What a joyous day it will be when we can tell the House of Saud and the rest to piss off

Not to mention the Canadians.

Hey, wait just one freakin' second there. We've still got 1/5 of fresh water on this planet, and if you play nice, we just might let you pipe some of it to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. But we get special rates at Luxor, front row seats at Spearmint Rhino, and you have to lighten up on all that anti-Canuck banter.

never.  let's not do that.  bad idea.

My uncle has a good idea about water though.   We have many rivers that dump water right into the ocean.. fresh water. He figures we should just buy up some single hull tankers, park them at the mouth of a river, and load them up.   Then when someone country is in drought Canada could just send over some surplus water.  I kind of like that idea...

Tankers, even supertankers, are too small. Take a dry nation like Saudi Arabia, for example. They need around 15-20 billion tons of fresh water per year, and the largest single-hulled supertankers only carry about a half-million tons.

Another idea was floated, about thirty years ago, to tow icebergs to the Middle East to use as a fresh water source. I guess it never amounted to much because engineers figured out how to desalinate water cheaper than shipping it all over the place. Still, at 100 million tons, an iceberg is equivalent to hundreds of tanker ships.

If we have many rivers that dump fresh water right into ocean, why not put huge pipes at mouths of those rivers and then pipe it to wherever we want to sell it? How would that be different in principle from filling tankers, which really wouldn't work for reasons zyx gives?

It's funny to see this this come up without reason in a solar power thread, because generally water problems are about solar power.  Agriculture is, of course, the oldest form of solar power, with the engines traditionally being horses.  Recently, demand for ethanol has doubled the price of corn.

The most economic solution to a lack of water is almost always to curtail irrigated agriculture in the area with a water shortage, and to increase it somewhere else.

The lowest cost solution to move water long distances is usually to take water from near (no not at) the mouth of the river and move it under the sea.  Since the density of fresh water is fairly close the same as that of salt water (much closer than fresh water and air), this minimizes pumping and pipeline costs, but these projects usually don't get built anyhow.

Or at least they haven't so far because they really haven't been absolutely necessary. That may change over next few years.

Apparently Turkey doesn't technically qualify as water rich as that final link asserts but it is still well positioned in water resources relative to its neighbors.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

The water at the mouth of a river is probably brackish.  

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Oh, then move those pipes ten miles upstream.

I thought of that too...but what happens if so much water is taken out that it makes ports at the mouth of the river unnavigable or destroys/disrupts animal habitats along the way?  

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Then you take less, or remove some of those pipes?

I dunno...but one thing is sure, since fresh water from rivers might not be exactly fresh, this might not be the soft option in any case.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

We've still got 1/5 of fresh water on this planet, and if you play nice, we just might let you pipe some of it to Los Angeles and Las Vegas

You can take that up with the people in Vegas; I don't care if they have water or not. Anyway, it won't make them like you any better.

Only thing that made people in Vegas like us any better were all those 5-loonie tips.

You might really like this church near my house. Except they think that asteroid will be called Jesus.

Unlike them I'm not looking forward to asteroid.

Critical distinction indeed.

dozens of sock puppet accounts on TnT and one of them could be Lou.

After years of yoga and strength training, I am finally able to shove my hand up my own ass than thus become my own sock puppet.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

And you were here long before me anyway. Actually, zyx should posit that after all your years of yoga and strength training, you manipulate me rather than vice versa. Actually, I get manipulated by Red Son.

I missed that part of my story in which I posited massive, highly secretive conspiracies...unless you think I already have dozens of sock puppet accounts on TnT and one of them could be Lou

No, I was responding to lou, not to you.

Your last sentence of comment 3 said, in response to Lou, "Unless you're with novy and wish to posit a massive, highly secretive conspiracy." Did you expect me not to notice?

For those others who don't follow such matters, I want to express my general appreciation for zyx's efforts to make my stories look heavily-commented upon, starting with story on London. He can be part of my massive, highly secretive conspiracy any time he likes.  

There was a story on London?

Notice how modest (and secretive) zyx can be. He belittles his 15 comments in "Greatest City On Earth" as if they didn't happen (some stories here don't get that many comments altogether), or as if he didn't notice story was about London, or as if he didn't notice I wrote it. I still remember his ringing and noble defense of Halifax (that I modded to 5.00) in face of rEv's Montreal-based onslaught with gratification.

He belittles his 15 comments in "Greatest City On Earth"...

Oh, that story. I had forgotten.

