Can snow be exported?
dolphins4life:
Just curious
Could we export the snow Buffalo gets this weekend to drought-stricken countries?
Or could we put in the Mississippi River to help replenish it?
fyo:
No.
First off, let's dispel the notion of transporting snow. Snow is basically water with packing peanuts, making it take up 10x the amount of space. Snow also has an annoying habit of undergoing phase change, going from solid to liquid.
Fortunately, water is much easier to deal with, especially over significant distances, since it can be pumped and piped.
So can we pipe water to drought-stricken areas of the country? Yes, in theory, but there are two pretty much insurmountable problems: No one wants to let go of their water. And it's simply way too expensive.
Pipelines connecting the Mississippi River (now drought-strikken itself) and the Colorado have been trying to get off the ground for over a decade. The cost was originally estimated in the few tens of billions for even a small pipeline. Estimates of reasonably sized pipelines today are more like a 100 billion.
That's simply too much money for something our society is built on being essentially free. Sure, you pay money for water (average residential price of water in the US is about $6 per thousand gallons), but much of that is infrastructure and disposal, which would need to happen anyway.
Large-scale users of water (like farmers) pay something like a tenth of what you do and they consume *much* more water than you do (80% of California's water consumption is agriculture). To keep prices at that level, the water itself needs to be essentially free and that isn't happening if you need to pipe it half way across the country.
Spider-Dan:
The Great Lakes are the largest freshwater resource in the world.
If we wanted to ship water around the country with no regard to cost, we would do it from there.
Phishfan:
I really didn't expect a response.
Sunstroke:
Yes, you can export snow, and for a limited time only, you can also purchase wind for 50% off.
Act now, before supplies run out!!
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