A new bid to place a measure on the ballot that would ask California voters to approve the state's secession from the U.S. has been cleared for signature gathering.
$1,000 to $3,000 per acre-foot of water produced, which can translate to about $2,000 to $3,500 per acre-foot for smaller-scale projects .
1 acre-foot of water = 325,851 gallons
At $2,000 per acre-foot, the cost per gallon is about $0.0061 per gallon. Its really a range between $0.005 to $0.01 per gallon.
Of course you can just move to a state that has water. Everyone knows you can just drink river water and lake water without any treatment at all. Plus the convenience of living near a swamp, river, lake or flood plane is superb. Otherwise you would need to carry the water somewhere else than where it is. But sure, you’re right, we shouldn’t desalinate water. That’s crazy!
Oooh oooh, now do one for the AI GPU farms. Now, a lot of people would argue these are not a comparable use of vital resources, what with water being critical for the survival of all life, and AI the current billionaire snake oil.
But I mean, what’s really more important than generating capital to grow the net worth of a few people by a few percents so that we can input text to generate pictures of a sick-ass panther or stories that lose the plot less than three sentences in?
A single ChatGPT query requires 500ml of water, or let’s say one water bottle. Meanwhile, a single cheeseburger requires 700 gallons of water or 5299 bottles.
The whole “AI is wasting all the water” argument is not as significant as it seems when you compare it to literally anything else we as humans do.
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the amount of power desalination uses. Didn’t even know AI consumes water.
edit: wait a minute–why the fuck does AI consume water???
Second edit: sorry, I got caught up in the original comment talking about the cost per minute for desalination, and immediately went to assuming they were talking about energy costs.
Nah man–I did the same thing, but turned all units into power consumption. Regardless, my point was that you can’t drink AI, and maybe prioritizing the usage of vital resources needs to be reassessed.
LOL, your edit is hilarious. It requires water for cooling. Even in a closed loop, it will have losses. I agree, though. Our prioritization of resources is so whack.
River water and lake water are potable with minimal input, whereas desalination is prohibitively expensive. Unless there’s a free energy source somehow, we’re better off drinking river water or small beer as our ancestors did.
Did you look at the numbers I researched for you? Those numbers give you water ready to drink. Once the water gets the salt removed, you can drink it. The desalination is basically cleaning the water. If you got a water filter at home, get some pH measuring test strips and measure the pH of the water from your tap and from the filter. You’ll find that there is a significant differences. It could be like two pH levels difference, and I think each level is one order of magnitude larger than the previous. So 100 times cleaner. Plus they get salt, which is a valuable byproduct.
FYI the pH of water is not a measurement of cleanliness, it is a measurement of the acidity-alkalinity. I am not sure if you were meaning that but it seems implied by your comment.
No, dude, I mean pH. The carbon in your filter will definitely alter the pH. PH is changed molecularly, so a filter for that must be chemical, electrical or both. Activated carbon is both. Plus all the gunk already trapped in it does like to react with the opposite charge.
This is fairly complicated stuff, its better to just give it a try.
It matters not. What matters is that desalination of water from the Californian coast is relatively cheap and the process is similar to that of acidity removal. Also removing materials that are not potable take a similar amount effort so desalination should be seen as a viable form of water source.
They got desalination plants.
They cost $1m/min to run
$1,000 to $3,000 per acre-foot of water produced, which can translate to about $2,000 to $3,500 per acre-foot for smaller-scale projects .
1 acre-foot of water = 325,851 gallons
At $2,000 per acre-foot, the cost per gallon is about $0.0061 per gallon. Its really a range between $0.005 to $0.01 per gallon.
Of course you can just move to a state that has water. Everyone knows you can just drink river water and lake water without any treatment at all. Plus the convenience of living near a swamp, river, lake or flood plane is superb. Otherwise you would need to carry the water somewhere else than where it is. But sure, you’re right, we shouldn’t desalinate water. That’s crazy!
Oooh oooh, now do one for the AI GPU farms. Now, a lot of people would argue these are not a comparable use of vital resources, what with water being critical for the survival of all life, and AI the current billionaire snake oil.
But I mean, what’s really more important than generating capital to grow the net worth of a few people by a few percents so that we can input text to generate pictures of a sick-ass panther or stories that lose the plot less than three sentences in?
A single ChatGPT query requires 500ml of water, or let’s say one water bottle. Meanwhile, a single cheeseburger requires 700 gallons of water or 5299 bottles.
The whole “AI is wasting all the water” argument is not as significant as it seems when you compare it to literally anything else we as humans do.
Electricity consumption, on the other hand…
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the amount of power desalination uses. Didn’t even know AI consumes water.
edit: wait a minute–why the fuck does AI consume water???
Second edit: sorry, I got caught up in the original comment talking about the cost per minute for desalination, and immediately went to assuming they were talking about energy costs.
Ah, my bad, lol. Im dumb. I was stuck on water consumption ig. I shouldnt wake up and Lemmy…
Nah man–I did the same thing, but turned all units into power consumption. Regardless, my point was that you can’t drink AI, and maybe prioritizing the usage of vital resources needs to be reassessed.
LOL, your edit is hilarious. It requires water for cooling. Even in a closed loop, it will have losses. I agree, though. Our prioritization of resources is so whack.
Acre-foot? Fuck me that is a cursed unit. Americans really will use anything other than the metric system
https://youtube.com/shorts/Iu-H5QkBk-Y
Its done like that by the water authorities so that nobody knows what the ever living fuck they’re talking about. So I agree with you on this.
River water and lake water are potable with minimal input, whereas desalination is prohibitively expensive. Unless there’s a free energy source somehow, we’re better off drinking river water or small beer as our ancestors did.
Free energy?
Are you seriously wondering if California gets enough sunlight?
Did you look at the numbers I researched for you? Those numbers give you water ready to drink. Once the water gets the salt removed, you can drink it. The desalination is basically cleaning the water. If you got a water filter at home, get some pH measuring test strips and measure the pH of the water from your tap and from the filter. You’ll find that there is a significant differences. It could be like two pH levels difference, and I think each level is one order of magnitude larger than the previous. So 100 times cleaner. Plus they get salt, which is a valuable byproduct.
FYI the pH of water is not a measurement of cleanliness, it is a measurement of the acidity-alkalinity. I am not sure if you were meaning that but it seems implied by your comment.
No, dude, I mean pH. The carbon in your filter will definitely alter the pH. PH is changed molecularly, so a filter for that must be chemical, electrical or both. Activated carbon is both. Plus all the gunk already trapped in it does like to react with the opposite charge.
This is fairly complicated stuff, its better to just give it a try.
What does it really matter if your water is slightly acidic or alkaline? Surely it largely depends on your local geology and source of water.
It matters not. What matters is that desalination of water from the Californian coast is relatively cheap and the process is similar to that of acidity removal. Also removing materials that are not potable take a similar amount effort so desalination should be seen as a viable form of water source.