Are these repurposed oil pipelines? Or dedicated fresh water pipelines built spe... | Hacker News

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		symplee on April 17, 2020 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Climate-Driven Megadrought Is Emerging in Western ... Are these repurposed oil pipelines? Or dedicated fresh water pipelines built specifically to replenish water supplies? I'd imagine as oil declines, the pipelines from the gulf might be able to send desalinated water back inland. Not sure how feasible this would be, thoughts?

readmodifywrite on April 17, 2020 [–]

The issue there is desalinating the water in an environmentally responsible way. It's hugely energy intensive.

symplee on April 17, 2020 | [–]

There have been some encouraging results recently. For example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22269115

In any case, the time frame we're talking about is 10-20 years from now. Lots of time for even more breakthroughs.

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