Focusing instead on his more recent efforts to make my stories look like centres of attention. He can't fool me: he likes me, in spite of himself. I feel like Sally Field, minus 15 years and all those bone problems.

I would hazard a guess and say that US power companies account for close to 100% of power  generation in the US...

Those companies are heavily regulated. In fact, they are forced to buy electricity from you if you have a means to generate some.

More importantly, why would a US power company not want to get into the solar energy business? You're comment is illogical.

Not at all.  While it's true that power companies need to buy back electricity from a consumer, this will probably only last as long as home grown electricity generation is costly and complicated (having solar panels on your roof can even effect your home insurance).  And while it's true that it's possible that for the time being this stuff might be beyond the scope of an average home owner, how long do you think it will be before this film can be bought at home depot?  Now, I'm feeling kind of optimistic today so say that if this stuff does work as advertised and if it does  become cheap enough where we see Norm installing it on This Old House, power companies will probably ask the legislature in each state to let them off the hook for paying for home generated power.

Or they could stifle it somehow...whichever is cheaper for them.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

The net-metering clause in Hawaii's power regulations states that it only applies so long as co-generation produces less than 1/10th of 1% of the system's capacity.  Cute, eh?

Cute indeed...like the old saying goes, "never come between a dog and its meat".

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

...this will probably only last as long as home grown electricity generation is costly and complicated...

What, and the laws will suddenly and miraculously change?

...if it does  become cheap enough where we see Norm installing it on This Old House, power companies will probably ask the legislature in each state to let them off the hook for paying for home generated power

Let me try to be a bit clearer: I was using the example of being forced to purchase off-grid power merely to illustrate the fact that energy companies cannot simply do whatever they feel like doing. The more important idea that I wanted you to keep in mind was contained in my question, "why would a US power company not want to get into the solar energy business?" If it's true that the capital costs of these new solar cells (which I should note are being marketed for industrial installations, not for household use) is comparable with constructing a coal plant, why wouldn't an electric company want to invest in a solar plant rather than a new coal plant? Unlike coal the cost of sunshine is constant, after all.

Utilities and other companies tend to think differently about which kind of plant they want.  Looking at some statistics from September:

Electricity Generation by Fuel, %, Sept 07
              US Total  US Utilities
Coal             47.8     59.8
Natural Gas      24.7     14.7
Nuclear          19.0     17.4
Oil               1.0      1.4
Hydro             4.1      6.4
Wood              0.91     0.08
Wind              0.74     0.17
Waste             0.40     0.05
Geothermal        0.35     0.04
Solar             0.0196   0.0005
Other Renewable   2.4      0.3
Other             0.32     0.02
Utilities strongly avoid alternative energy relative to other energy companies, with the only bright spot being a low reliance on natural gas.  A lot of this comes from the responsibility of a utility to assure that the system doesn't collapse, which gives them the responsibility to maintain reserve generating capacity.  They need power which they will know will be available at demand peaks.  If you're going to supply power from wind, you need a storage project (usually pumped storage hydroelectric) as well to assure that the power is available when you need it.  Where we've had deregulation, generally a non-utility wind power producer gets a free ride by not having to assure that the power is available when needed.

It's unclear how this effects solar energy, since solar energy output will peak during the summer peak demand times, but the very rare but worst electricity capacity crises usually occur in the winter as a combination blow with a natural gas pipeline capacity shortage.

The article actually claims that organic solar panels will be cost competitive "within 5 years", which is exactly the same thing I remember reading about them 3 years ago.  It makes no claims that they are cost-competitive now.

The majority of our current problems with electric supply stem from the freeze in coal sulfur emissions.  This made coal plants more expensive, causing power producers to turn to natural gas plants instead, which resulted in a shortage of natural gas and sharp spikes in natural gas prices.  In September 07, 24.7% of US electric power was produced from natural gas, up from  21.8% in Sept 06, and this is way above where it was about 5-10 years ago.

Our electricity policies do make oil availability significantly worse, chiefly through its use of natural gas, which in addition to competing directly with oil in the space heating market, can also be used quite easily to power vehicles.

With recently increased natural gas prices, coal is once again the low cost source of electric power, and don't expect any movement from this until we see greenhouse warming legislation.  Power companies are expecting this to come as a freeze as and then a gradual reduction, which will reward power companies for having CO2 emitting plants in place at the time it is passed with tradeable grandfathered emission permits, so the prospect of greenhouse warming legislation is actually a government incentive to emit more CO2 at the present time.

