we live in a closed greenhouse system, the water just doesn't just disappear and most of the Earth is covered in it. Plenty of countries completely rely on desalination already, I think we'll be fine. I'm much more concerned about everyone becoming a moron from using AI.<p>edit: cloud seeding too.
> Plenty of countries completely rely on desalination already<p>Let's take Kansas... the largest producer of wheat in the US. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/190376/top-us-states-in-wheat-production/?srsltid=AfmBOoodNF3dqIkb5oSV_luqpgiiTFXNyNZsTmch18flkq5jVzVD-c2V" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/190376/top-us-states-in-...</a><p>Kansas wheat crop down 38% from last year <a href="https://youtu.be/QjrhAXzEGDc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/QjrhAXzEGDc</a><p>Kansas cannot run on desalination plants ... there's no salt water. The gulf coast of Texas is 1000 miles away.<p>While aquifers <i>do</i> regenerate (Groundwater levels in the Kansas High Plains aquifer see first overall increase since 2019 <a href="https://kgs.ku.edu/news/article/groundwater-levels-in-the-kansas-high-plains-aquifer-see-first-overall-increase-since-2019" rel="nofollow">https://kgs.ku.edu/news/article/groundwater-levels-in-the-ka...</a> ) I'm going to point out that news article has <i>seven</i> years of declines previously.<p>The aquifer that Kansas draws upon is the Ogallala Aquifer ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer</a> ) and you can see the rate of depletion at <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/national-climate-assessment-great-plains’-ogallala-aquifer-drying-out" rel="nofollow">https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/nation...</a> - there are spots in Kansas where the groundwater dropped by 150 feet from before it was tapped with deep wells to 2015.<p>Yes, most of the earth is covered by water. Getting that water to Kansas and Nebraska and North Dakota, however, is a problem.
The problem is that aquifers are really cool natural filters, and only refill as fast as groundwater moves through the soil. So they're a finite resource. Instead of depleting them, people who want to farm in deserts should probably start desalinating or whatever themselves instead of assuming subsequent generations will do it.
The government made it literally the only way to claim much of the land out west[]. They <i>require</i> that you come up with an agricultural land including plan for watering crops on that acreage in order to claim the land. And you're required to execute the plan to get the deed.<p>In fact, this is the only remaining way I know of to more or less 'homestead' federal land in a way that results in a permanent deed. The rest of the homesteading type stuff was revoked back in like the 70s or 80s.<p>[] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Land_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Land_Act</a>
> Plenty of countries completely rely on desalination already<p>There are only 3 countries that do: Bahamas, Maldives, and Malta.<p>Other countries that depend heavily, but not completely: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE.
Qatar, Kuwait, UAE. And these guys rent out tons of farmland in the USA to grow crops because they can flood irrigate and get five crops of alfalfa a year to feed their livestock.<p>Desal isn't useful for anything but a stop gap
Desalination isn't really much of an option for deeper inland and much higher than sea level areas. Tell me, which ocean is Dodge City KS going to pull from?
and desalination is so efficient/cheap at scale already that it barely affects water prices in those countries (less than 10% already, further shrinking every year as methods improve)
This is by far the dumbest post in this thread by a mile. It's funny saying AI will make people dumber when you've obviously don't understand this issue in the first place. Food security is human security. When you take a huge percentage of a countries grow able land out because it stops raining then food proces go up, often dramatically.<p>Desalination uses far more power than AI ever would.
Plants require a ton of desalinated water and Animals who eat plants as such require desalinated water too.<p>There are countries in middle east like UAE, Saudi arabia etc. which rely on desalination but they are relying it for the clean drinking water, not for the food generation. They import almost 90% of their food iirc.<p>The amount of energy required to desalinate all water and the environmental impacts to get that energy would literally be quite catastrophic and I am not even sure if it would be even feasible and food prices would literally skyrocket or food would simply be produced even more less by magnitudes of order.
The energy required to transport water from the coast to our major agricultural areas would be astronomical, and the resulting brine waste would create its own environmental crisis. If we get to a point where we're forced to bypass natural water cycles entirely, our native ecologies will have already collapsed. At that point, we'll be trying to engineer our way out of a total ecological apocalypse as masses starve in bread lines.