on behalf of Canada: you may have Quebec. leave the rest of us alone.
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They said water, not poutine and maple syrup.
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they have lakes, too! i promise! just take it!
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The US could do it without an invasion. It would be cheaper just to purchase Manitoba.
There are just 1.2 million people in Manitoba. Offer each of them $100,000 in return for Manitoba joining the union. The resulting referendum would pass without any problems.
$120 Billion sounds like a lot, but compared to the cost of say the >$3 Trillion Iraq invasion and occupation - which resulted in no new territory for the US - itās a deal. Manitoba would provide a new area the size of Texas with farming in the south, oil in the south-west, large mines and lots of forestry in the north, and hydro-electricity that already powers part of the US grid. Thereās a whole lot of fresh water.
The US would get a major northern port in Churchill - the closest port to the European markets for just about all of the US - just as global warming opens it up year-round. It would have a better claim to the right to use the North-West Passage. Missile defenses could be placed further north - say, at the rocketry range near Churchill.
And since Manitoba would be part of the US, that $120 Billion would be dumped right back into the US economy. Thereād even be an even distribution - as a million Manitobans with $100,000 and American citizenship move to warmer climates. Just the thing the housing market needs.
Once this happens, other Canadians will want the same deal. With the precedent set and western Canada cut off from the east, you can pick up more provinces for a substantial discount - if the US wants to bother at all.
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butā¦but we like Manitoba.
you can have Quebec for free.
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OK, but only if you take Texas and Arizona. And North Carolina. And Arkansas. And ā¦ hmm. This may require some serious negotiation.
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i will gladly accept Arizona, and Florida, even. happy for the cheap baseball before the 100 degree weather sets in.
only because itās kind of related: any opinions on Cascadia?
Why donāt you tell me?
From the U.S. Geological Survey:
- It is estimated that some 30% of the world's irrigated areas suffer from salinity problems and remediation is seen to be very costly. - In 2002 there were about 12,500 desalination plants around the world in 120 countries. They produce some 14 million cubic meters/day of freshwater, which is less than 1% of total world consumption. - The most important users of desalinated water are in the Middle East, (mainly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain), which uses about 70% of worldwide capacity; and in North Africa (mainly Libya and Algeria), which uses about 6% of worldwide capacity. - Among industrialized countries, the United States is one of the most important users of desalinated water, especially in California and parts of Florida. The cost of desalination has kept desalination from being used more often.
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Wasnāt North Carolina the sane Carolina until recently?
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Yes, but barely - the bar on that is pretty low. South Carolina had Strom Thurman, but North Carolina kept re-electing Jesse Helms. (I grew up in NC, but escaped about 30 years ago. Helms really was one of the reasons I left as soon as I could.)
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Desalination costs about 3x more than getting water out of a lake and cleaning it. No one wants to desalinate water when you can just get it from a lake, even if you have to buy it from someone elseās lake at 2x the cost.
My point is that desalination tech is basically going to keep water prices from ever skyrocketing. You canāt have long-term water prices that are 5x higher than the current level if I can just build a de-sal plant. In a similar vein, the ability to make biofuel has basically placed an cap on the cost of a barrel of oil. Oil will never maintain a cost over $150/brrl, because at that cost biofuel starts becoming practical.
The first argument against both desalination and biofuel is that they require major investment in infrastructure and that they would only break even at the prices I mentioned. However, thanks to economy of scale and the steady march of progress you can be fairly certain that the prices would fall and the technology would rapidly mature. This isnāt science-fiction.
If you are worried about the electricity to run all of this desalination, realize that solar recently surpassed the ābreak even pointā. It is significantly cheaper in energy cost to make(from dirt to installation) a solar panel than that solar panel will produce in 25 years. That means that PV isnāt a vanity project anymore. It is also why you are seeing a steady rollout of large-scale PV farms.
!! Both of them? But you know, of course, that Florida Man Will Not Be Owned!
yer gettin a terrible deal hereā¦
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That may be true for people who live near a coastline thatās amenable to construction of a desalination plant (as well as handling the energy and construction costs, which you rightly point out as large), but thereās a whole mess of inland people who want water, too. And desalination isnāt PV, oil, or LNGāit comes with itās own set of environmental challenges. Itās not the silver bullet you appear to think it is.
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Yeah, but it is about 100x more feasible than invading Canada or one of the other insane sci-fi plots that seem to be popular in the āclimate sci-fiā genre. That was my original point. While water issues are a problem, imagining that we will actually invade Canada for access to Canadian water is insane. It just doesnāt make any damn sense. It is like suggesting that China will blow up the moon with a complex arsenal of weapon to cause the sky to black out to kill the crops of North America. It might be hypothetically feasible but it is so insane that even writing it down on paper seems stupid.
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The butter tarts man, the butter tarts!
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That is so well argued and logical that thereās no way weāre ever going to do it.
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I know. Thatās why as a Canadian I donāt feel at all treasonous for posting it.
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Iām vaguely a fan of Brian K. Vaughan. Glad itās coming out in one release. I canāt afford to keep up with Saga.
No, just the one that managed to stay off the national radar until lately. I mean in comparison to South Carolina, maybe a little? Those folks flew the Confederate flag over their capital up until painfully recently. NC just puts them on every spare bit of space on all the trucks.
The U.S. declines to take Quebec unless Canada takes Texas, Arizona, NC, and Arkansas.
As someone living in one of those states, please hurry. 
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