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whats bad faith

as I previously said this is not the hill I want to die on

so if you find my questions not in good faith just dont interject anything in response to my posts

I have no problem with you disagreeing with me but you obviously have a big problem because we dont see eye to eye

so just look the other way when I post please feel free to believe what you want and I will do the same

There is nothing that someone could say in this thread to change your mind.
You're pretending to converse here, but it's not genuine.  
That's bad faith.

why do you feel the need to turn everything into politics take these thoughts to the proper thread please

What's political about what I posted?

There is no such thing as a "water shortage" at the planet level. The issue we have is droughts which cause a shortage of freshwater suitable for human consumption. But the Earth has plenty of water.


The answer to "why couldn't we change it" is that water vapor in the air is an effect, not a cause. We can't change the total amount of water on the planet. We could boil a bunch of it, turning it into vapor, but it would just rain right back down on us because we can't keep it in the atmosphere. It's a cycle.

first - this has been my argument.  There's no shortage of water.

second - why couldn't we store water underground or somewhere it wouldn't evaporate as quickly such as tanks, under the shade of solar panels, trees, tarps, ect?
If we can take water to the desert for large cities where it evaporates more quickly, why can't we take it elsewhere to slow evaporation?
Cloud seeding comes to mind

first - this has been my argument.  There's no shortage of water.

second - why couldn't we store water underground or somewhere it wouldn't evaporate as quickly such as tanks, under the shade of solar panels, trees, tarps, ect?
If we can take water to the desert for large cities where it evaporates more quickly, why can't we take it elsewhere to slow evaporation?
Cloud seeding comes to mind

Your second point is most intriguing. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I think there are two problems:

• The scale. A quick google search suggest the oceans contain 352 quintillion gallons of water. The idea that we could build water storage capability for any meaningful fraction of that is ludicrous. 
• Even if we could store that much water, I don't think it would matter. I think we'd end up lowering sea levels, but not changing water vapor levels in the air. The air's capacity to carry water vapor is IMHO the driving factor, not the total quantity of water exposed to air in the world. I.e. if we stored 10% of the earth's water, 35 quintillion gallons, I think it would just change the balance such that the amount of water that is maintained as vapor in the ear would be the same, it would just be a higher percentage of the total. 

Essentially the vapor comes from the surface. The water deep in the oceans isn't evaporating. So if you reduce total water by 10%, you still have [essentially] the same amount of surface water that can evaporate. 

Your second point is most intriguing. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I think there are two problems:

• The scale. A quick google search suggest the oceans contain 352 quintillion gallons of water. The idea that we could build water storage capability for any meaningful fraction of that is ludicrous.

similar to reducing CO2 emissions for any meaningful fraction any time soon

what if we could somehow cover 20% of the oceans?
seems insurmountable, but......

what if we could somehow cover 20% of the oceans?

I don't see how that could matter, at all.  The limiting factor is temperature (and some wind currents perhaps).  Water vapor is going to seek its level pretty quickly.

The other geophysical methods being considered would be plausibly feasible and useful, though unintended consequences could arise.

similar to reducing CO2 emissions for any meaningful fraction any time soon

what if we could somehow cover 20% of the oceans?
seems insurmountable, but......

Surface area is important for evaporation rate, of course. I was thinking about this after that post... I.e. put 5 gallons of water in a tall narrow pot, vs a short wide pot. Put a 1500W heating element in each pot. The wider one will evaporate more quickly. So I can see where your mind is going with this. 

However I don't think it's the same thing with the ocean. Nobody is boiling it. The key is more how much water vapor the air can hold, IMHO less than the rate of evaporation. 

So the question would be, if you cover 20% of the oceans, would the remaining 80% surface area just evaporate more quickly to compensate? Unless the oceans are currently evaporating at the maximum possible rate, I would think that the evaporation rates would be faster in the uncovered areas. Or that if it wasn't faster, that the system wouldn't still achieve stasis based on the carrying capacity of the air, just a little more slowly...

I'm not sure that I see any way that we could actually reduce the amount of water vapor in the air over any sustained period... 

But it's an interesting line of thought nonetheless.