[dataflow]

> What this article shows is that nearly all of the potential "shortages" in materials on earth are really just energy shortages (with some small number of notable exceptions like helium)

You're saying freshwater shortage is really just an energy shortage?

[hn_throwaway_99]

Yes, absolutely. Look at places like Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East that run on desalinization plants. It's energy, all the way down.

[dataflow]

You're saying every population everything on earth could solve their freshwater problem with desalination if only they had cheap energy? No other issues here besides lack of energy?

[hn_throwaway_99]

Try thinking of this another way to help you understand. How does nature get most of us surface freshwater to begin with? Energy from the sun heats ocean water which causes evaporation into the atmosphere (aka "natural desalinization") and then wind patterns in the atmosphere (also generated by energy from the sun) cause clouds to move over land where water vapor eventually condenses and falls as precipitation, filling lakes and rivers.

So the equation is basically energy input from the sun creates freshwater from salt water and transports it over land. Humans can, and have, replicated this process artificially, the limiting factor just being the cost of energy.

[inigyou]

You also need seawater. But infinite energy lets you move fresh water a long distance. You could deliver it to the middle of the country from the coast. Or from other countries.

[jandrese]

Unless you're in the middle of the Atacama or on the moon or something, yes.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Even in the middle of the Atacama, it's still just an energy problem. The Atacama basically borders the Pacific, so it's just a desalinization and transport issue, which is, again, all just energy.

[matthewdgreen]

With desalinization, in most places that is the case.

[dataflow]

Er... for starters, hasn't one of the biggest arguments against desalination been the ecological impact? Or are we assuming spherical cows here?

[inigyou]

Yes, but that's localized and temporary. It's nothing like the ecological impact of burning fossil fuels, and more like the ecological impact of a quarry. It's a lower impact than a hydro dam, I think.

You have an intake that can suck in sea life accidentally, and an outlet that emits water too salty for sea life to survive, which doesn't go beyond a certain distance as it mixes again with normal ocean water.

[Beltiras]

We have near perfect processes for saltwater filtering.

[mock-possum]

Are you saying it isn’t?