From looking at the current distribution of plants, it should be obvious that the preferred low-cost non-CO2-emitting power plant technology of power companies is nuclear power.  I would think that cellulose-waste burning plants ought to be even more profitable, especially if used to produce hydrogen as a byproduct for petroleum refining or the generation of gasoline from coal.  Wind power is very competitive now as well, but the best sites are mostly in northern Canada, and would require a long-distance power transfer network to be built.

For solar energy, at the present time it is clearly far cheaper to use concentrated solar energy to drive a heat engine to generate electricity than it is to use photovoltaics, and costs for will go down a lot farther with mass production, but despite this concentrated solar power seems to receive very little attention.

"Indeed, it is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings."

While the costs are comparable to constructing a coal plan for now, they most certainly will drop over time (did you know that a "cell phone" in the early 80s cost something like 4 grand?).  My question is this:  If a technology becomes so cheap that everyone can just slap it up on their home and produce something that used to be expensive, would a business invest tons of money to build a plant that will make a product that folks can get for free?

Now, I can give a tentative answer of yes if you need yards and yards of the stuff to create any appreciable amount of power.  If the installation requires a vast acreage of room, then it will probably remain outside of the scope of the small user and you are correct.  However, if it becomes cheap enough to slap on fat people (according to Steve), then I stand by what I meant originally that power companies will make a fuss over anything that could put them out of business.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

If a technology becomes so cheap that everyone can just slap it up on their home and produce something that used to be expensive, would a business invest tons of money to build a plant that will make a product that folks can get for free?

Mostly for 24x7x365 capacity. See my comment below for a link to an article that explains the type of technologies that are needed to store electricity. People who currently use off-grid solar get their nighttime/rainy-day power either from the grid (producing and selling excess during the day, then buying it back at night) or by using on-site storage in the form of batteries, which are quite expensive.

"Why would a US power company not want to get into the solar energy business?" Because they have common ownership with companies that mine coal or drill for natural gas?

"Those companies are heavily regulated." If only they were free to buy Congressmen and Senators like other energy companies...

Company comes from California, but only clients so far come from Europe, and they plan to open German factory next year. US has tons of brilliant people, but without clients or governmental assistance, they will end up somewhere else.

In a different discussion (about religion) when I claim that the human race is not doing a good job of managing the world and could use some divine assistance, you disagree and cite all the magnificent progress that human civilization has made.  When, in this discussion, I express my appreciation for the progress that the US has made in the field of solar power technology, you disagree and predict that it will all work out badly for the US.  So which is it, novy?  Are we doing well or are we doing badly?  Does the US have a happy future?  I actually doubt that it does, but nonetheless, this particular technological development is undoubtedly a good thing.  Even if it is ONLY used for the purpose of exporting it to other countries, the US needs more exports anyway, to alleviate its balance of trade deficit.  And I really see no reason why the new solar power technology will not eventually be used in the US as well as exported elsewhere.  There is no need to be pessimistic about that unless you just enjoy pessimism.  And you don't seem to, given your other comment about how well the human race is doing at the overall job of managing the world.

Human race has been doing great, and will probably continue to do great. Individual countries may do great and may fall behind.

Ever since US emerged as world-beating superpower, Americans have lost more and more of their original freedoms. When one country has too much power, people motivated by desire for power plot to subjugate that country and its people so they can use that country's power as they see fit. But to extent they succeed in appropriating power to their own ends, that power diminishes until dominating that country no longer has any special utility.

Britain once was superpower also, but no longer. For ordinary citizens of Britain, loss of superpower status has meant better life in most respects. When US loses superpower status, it will mean better life for Americans in most respects. European Union, China, India, Russia, and Brazil/Argentina cannot become superpowers fast enough for my tastes. Call that pessimism if you like, but it might be more accurate to call it wishful thinking.

You previously claimed that the US, having developed a superior form of solar power cell, will not benefit from this and will lose its technological advantage, which is a somewhat odd conclusion to draw from an actual technological advance.  This doesn't particularly have anything to do with the superpower status of the US which you are now discussing.  However, I will agree that being a superpower doesn't seem to be doing the US very much good.  If the US could stop trying to dominate global politics it could devote its resources to making the US a better country.  Solar power will help.

Solar power really would help, and I hope you get to use it.

Don't worry -- Al Gore has everyone buying "carbon credits" now, so I am sure there will be lots of money available for investment into solar power.