Water: Yes, it's everywhere.

Ever since us urbanites have been experiencing first-hand the harsh tragedies of the current drought for a long, arduous half hour every night through the 7:30 Report I’ve heard an idea spoken with more and more frequency: “water is too cheap.” The reasoning behind this is obviously that to raise the price of water will lower people’s wasteful consumption of it either by making them more consciously aware of this country’s long history of being a desert, or just by making it too expensive to continue wasting it. Either way this is surely a good cause, but is it being achieved in the right way? Maybe, but it would seem to me that the aim of any forward looking society would be: forever trying to reduce the cost of resources. Add to this the fact that we’re not talking about oil we’re talking about water, it’s everywhere. Not to mention that, as far as I know, we don’t even use it up! Water just gets cycled around. So shouldn’t we be focusing on trying to develop new technologies to extract/filter/purify those sources of water that are all in ridiculous abundance?

That's the only topic I got at the moment... sorry.

Haven't you noticed? Increasing the cost/tax of things is the answer to all our problems.

Your sarcasm detector had better be off the chart right now.

Trev basically said what I was gonna say.

Damn it Marc I was hoping you'd say "oooh a sarcasm detector! That's a real useful invention!"

Dang.

Trizender wrote:Your sarcasm detector had better be off the chart right now.

I had a sarcasm detector... but it exploded about 5 minutes after meeting you.

Every time the come up with a new tech for water, it gets poo hoo'd by one govt. agency or another- remember the de-salinization solution?

Yeah, too true. I remember de-sal, but what I remember more was the recycled water, which, in my opinion, would have done wonders for the water-cycle-thing but was poo-pooed by the same team that proposed the de-sal... Iemma was a bit of a nob-head, i thought, in respects to that thing.

The problem with recycled water is that the herds of ignorant/stupid/ignorant/arsehole/ignorant masses are scared of it. It uses far less power than desalinisation and costs less too.

Did I mention ignorant?

"I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work." -The wise Kent Brockman

Yeah, thanks for clearing that up Trev, I forgot to mention that people are fricken stupid and that's the reason the recycled water thingie never got under way as far as I know. Oh man, I had forgotten about it up until now. It makes me so mad to think that that unbelievably brilliant piece of machinery is going to waste— at least, in this country it is. Which brings me to another point that i'll keep in this thread 'cause it's kinda related: Don't you think Australia is really sucking ass in terms of funding the development of and/or the employment of new technologies; or so this is what I'm led to believe when I hear such things like Germany creates roughly 30%-50% (I really have no idea of the percentage) of its energy from renewables, and so on. So why do we suck so bad? Does it make anyone else madder than...than... a yak in heat?

You need to get a new writer.

Also, Germans are just superior humans.

Iemma IS a goddamn tit. Contrasting his speech with the Commissioner's at Jess' graduation, Iemma came across as a self-serving jerk; he just kept talking about how he promised 700 cops and by-god here they are, he repeated himself many times on the subject. Whereas the Commish just seemed genuinely proud of the graduating cops.

I love the Germans. I came across this following passage just recently in a book, as I was reading it of course. It's a little long, but then I guess you don't have to read it...

The author starts discussing the idea of such classes of questions as "Why is it, considering all the odds, am I alive?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?" During the discussion this paragraph particularly caught my attention:

Philosophy begins with wonder, said Aristotle, and it is this particular wonder, according to Schopenhauer, 'which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going'. Some have called it not a question but a disease, for which the Germans have the rumbling name 'Grübelsucht': moping melancholy mad.

What a culture.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1700516.htm
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20974008-601,00.html

Glenjamin wrote:Every time the come up with a new tech for water, it gets poo hoo'd by one govt. agency or another- remember the de-salinization solution?

and it's poo-poo Glen... you clod.

"This year's Australian federal budget was predictably light on support for science research and development, according to commentators who are pinning their hopes on next year's budget."
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/14/2244821.htm?site=science&topic=latest

How pertinent, and disappointing...

Update:

If people didn't already know (because I wasn't sure), desalination is on the go. Apparently it should be operational by 2009/2010.

http://www.waterforlife.nsw.gov.au/supply_and_security/desalination

But they halved the original size- now it will only be able to service around 15-20% of Sydney's yearly water needs. i'm sure i'll need a citation for that, but i remember the original talk being closer to half.

Ah, I see. That's gay then, if true.