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posted by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the help-us dept.

Recognizing that global collaboration is imperative for solving the world's greatest challenges has been a powerful paradigm shift in recent years. This global focus is important to create impact at scale, and also helps when solving pressing challenges within our own local communities; sometimes the solution is right at our fingertips, and other times, the idea is budding across a distant border.

Launched at the Second Annual Exponential Impact Day on June 15th, the 2015 Singularity University Impact Challenge is a new impact competition in collaboration with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. The goal? To help alleviate the severe drought in California by leveraging new and exponentially growing technologies.

"Water is certainly one of our Global Grand Challenges," says Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, chief impact officer at Singularity University. "And if you look at our mission, it embodies what we want to do as an organization, which is to leverage exponential technology to solve a Global Grand Challenge. What better way to do that than to solve the biggest problem in California right now and one that is in our backyard?"

Golden Opportunity, Soylentils: What's your technological magic bullet solve a problem caused by generations of water policy failures?


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:17PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:17PM (#214840) Homepage
    Precisely what bit of the quoted material are you objecting to? The last big unit I'm familiar with budgeted 5 years for construction (after 5 years of planning and licensing).
    --
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:04AM (#215154)

    The San Onofre nuke plant was shut down after its operator (SoCal Edison) proved to be untrustworthy.
    You could call them "incompetent", but that would be letting them off easy--they are simply liars.

    The only remaining nukes in Cali are at Pacific Gas and Electric's Diablo Canyon facility.
    That is an ecological nightmare, sucking in tons of sea life every day and expelling it as dead biomass.
    The plant is build on an earthquake fault.
    Diablo Canyon is a disaster.

    The publicly-owned ("Socialist--gasp) Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has always said NO to nukes.
    DWP demonstrates again and again what lousy providers SCE and PG&E (profit-driven corps) are.

    Want to build a nuke in Cali?
    Start here:
    Pay 75 years of liability insurance up front (the way the USA Post Office has to pre-pay its retirement fund).
    Good luck finding an underwriter for that.
    ...and NO, you can't get federal help nor a waiver.

    The title of this page contains the word "ABUNDANCE".
    What Cali has in ABUNDANCE is SUNLIGHT.
    Once your collectors are in place, the energy is gratis.

    There are also plenty of mountain passes that have wind whipping through them.
    Capture that energy. (People on the receiving end of Santa Ana winds will thank you.)
    Again, after the turbines are up, the energy doesn't require railway cars or pipelines nor does it involve high-level waste (which USA has been producing with nukes since 1943--though we haven't yet figured out what to do with that).

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:15PM (#215611)

      The publicly-owned ("Socialist--gasp) Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has always said NO to nukes.

      The LADWP owns (and has owned since the beginning [latimes.com]) 5.7% [clui.org] of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station [wikipedia.org] to the west of Phoenix. Fortunately, the plant, like the coal-burning power plants that provide the bulk of the city's power, is well downwind of Los Angeles.

  • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:45AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:45AM (#215198)

    phil, how is that going to help them when they only have a year of water left before the shit really hits the fan?