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I’ve returned after a week in southern Spain.
There were several million others there, drinking, showering, hosing gardens and watering Spain’s 60 million pigs, amongst many other water-based activities. but I still felt guilty after passing this ‘river’ and it’s tightly-packed, desperate, fish:
I couldn’t enjoy myself for thinking this is unsustainable and imagining the place like the image under the heading, in 10, 20, 30 years?
Will Scotland’s water supply turn out to be more valuable by far than our oil is, in years to come?
Anyhow, I’ve missed a lot in the last eight days and will return to my twin tasks of talking-up Scotland and dressing down BBC Scotland as soon as I can. I’ve been checking out the work of Wings and Indyref2, secretly, when my wife seemed to be asleep and I see they’ve been doing sterling work.
Talking-up Scotland 
water may well be our biggest resource after independence
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Welcome back!
Re Scotland’s water. They have their eyes on it already. Mr Boris Johnson some years ago was talking of canal schemes to bring water from places in the sticks to where the important people live. Probably to ensure that the rowing course at Eton Dorney is filled to the appropriate level.
The Scottish meeja, were of course going about their scaring business by talking of water shortages. There were, of course, some in a few areas. However, by an investment in infrastructure repairs to reduce leaks and by creating more up to date storage facilities and transport mechanisms in some parts of the country these things could be reasonably quickly and relatively quickly be remedied.
However, if the ‘power grab’ succeeds, do not bet against the spurious arguments for privatisation of Scottish Water appearing in the Herald, Scotsman, Courier, P&J and on the BBC and STV. The private sector ALWAYS does things more efficiently, doesn’t it?
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Yes and gives positions on the board!
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“I’ve been checking out the work of Wings and Indyref2, secretly, when my wife seemed to be asleep”
LOL. I know the feeling.
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Welcome home, John. If I was ever two minutes late (never mind a week) my dear, old Mither-in-law would have had me “o’er a dyke”! Glad to see you were in Spain and not in a field somewhere.
We have had a pretty decent summer, all things considered. But a couple of weeks ago, as soon as Jackie started supercilious yapping about “drought in Ayrshire”, the rains came. What was obvious even then as the BEEB assured us all, that BRITAIN ( us/we ) was having a scorcher, was that the jet stream tends to cut the UK in half, with us having cooler and wetter weather from the Atlantic, while in the south, they share the weather pattern driven from North Africa.
If the globe is warming (I believe it is ), then Scotland will become a very good place to be. Continental Europe, Scandinavia and England/Wales had weather verging on too hot. Scotland will do fine with a wee bit smirr.
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I have been thinking this for decades now. Two pipelines, one fron Loch Ness along the Moray coast and south through Aberdeenshire to the Tay and a second from Loch Tay to the Lothians terminating at Berwick. Scottish farmers protected from drought and the opportunity to sell water to England.
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I think they would suke us dry.
I also think we (as in the heads of all the Global powers – business and governments) need to think much much bigger.
There is not a shortage of land, much of it is desert. There is not a shortage of water, most of it is sea. If this could be turned round by means of changing sea water to unsalted, using renewable energy – could the desert be a forest again.
If we are prepared to do that, can we persuade the rainforest areas in the world to reverse deforestation.
Can we change our mindset of consuming more, more, more.
Anyway, I can dream, and the break through in new technology – tidal power – water – to H + O2, that you’ve told us about gives me hope.
Lang may our Lums reek.
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Prof Stephen Salter ( of nodding ducks fame, defeated by the nuclear industry who fiddled the costs ) in a paper many years ago, advised the Australian government that to alleviate the dry climate of Australia they could have platforms out at sea pumping sea water in a fine aerosol into the atmosphere. This water would lose its mineral content and make its way via prevailing winds over the Australian land mass—to fall as rain. It was to be powered by solar if I remember correctly.
Doesn’t matter. The Aussies didn’t give a xxxx.
But the concept is still presumably valid, and could be used wherever precipitation is required.
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