Nestle: Just as planned
edit: On the bright side, Solar Stills will probably work a lot faster in the future.
I know you are joking, but for people that don’t know: Solar Stills are total scams. They might work in a pinch as a survival tool, but for long term it’s a non starter.
They have many issues, for example in places that don’t have a lot of water and thus would be the most needed, they simply don’t work. If there isn’t a lot of water in the air, there isn’t any to extract. Even in perfect conditions these things produce very little water, in most conditions you’d be lucky to get a couple of drops. Second issue is the water isn’t clean, there is so much stuff floating in the air, you can’t drink the water that comes out without filtering / boiling first. If that step is required you might as well go with ground or surface water sources. And if there isn’t any ground or surface water sources, there won’t be any water in the air most likely. Third issue is you are creating a hot and humid environment, which is an excellent breeding ground for all sorts of nasties. Think legionnaires disease and all sort of other bacteria and fungi. Within days it becomes a serious health hazard. Last issue is the materials used are almost by definition cheap and exposed to hard uv a lot of the time. This makes them degrade quickly and fall apart. Leaving plastic waste and chemicals leaking into the water it produces, until it just falls apart.
There have been so many crowd funding campaigns for clean water from the air over the past decades. Maybe some of them are simply naive and well meaning, but almost all are plain old scams. Feeding off the desire of people to help other people, only to fill their own pockets.
And furthermore, the problem with access to clean water is capitalism. There is plenty of water available, we have the means to extract it from the ground, surface and sea. We can process it, clean it, recycle it. Use trucks or pipes to transport it to places that don’t have it. The only issue is, that costs money and the people living where the water is needed don’t have a lot of money. So bringing water to these places simply doesn’t generate a profit and thus doesn’t get done. It isn’t some kind of huge technical issue, there are many rich places in the desert that have plenty of water. Think oil states in the Middle East, or places in the US like Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico etc. Capitalism is the issue, not technology.
The Guardian also has an excellent article today on companies like Nestlé and Danone emptying out aquifers.
‘It’s not drought - it’s looting’: the Spanish villages where people are forced to buy back their own drinking water | Life and style | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/23/spanish-villages-people-forced-to-buy-back-own-drinking-water-drought-flood
40% huh? Where have I heard that percentage before…
Capital will literally destroy this planet in order to “profit” from cars and carnism.
Well, yes, but many regions that are going to have water supply issues aren’t near the animal ag farms. Closing a dairy farm in New Hampshire isn’t going to help things in central Africa. The bigger culprit is Climate Change bringing dry air flows to areas that previously had more humidity and precipitation.
To clarify what this user is referring to, Poore & Nemecek 2018 is a recent, widely cited meta-analysis covering over 1530 studies assessing the environmental impacts of food. It’s published in one of the world’s top academic journals – Science – and authored by Dr. Joseph Poore, the director of the University of Oxford’s food sustainability program, and Dr. Tomas Nemecek, an expert on agroecology and life cycle assessments from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
They somehow constantly appear like a spectre whenever this study gets brought up to try to spread FUD about it through vague and unsubstantiated nonsense. They do this because it’s extremely compelling, effectively unambiguous evidence that many animal products such as dairy are abysmal for the climate (“because it’s devastating to my case!”). I highly encourage anyone interested to read it for themselves. The article is paywalled, but Dr. Poore hosts it for free through their personal website, so you don’t have to take either of our words for it.
Edit: the paper they quote (but conspicuously don’t link to) below to try to refute this methodology is itself a meta-analysis of 369 LCA studies in the same vein as Poore & Nemecek. I can’t; my sides are in orbit. Edit 2: For anyone wanting to read it in full, Lancaster University hosts Clune, Crossin & Verghese 2015 legally and for free as well, so again, you don’t have to take either of our words for it.
First, it is often cited that LCA results should not be compared (Desjardins et al., 2012; Foster et al., 2006; McAuliffe et al., 2016; Röös et al., 2013) due to variation in methodology choices, functional units, as well as temporal and regional differences2. Second, no single comprehensive review was identified that adequately covers the breadth of fresh foods available to consumers and caterers. As Helle et al. (2013, p.12643) state ‘data availability and quality remain primary obstacles in diet-level environmental impact assessment’, while Pulkkinen et al. (2015) calls for the creation of a database that communicates data quality, uncertainty and variability to reliably differentiate between the GWP of food types. Previous studies have compiled LCA data to compare different foods (e.g. Audsley et al., 2009; Berners-Lee et al., 2012; Bradbear and Friel, 2011; de Vries and de Boer, 2010; Foster et al., 2006; Nijdam et al., 2012; Sonesson et al., 2010; Roy et al., 2009). While these are useful attempts, the identified studies are inadequate in the coverage of fresh foods available. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) attempt to inform consumers of the environmental impacts (carbon, water and ecological footprint) of specific foods, however they also fall short in breadth of items covered at present. The most comprehensive attempt at carbon footprint labelling was performed by Tesco (2012), however failed to label key categories such as fresh fish, pork, lamb or beef before finishing in 2012 due to the scale of the labelling scheme and a lack of participation from other retailers (Head et al., 2013). Third, studies that do compare results may often present singular figures. Peters et al. (2010) and Röös et al. (2011) argue that a range of impacts should be reported from LCA’s to better represent the variety of environmental impacts, as opposed to a singular figure. Finally, there is a lack of synthesised open access LCA data in the public domain available to consumers to inform decision-making.
it is not compelling, because the LCA references explicitly say that they cannot be combined with other LCA studies. poore-nemecek ignores this guidance and draws hyperbolic conclusions.
Dont worry, there will be a considerable drop in demand due to artificial circumstances. So I wouldn’t worry if you survive what is to come.
Also not an issue if you’re in the rich part of the world, or just one that has a lot of water. Fortunately I don’t think water is gonna be what makes Russia invade, don’t know what their supply looks like but I can’t imagine it’s not enough.
Russia has the largest freshwater lake by volume, Lake Baikal, so they aren’t likely to invade anyone because of their drinking water needs. Especially because Ukraine has been instrumental in reducing their need of fresh water.
It’s a big lake but a bigger country. I don’t think Russia will be the first to have big water issues. Rather, I would look to Mexico City, Panama, Arizona, Nevada, California.
But I need it to cool my AI powered rule 34 service.
I guess, “do not become addicted to water”
