Posted by jasondavies 1 day ago
What is the this desalination cost competing against, what's the alternative cost of importing water by tanker or pipeline?
Also, why do you want batteries, instead of just running the osmosis when there is sunlight? Maybe the osmosis equipment is expensive enough that it pays off to keep it 100% occupied with batteries?
I love this idea, and would be comfortable pushing the number even higher. The cool part about the US is it's relatively unpopulated as compared to European countries.
We could probably fit another 200 million or so people in the eastern half of the country, just by bringing it to the level of density of, say, the UK. If we were willing to live as densely as the Dutch, perhaps we could add 300 million in the eastern half.
In his wildly enthusiastic 1860 book The Central Gold Region, William Gilpin claimed that the Mississipi Basin could support at population of 1.2 billion people, and was destined to become the “world’s amphitheatre”, with all of the world’s trade running through it in a grand “Asiatic and European Railway”.
https://www.up.com/customers/track-record/tr120120-freight-r...
of, say, any small island. These dynamics are unnatural modes of compensation for other inconveniences.
> as densely as the Dutch
or, say, people who live under the level of the sea itself.
> people who live under the level of the sea itself
Your responses read as facetious. I chose two relatively large & wealthy European countries for comparison. But the US ranks 186/249 for population density; there is a lot of room for increased density if it is desired.
If you don't like those, here are some alternate compares you can sub into my post if it helps you engage with the concept:
- Belgium
- India
- China
- Vietnam
- Germany
- Italy
- South Korea
- Nigeria
- Spain
If the US were as dense as the EU, there would be ~1 billion Americans now.
Other than forgetting that literal drilled wells exist.
Has anyone tried this on their own land? I'm tempted to try it.
It's worth poking around YouTube to see just what people are saying they've achieved. It changed my mind.
> The soil was springy and spongy when you walked on it. Like an uncompacted garden bed it was full of mulch captured by rain water. Eighty years of humus was deposited here during flash floods, without any help from mankind.
> The trees were all self seeded.
> Geoff plunged his hands into the soil and went down 8 inches of moist, black, rich, composted soil. It was still damp.
https://www.permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasi...