What if Fresh Water was the new Oil?
 

If fresh water became as rich a commodity as Oil, how long would it take for Winnipeg to surpass Calgary and Edmonton in population? How long would it take for Brandon to surpass 100,000 people. How long would a Northern Manitoba city become the boom town that Fort McMurray was for the past 20 years?

Um, never. Water runs downhill. It comes from Alberta. Winnipeg/Manitoba would have nothing unique to offer.....

The majority of Lake Winnipeg water comes from the east through the Winnipeg River system.

Huh? Alberta still wins. Almost all the water comes from there and they don't have to pump it uphill to get it anywhere.

Riverman is sort of right. I just looked it up and the Winnipeg River is the biggest contributor to the inflow at 33% to Lake Winnipeg and it does come from the SE. Still most of Manitoba's water comes from SK, ON and ND including from the Saskatchewan, Churchill, Assiniboine, Qu'Appelle, Souris, Red and Winnipeg Rivers.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-Ma-rivers.png

I'm glad we've established, that one way or another, West, South and East water flow from multiple areas of the country and the United States all eventually ends up in Manitoba...Who knew..

Can't go wrong with investing in fresh water supplies, wherever they originate, it's like cemeteries, It will always be in demand.

Winnipeg River inflow is 49%, Sask River 25%. Bloodvein is a fairly large river too, so the majority of inflows come from the east.


http://www.gov.mb.ca/waterstewardshi...resolution.pdf

Although that was a snapshot form the early 2000's. It appears that it is more like 33% historically.

Dumbest shit I read

Interesting to postulate for sure. A few thoughts:

First off, *if* it happens: there would need to be a worldwide change in terms of what fresh water will do for say the energy industry vs what oil currently does, and also one must presume nothing else takes over (no other alternative energy form takes over) or that the major energy corporations headquartered in AB/SK don't purchase all the small guys in MB and still essentially run the energy sector from Calgary/Edmonton....plus oil is used in so many major supply chain processes in the world beyond use for commercial cars, planes, boats etc... and again water would need to somehow replace it on that global level...it will still be in enough demand that the energy corporations in AB & SK should be comfortable for decades to come, even in times of economic downturn

If anything is going to happen on that scale, it won't be for a very long time (unlikely in our life times, but I suppose one should never say never)



Second, why does it matter to see Winnipeg surpass Edmonton and Calgary in population?

I don't think Winnipeg will ever surpass Calgary or Edmonton in population in any of our lifetimes...It is in some ways close; they are all mid sized Canadian cities, but in other ways it is far behind (for example the recent CMA estimates for Calgary put it at closer to 2x the size of Winnipeg, than it is to the current size of Winnipeg) and if anything the gulf will keep growing larger, not smaller.

Further, look at current or recent trends - According to statsCAN, a relatively stable and growing Winnipeg CMA is losing people at a rate of -0.7% to interprovincial migration whereas Calgary and Edmonton are gaining CMA at +0.7% and +0.9% respectively despite their current historic troubled economies. Now, Calgary has been hit even harder since that study was done, but I don't see that changing on a larger scale for a prolonged period of time.

Winnipeg will continue to grow at a stable, healthy pace thanks to a diversified economy, and if anything is going to really give it some sort of "boom"like economy, I think it will be CentrePort....but even that will takes decades itself to become fully realized, and even then it won't be on oil-boom scale.

But lets say Calgary & Edmonton suddenly stop growing...CMA population estimates from 2015 were:
1,439,800 for Calgary
1,363,300 for Edmonton
793,400 for Winnipeg

I think Winnipeg is over 800k by now, for sure. Lets go with 800k for Winnipeg, 1.3 mil for Edmonton and 1.4 mil for Calgary. The city of Winnipeg shows about a 10k per year growth, give or take, for the Winnipeg CMA and pegs the population to be ~845k by 2020 (only a few years away). If we keep going with that rate, it means in 10 years, Winnipeg CMA would grow by 100k. So in 20 years, 200k. 30 years, 300k. Lets pretend Edmonton and Calgary stay completely stagnant at 1.3 and 1.4, it would take Winnipeg 40 years to hit 1.2 million CMA, 50 years to hit 1.3 million and 60 years to hit 1.4 million. Now this is under the assumption that Edmonton and Calgary don't grow & don't lose people under a hypothetical "water is the new oil" scenario, and that Winnipeg's growth is consistent at 10k per year and doesn't increase (who knows it could, and it will if growth rate stays consistent with population growth)

So given all of that, I don't think its gonna happen - at least not in our lifetimes. I will never say never because 100 years ago, people probably thought and said the same for Edmonton & Calgary which were tiny towns at the time Winnipeg was a booming city, and the third largest in Canada.

But what does it matter? Its cool to think about, but Winnipeg is a great size, it is already plenty big (though it would be nice if the airport was a bit bigger with more overseas connections) and it has an excellent arts scene...it shouldn't matter that its "smaller"...its already got the best NHL team there after all ;)

Anyway you slice it, Winnipeg will never boom from water. Water runs downhill, anyone uphill can pollute all they want.

Sad but true isn't it?

Sask. oil spill unlikely to make it to Manitoba
http://storage.winnipegsun.com/v1/dy...y=80&size=420x

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2016/07/2...it-to-manitoba

Regina is just bringing on line a very expensive, state of the art sewage treatment plant. My flushes go into the Wascana-Qu'Appelle-Assiniboine-Red and then Lake Winnipeg. The water we send you should start to get a lot better. This new plant removes the phosphorus which is the main nutrient for algae.

...you're welcome

If water was the new oil then the praires would not benefit much. One only has to fly over Lake Superior to understand why.

Greatly appreciated, every bit of the polluted water sent our way helps.

if water becomes the next oil we will need a military to defend our nation

^ Let's hope it doesn't then, but no worries, we have our big brother to the south to take care of us..

Trump says he won't do that anymore unless we pay.

What if oil was the new oil and people realized how important and inextricably linked with everyday life, products, and services it is and appreciated it for the increase it brings to the quality of our lives?

This should be taught in primary school. With all this anti-pipeline posturing it seems that people don't seem to know what oil does for society.

Trump will not get elected, so it's an irrelevant point.

This wouldn't be a Province vs Province thing. So stop all your 'we'll pollute your water' mumbo jumbo.

It would be Canada vs USA locally. Water would also be scooped up and shipped in large quantities, for profit, to areas of the world were water is scarce. People from both countries would be pumping Lake Superior water to plants for bottling, etc. There would need to be agreements on water use, which would of course be broken, around the world.

In the USA, places like California, Nevada, Arizona, etc, would be the first to dry up. Ocean water desalinization would become very popular, but expensive of course. Long water pipelines from great lakes would be posed just like all the oil pipelines.

This is where wars will break out when countries like Russia start exerting their pressure on surrounding countries.

Not talking tomorrow, but a couple hundred years from now when the population of Earth explodes even further. Food is scarce, same with water. Need water to grow crops for peoples foods. Snowball effect takes hold and the consumer society starts to crumble.

Water being the next great world commodity is real.

I couldn't agree more with Bomberjet.

Moreover, Once the carbon count reaches 450 ppm, natural feedbacks will kick in. (2C --- AVERAGE --- global temperature rise from 2008.) Simply put, the train will have left the station. (Presently, we're at 413 ppm and during the winter of '07-08, we were at 385 ppm.) We WILL blow by 500 ppm before we stop this juggernaut.

During the Industrial Revolution, our planet was at 275 ppm; things are picking up speed.

In the Western World, Latin America, Mexico and the Southern States will dry up. (Not to mention other locales within the Tropical/Subtropical regions worldwide.)

hmmm. It might take a year. A decade. Or ten. Or maybe a few centuries. Perhaps eons.

The population of the World is currently at 7.4 billion. Far too many people live in this World.

I am skeptical of most of these predictions. History is littered with what were once accepted demographic and climate predictions that were widely accepted and now look foolish. The populations of Europe and Japan are already falling and N. America is growing solely due to immigration. Birthrates are falling almost everywhere. Ag tech has meant that the food shortages predicted for decades have never materialized. In fact there are billions less hungry people now than there were a few decades ago.

I can remember when scientists were saying that another ice age was coming. They also said the Prairies was facing perennial droughts, the Antarctic ice cap would melt, polar bears would become extinct and we would have more hurricanes. So far the reverse has happened on all of these.

Edit: Also desalination tech has really progressed. There should be plenty of water for drinking at least. It may never be feasible for irrigation.

Never, unless our NDP/Liberal SJW twitches stop kicking in and getting in the way of success.

Don't you dare utter that dirty p-word!

Actually, we still produce more food than what we can consume on a global scale. We just do a really bad job of distributing our resources.

Of course, the smartest 'solution' to your hypothesis would be to wipe out Americans and Canadians because we consume and waste the most per capita.

We are wiping out species of animals at an alarming rate. The vast majority of the population does don have access to clean drinking water, health care, sanitation, and the freedom to say what they think.

