Isn't Substack.com like the old "blogosphere" and hence like the old internet? There certainly are many quirky people publishing on Substack who are writing, creating and talking (via video and podcast) about anything and everything. I myself publish essays about the life lessons found in movies, and I'm creating a four-panel comic strip on Substack. Others are putting up original music, poetry, fiction etc. And of course there are many technical Substacks, covering economics, politics, research, etc. Many of these are large enough to have their own communities. Can't you get what you liked from "the old internet" on Substack?
Carl Sagan is endlessly quotable! Even though I write about movies, or specifically the life lessons in movies, I've found myself quoting Carl Sagan a number of times:
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”
—Carl Sagan
"Our passion for learning, evident in the behavior of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. […] What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. […] We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.”
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos, pgs 278-279.
"In order to comply with the desalination plan set out by the cabinet, 5 desalination plants were constructed over the years, in Ashkelon (2005), Palmachim (2007), Hadera (2009), Sorek (2013) and Ashdod (2015), with total production capabilities of some 585 million m3."
California is building desal plants, Look at the one built in Carlsbad, CA that went online in 2015.
The problem is price. From the wiki[1]:
> "The cost of water from the plant will be $100 to $200 more per acre-foot than recycled water (approximately 0.045 cents per gallon), $1,000 to $1,100 more than reservoir water (approx. 0.32 cents per gallon), but $100 to $200 less than importing water from outside the county. As of April 2015, San Diego County imported 90% of its water."
Considering SD imports so much water, this is a big win. But still, this one plant cost nearly $1b to complete, and only provides 7% of the potable water for San Diego County. It's a non-trivial cost to use Desal water vs recycling efforts and loss prevention from reservoirs.
Definitely. SD County should do this, and all the other California coastal cities. They benefit from being near the ocean, therefore transport costs are reduced making it a win over importing.
For inland california, this isn't the case since pumping costs don't make it so clear cut cost wise. Reclamation efforts like the OP company, are a really big deal because they are one of those rare "easy-wins".
If San Diego needed to then they probably could, but this is generally one of the most expensive options. It is politically impossible, but it would probably be cheaper to pump water from the Klamath to San Diego than to extract it via desalinization.
The wording of that quote is pathologically bad. I think it is trying to say saying potable desalinated water from the plant is 0.32 cents per gallon, and recycled is 0.045 cents per gallon.
It cites a hit piece from Fox News Radio with equally confusing numbers.
Anyway, the Fox article says it will cost $1000-1400 (or maybe $1500 because they inflate the number as they go) per acre foot. At $1500, that's 0.46 cents per gallon, which is about 10-15x more than people currently pay to flood irrigate fields. Flood irrigation is notoriously wasteful.
Anyway, tap water costs about 1 cent per gallon in San Jose. These desalination plants could affordably provide water for residential use.
I wonder why the cost is so high, is it mainly electricity?
Parts of California produce more solar power than can be used at that time during parts of the day - could that extra electricity be used for desalination?
There are also two documentaries about him worth seeing:
Steve Jobs: One Last Thing (2011)
"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again."
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2012)
“Expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those things in to what you are doing.” — Steve Jobs
And, if you need some encouragement or diversion about the joy and reward of learning and how it get help you achieve "flow" and happiness from your work, please read:
Some Advice On Happiness From A Few Good Movies
https://moviewise.substack.com/p/going-through-an-existentia...
