Some of you might recall a few threads I made over the past year pertaining to water resources.

This one pertains to the situation in Nevada.

This one pertains to the situation in the Midwest.

Anyway, it turns out the situation across the United States is a lot more dire than originally thought. According to the BBC's report yesterday, the situation has escalated to one of the worst droughts in almost 20 years, with 55% of the country in "moderate to extreme drought." Given this fact, something definitely needs to be done. However, nobody's really presented a course of action yet. What do you guys think about it all?

Yeah... I'm in that one area of the country where it won't stop raining.

To be honest, it's just nature. I don't see how we're going to be able to change or help the situation when there's a drought going on.

>>2
Yeah, you're right we can't really change nature...

The good news is that the planet is about 75% water. The bad news is that most of that water is salt water, so machines need to be built to decontaminate it into something usable.

Unless we handle our economy, water resources are the least of our concerns.

In my opinion, our priorities are something like this:

1.) Economy
2.) Education
3.) Water Resources

>>4 I think it needs to be altered a tad:
1)Education
2)Common Sense
3)Economy
4)Water Resorces

Because what good will fixing the economy be if stupid people keep f!@king it up? lol

I heard it's because the jet stream has veered off of its usual course and possibly slowed a bit, which is causing the big heat dome, which is causing all the rest of it. Interestingly, I learned from a documentary I have that the same thing(at least the veering off course; I'm not sure about the slowing), combined with bad farming practices, pretty much caused the dust bowl.

But yeah, as has been said, nature will do what nature will do.

>>5 Economy has to come before education because the economy is mostly why education is suffering. If we get the economy fixed, education will follow because we won't have to sap their funding.

To all those throwing out the "nature card," I think you're missing the point, here. Drought = Lack of Water = Increased water prices, wildfires that cost money to put out, and less crop yield that drives food prices up. King, you pointed out the obvious solution to this (desalination/distillation) but glossed over it before moving on to a completely different topic (politics). I would like to veer this discussion back to water resources, if you don't mind.

I'm still of mind that we need to pipe seawater into the Mojave desert and create artificial distillation pods and other solar desalination projects. But it's also possible for coastal citizens to stockpile water that they desalinate in their own home. I want to keep that option on the table if I can.

>>8 Desalination is a energy costly and expensive process, which is why it's not redily being used, at the moment alternative decontamination processes are being reaserched. The Mojave desert sounds interesting, but with the land that it'd take up, I'd suggest that you'd be better off building solar farms and using that electricity to power the Desalination Plants while also powering the local community.

My personal thought experiment has lead me in a few directions, mostly focused on producing most of our food using aeroponic/hydroponic methods to drastically cut down the major water consumer on the planet (as you've pointed out, Agriculture). But my personal fav so far would be to use Plasma Gasification as our major desalinization and recycling method. Theoretically, it would devide the introduced substance (sea water) into a cloud of gas (rich in chemical elements, such as, and the major part would be H2) then the salt would be crystallized on the bottom of the reactor chamber, with petro-chemical waste turned into an oil rich goo. All of which could be then collected, then sold/used in any imaginable way. Best off, the hydrogen would then be able to be collected, shipped to where water and energy is needed, then burned as fuel, water being it's "exhaust" (it is rocket fuel after all). The heat produced within the reactor chamber is enough to power the reactor, along with a small town. It literally pays for it self in energy and chemical production alone, water being just a side product... which would be sold for an additional profit.

>>9 The thing is, Solar Farms and Solar Desalination Farms could easily take up the same amount of room. And the Mojave is massive enough to accommodate both. Plasma gasification could also be viable.

One possibility I've been experimenting with is the use of Oxidation reactions to superheat water. In fact, it seems that California Polytechnic also has that idea. So odds are it could be a common factor in our lifetime. The only downside is reliance on aluminum.

Where I live drought is normal, but what concerns me is that we've been getting above average rainfall. Today it poured. Which is quite unusual for South Texas in summer months.

>>11
water at the wrong places.

It's not that it's unusual, it's something that texas hasn't been seeing much of for the past several years. West Texas has been on the verge of burning down for the past many years. The rain is sorta kinda starting to come back.