Canadian middle class residents are considered in the top 1% when it comes to quality of life, and standard of living. It's only getting worse. We really do not have an accurate picture of how the world has changed over the last 25 years, until we start living in countries where close to the entire population lives in absolute poverty.

Just look at the Olympic Games in Rio as an example of the negative effects of overpopulation. Pollution, crime, lack of sanitary conditions, zika virus, etc.

You're correct with you're first paragraph, but that is not due to overpopulation, but corruption. As far as food production, if we replaced coffee with food crops, most central and south American countries could throw food away at the rate that we do. :rolleyes: I've done missionary work in Africa, Mexico, Cuba and Guatemala, and I can tell you, the so-called 1% are an absolute blight on the rest of the world.

Whoa!!!!
I'm ok with crapping on oil, the 1%, and overweight North Americans but lay off Coffee.

Its been a while but I have a vague recollection that food wastage in the developing world (including Russia in this) due to inadequate storage facilities and pests like rats led to far more spoilage (of the raw product) of food than the developed world. That North Americans waste far more finished or table ready food - I have no doubt.

Both issues are part of the problem, yes.

Yeah, human beings have nothing to do with pollution, deforestation, depletion of natural resources (especially water), invasive species, viral epidemics, and toxic levels of fecal matter in much of the bays and freshwater lakes in many countries. Not to mention the extinction of a significant proportion of the World's mammals. Have you seen what is going on in Europe? Millions of people from all over the World are migrating through Europe, trying to seek refuge. They are blocking highways, ripping open semi trailers, and throwing rocks at the drivers. How many of these people are Syrian refugees? 5%? 1%?

The influx of people we are seeing in Europe is a direct result of the population explosion, and the inability of Western Democracy to stop it, as the migrants, often from places where there is not even enough to eat most of the time, let alone jobs and housing, are coming in droves in search of a better life, even though these countries cannot absorb them, as it is a massive strain on their social services.

The UK left the European Union mainly due to this. Luckily we in North America have a huge Ocean separating us from the less fortunate. My worst fear is one country is going to elect a totalitarian regime that will make Hitler and the National Socialists look like saints. Would anyone on this forum have honestly predicted a decade ago that a massive percentage of Americans would support an incompetent, bigoted, and divisive man like Donald Trump? The 2016 US election looks like a better produced episode of the Jerry Springer show.

I ahve a sad feeling that some of the posters who are dismissing my points as ridiculous, have no idea about the history of North American/European nations. Maybe they are in denial. I can't ever recall the American voting public making a hate-filled nutcase, a serious contender for the Presidency. I mean there are riots in the streets along racial lines even worse than what went down in the 60s. And of course, none of this is due to overpopulation, or the strain on the World's resources. Americans must be doing it due to bad weather....:rant:

Really? It has nothing to do with the wars in the Middle East, and the aftermath of the power vacuum brought about with the toppling of Dictators? Events set in motion by the West?

Upwards of 20 million people in Europe were classified as displaced in 1945, in the aftermath of WW2. Many were resettled; and quite a few were resettled in North America. Including relatives of many people that post on this site. Perhaps you might also crack open those history books.

Much of the global population problem has already been solved. Globally births peaked in the late 1980's. Globally the fertility rate is now just a little over the replacement rate and is still falling. The population continues to grow because the people in their prime dying years (the elderly) did most of their dying in the early 20th century when they were young. The baby boomers and subsequent generations delayed their prime dying years until they were actually elderly. This has caused a one time blip in the population growth rates as births remained high but stable for the past 30 years while the number of deaths actually decreased, despite the rising population. This trend however, cannot go on forever because at the end of the day we are all mortal. Over the next couple of decades the number of people dying every year is going to increase dramatically putting the breaks on population growth. it seems likely that population growth will come to a stop sometime around the 2060's.

Water, unlike oil, is not destroyed in the process of using it. If water become expensive people will simply clean and reuse it. There will be no water wars.

Excellent post, Molson.

http://foodnetwork.sndimg.com/conten....sni18col.jpeg

That post was well thought out, and I present you with this image to show my appreciation.

That is only true in European countries.

Not sure if serious....

The population will continue to increase dramatically, since the vast majority of the increase is by developing nations in Africa, Middle East, India, South America, etc. What you speak of, can only be applied to a few countries in Europe and the Far East. In North America, the population will likely continue due to immigration rates.

