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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)



Rick Tarara includes:

     If anyone has fresh water stats I also would like to see
     them.  What we need is:

     Total fresh water supply: could probably use average
     rainfall over land time area.

     Average water use per person: (including water needed to
     produce food)

     Energy cost per unit to desalinate salt water:

     From a Biologist or BioChemist a figure of rare elements
     necessary for human life.  The amount per person and the
     total estimated amount (near the surface) of the earth.

The water problem is complicated by the fact that the cost of water is
dominated by the cost of transporting it.  The price of oil is not
increased very much by the cost of transporting it from the Persian
Gulf to the U.S.  Water is used in much larger quantities.

Here are some partial statistics.

1. California uses 35 million acre-feet per year for a population of
about 30 million.  California is the largest agricultural state in the
U.S. in value of product (Iowa is second).  Except for a small amount
>from  the Colorado river, the water is supplied from within the state.

2. The Columbia River pours 180 million acre-feet per year into the
Pacific.  Doubtless there is some price at which Oregon and Washington
would let us have some of it.

3. The Mississippi pours 405 million acre-feet per year into the Gulf
of Mexico.

4. The North American Water Alliance proposed in 1964 involved
importing 250 million acre-feet per year from Canadian rivers for the
U.S. and Northern Mexico.

See http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/water.html for more
information.  It has a link to an article in _Consequences_.

-- 
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.



References: