Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

Re:Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water by PeterisP on Thursday January 18, 2018 @08:08AM (#16176780)

Water supplies implicitly mean freshwater supplies. Sea level rising can't help that (seawater is not usable directly, and for desalination plants the bottleneck is their capacity and power usage, not amount of seawater available) but it can make it worse e.g. if certain aquifers become saltwater.

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Re:Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water by mikro2nd on Thursday January 18, 2018 @09:35AM (#16177273)

And, since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal, desalination - it seems to me - is only aggravating the problem (climate change) over the long run.

Yes, we should probably power those plants from some renewable/sustainable source, but that's a different discussion for another day.

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Re:Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water by SideburnsOfDoom on Thursday January 18, 2018 @09:37AM (#16177292)

> since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal

It's sad and crazy that this is still not changing. SA is a very sunny country.

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