One of the UN's population prediction scenarios see the world population beginning to fall by mid-century. I think this is realistic. Birthrates are below replacement in most big countries including Europe, the U.S., China, Brazil, Russia, Japan... Poor countries face either disaster (war/famine) or progress (which always means falling birthrates). For example, demographers are predicting Nigeria will have nearly a billion people by the end of the century. Not a chance.

The World population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, and 11.2 billion people by 2100. There is no reliable sources that predict the population will fall (I assume you mean decline) by 2050.

http://www.un.org/en/development/des...15-report.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...0-boom-africa/

You are basing your argument over things you predict will happen. How do you know that Nigeria will not reach one billion people by 2100?

Birthrates are still above replacement in the USA, China, and Brazil.

Birthrates have tended to actually increase in times of political instability, especially in developing countries. Since education and birth control policies are neglected, the birth rate tends to increase faster. This has been happening in Africa since World War 2.

As I said one of the UN's scenarios (lower end birthrate) predicts the peak mid century. All I am saying is that I subscribe to the low end scenario. You obviously do not.

Regarding Nigeria, I just can't see that kind of growth without an implosion

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/a...psf92yupgx.jpg

That graph only shows up to the year 2050. Historically, the World's population has leaned heavily towards to high-end projections.


http://static1.businessinsider.com/i...projection.png

Here is a graph of population projections, forecasting the population to the year 2100, where numerous reliable publications are projecting the population to hit 11.2 Billion.

Great Rebuttal. Now, how about you concentrate on forcing municipalities to merge to the inflate population statistics of your city (somewhere in Alberta...Quel Surprise), just so you can feel better about yourself.

Have you got a problem with Quebeckers?

This is untrue. China has been way below replacement level since the 1960s, and Brazil, for quite some time. As of the most recent figures available, the United States has also slipped below the replacement level. Perhaps you should eat more poutine, as it improves your ability to conduct research.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2127rank.html

More info on birthrates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

What is with Singapore? 0.81? Do they hate kids there, or are they just too busy making money?

How about we get back to the question you posed at the start of this thread?

How will the discussion on the worlds ever growing population, birthrates, developing countries roles, etc. effect water supplies, and thier relation to Oil in the future?

ok then....

You are imagining things, Molson. I love Quebec.

https://rvrentalscanada.files.wordpr...1/carnaval.jpg

I have attached this image of Bonhomme, as a peace offering.

Simple.

When given the choice between oil and water, people will always choose water. As 3rd world countires continue to grow, and engulf a higher percentage of the World's population, their citizens, most living in absolute poverty, will require fresh drinking water.

Now traditionally developed countries don't care about the poor, until it affects them in some way. This will happen through mass exodus from poor countries like we are seeing in Europe. It's only a matter of time before economies of the world collapse, and not wanting to die, a great percentage of Latin Americans will try everything to get into the UNited States. this will include:

-hiding on trains
-hiding in boats
-swimming or paddling on rafts across the Rio Grande
-hiding in vehicles that enter the USA
-crossing the border on foot
-hiding planes to take them to the USA

Sadly, this will put pressure on the resources that the United States has. Not thinking clearly, President Trump will spike the drinking water trying to rid southern US states of refugees. Only problem is, he realizes that now nobody in states like Texas, Florida, California, Arizona, etc. have water to drink. Trump will look north, and visit Manitoba.

Amazed by the abundance of fresh water, Trump will buy Manitoba, and divert fresh water to all US states via pipelines and other means. Other provinces will feel the effects of the fresh water boom, but it will be Manitoba that stands to see the economic boom of water increasing exponentially in price. Trump will also outlaw the NDP as a political party, and reverse the damage they have done on this province.

I have no doubt that the population of Manitoba will hit 2,000,000 people within 20 years. Winnipeg will eventually overtake Ottawa, Edmonton, and Calgary in population. Global warming will also create a Northwest passage, that will make Churchill and Thompson grow to 100,000 residents. Thompson will benefit from the demand of fresh water, while Churchill will become a major shipping port.

Winnipeg will hit 1,500,000 people.
Millions will become rich.
The Jets will win the Stanley Cup.

In a messed up way I'd want to see things happen that way because it would be so unexpected.

^^ that was an entertaining response...in a DreamScape kinda way..Humor helps us get through the day at times. Moving on..

I read somewhere that the US already had plans to reverse the Red River. Think it was a Newsweek article. As the Aquifer under Neb, Okla, Iowa, Kansas, is drained away that area, which grows that most important of all crops -Corn-will need water and lots. The article talked about Free Trade plans, also Invasion plans. As a poster said it all flows to us, one giant reservoir for the tapping! I don't see our region booming no matter how they acquire our water.