Well, two points:
- Just because the state needs the water doesn't mean this plant would have been a good solution to it. Desalination is a last-resort solution which has the endemic problem of increasing salinity in the water where you get it. No matter what, unless you have strong currents and turbulence naturally all of the time, the net loss of water compared to the salt returned results in an overall general alkalination of the region adversely affecting all life there.
- The other point is why do firefighters need desalinated drinking water? Isn't sea water wet too? We are talking two different standards here. Far better to put the burning neighborhood or whatever out than to let it all burn just because you don't want a little saltwater on your petunias.
Every solution is a trade off of some kind. Realistically, a state like California should have a back up emergency reserve system in place where if needed, they can cut into a back up of either directly sourcing water from the ocean or from some large storage tank kept filled with slowly-recycled sea water ready for use circulated just enough to keep it from getting stagnant, and cut this supply into the fire hydrant supply system which should be able to be isolated or kept isolated from the general drinking supply.
Fighting fires should never impact the general public water supply in any adequate, well-thought out system, ESPECIALLY in one so pricey and budget-overrun as in California, where consumers certainly get the shaft.
Good points in a way but the bottom line is that a Carbon Tax is needed to give the government the perfect excuse to take over total control of the economy and shut down our ability to drive more than perhaps fifteen minutes or so.
The Bill Gates "Innovating to zero" lecture and plan depends totally on the Al Gore Carbon Tax plan.
The truth about the value of mega-scale desalination is potentially so good that Bill Gates and those who promote him as the poster boy for Neo-Malthusianism do not want the truth about how best to stabilize the climate to come out.
Will world peace begin with immigrants from many nations who go to Canada and find out ways to address the root causes of the conflicts that were going on in the nations that they left?
I am hopeful that this will be the case, for example, immigrants to Canada from the Middle East may be able to turn the world away from the Al Gore Carbon Tax Theory and the Bill Gates, "Innovation to zero" emissions theory, and instead adopt the more down to earth approach to Climate Change advocated in the Jewish, Islamic and Christian scriptures as well as by a New Mexico biologist and coach.
Here is an ancient Islamic prediction that sounds like a brilliant response to both the threat of rising ocean levels... as well as to the Economic Crisis that it appears some influential people seem to want to occur.
Book 005, Number 2208:
"Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (way peace be upon him) as saying: The Last Hour will not come before wealth becomes abundant and overflowing, so much so that a man takes Zakat out of his property and cannot find anyone to accept it from him and till the land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers."
SAHIH MUSLIM, BOOK 25: The Book on General Behaviour (Kitab Al-Adab)
... "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and
the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joyand singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the
excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD,
and the excellency of our God.
....
Then shall the lame
man leap as an hart, and the tongueof the dumb sing:
for in the wilderness shall waters break out,
and streams in the desert.
And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons,where
each lay,
shall be grass with reeds and rushes." (Isaiah 35 : 1, 2, 6, 7 ).
A New Mexico biologist and coach wrote up an alternative theory on stabilization of the climate that fits well with these ancient Islamic and Jewish predictions for the last decades and centuries of human history before our Creator gives us a utopian world where the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh.
New Mexico biologist and coach Carl Cantrell.....
"So how is our problem of continental drying causing global warming? It all has to do with vegetation and sunlight. When sun light hits a plant, it causes a process which we call photosynthesis where the energy from the sun light creates oxygen for us to breath, water for us to drink, and is stored as sugar for plants and animals to use. When the same sun light hits the soil, all of its energy turns into heat and is radiated back into the atmosphere, carried away by running surface water such as rain fall, is carried away to other areas by our winds, and diffuses down into the soil towards the earth's crust. All of this warms our planet increasing its average temperature.
Therefore, the less vegetation you have on the planet, the more sunlight is being turned into heat and the warmer the planet becomes. This is very critical because warmer and dryer winds dry out other land areas faster decreasing the vegetation on those land areas. Less humidity in the air also reflects less sun light back out into space so that more sun light strikes the earth and more heat is generated.
The truth is that you can do more to decrease global warming by just reducing the average temperature for the Sahara Desert by one or two degrees than if we humans completely quit using fossil fuels and returned to the cave.
So, how would you start working to resolve this problem? Easy, cool the deserts and get some vegetation growing on them as soon as possible. But the method is much more complex than that. You have to use the prevailing trade winds in relation to the deserts to get the best results as quickly as possible and it will be extremely expensive.
Then we build desalination plants along the coast near these water sheds and pipe water to the tops or ridges of the water sheds
This will do a number of things. First, it will increase the moisture in the desert soil so that it will develop water tables and water will begin to run in the streams. This water will increase the amount of vegetation in the area and decrease the amount of heat being generated by sun light cooling the watered area and all areas down wind of the watered area. As more available water evaporates, it will cool the air and reflect more sun light back out into space cooling the area even more. Cooler and more humid air will have less of a heating effect on areas down wind and will reflect more sun light back into space in those areas cooling areas we won't be watering yet. Cooler and more humid air will also have less of a warming effect on our seas and oceans.
Rain water running off of cooler soil will decrease the heating effect on our oceans and our planet crusts which will decrease catastrophic storm activities for other areas and seismic activity for the entire planet. Also, returning more ocean water to the surface and aquifers of our continents will lower the sea levels providing more usable land for us to farm and build on.
With cooler desert areas and increasing vegetation, less water will evaporate from our deserts increasing the amount of surface water even more and increasing the amount of vegetation and animal life by huge amounts because deserts currently take up more than 20% of our land surface. Populations will be able to spread out and there will be less competition for existing land areas.
This strategy has to be done in steps with the first step being to begin slowing the rate at which our global warming is increasing. We need to focus on that until we have brought it to a point to where the temperature is not increasing any more and is reasonably stable. While we are doing this, we need to come to a global consensus of just how cool we want to cool our planet down to. If we cool it down too much, we will begin to have devastatingly harsh winters in large populated areas and even cause an ice age to set in.
Then we begin cooling the planet down to a point which will be most beneficial for all countries or the planet as a whole. We need to gradually bring the temperature down because there may be a lag effect in which the planet will continue cooling after we stop increasing our efforts to cool it off more. We may even want to stop cooling the planet once or twice before we reach our targeted temperatures to see if there is a lag effect
We need to start working on this as soon as possible because, if the planet reaches a point to where it is warming faster than our technology can possibly stop or reverse this warming trend, then our planet is lost and all life will cease to exist on this planet within a relatively short period of time. We will need to start with the largest and hottest deserts because cooling them will have the greatest benefit in the least time. (Global Warming II by biologist Carl Cantrell).
