conserve water and reduce urban runoff.

It needs to rain for them to harvest.

RE

[RE]

Holding a Protest against Drought is the modern equivalent of doing a Rain Dance.  The participants may feel like they're doing something, but it's unlikely to help resolve the problem.

Of course, they have been talking about Day Zero arriving in Mexico Shity every year for a couple of year at least, and they have managed to squeak through with trucked in water and JIT rainfall showing up.  Will this be the summer taps really go dry not just for a few hours or day on-day off rationing, but NADA for enough days in a row people could actually die from dehydration, not just smell bad because of not showering?

20M people in Mexico Shity.  Imagine a Convoy of not 1000 people but 1M people all marching to the FSoA border at the same time.  What would The 300 Spartan INS border patrol guards do when the "Earthquake, Captain" wave of Invaders attempts to cross the border?

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/mexicos-drought-heatwave-water-shortage-bad-police-blocking-110477760

Mexico's drought, heatwave and water shortage are so bad even police are blocking traffic in protest

RE