61–70 of 91 posts
Food shock =~ meat shock. 95% of our agriculture is dedicated to raising meat. Cutting meat production immediately relieves any and all water problems.
That's a really tall claim, and I don't believe we don't dedicate resources to grow wheat, rice, corn etc. Do you have sources for that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree, but it is still a scary prospect. Humans need water. We don't need gas, or oil, heck we can even survive without electricity. We can make do. But we die without water, and it is worrying to imagine a scenario where some people can no longer afford water because the price went up due to any number of factors. The price of a resource fluctuates for reasons not always related to the actual resources in…
The way I interpret that problem is that the pricing model itself is broken: it should be set up such at the cost of water increases the more water you use; if you are using a family's worth of water for drinking and cooking and showering, then you pay low rates, but if you are using an estate's worth of water then instead of just paying linearly more you should be forced to pay staggeringly more. Another way to mode…
Its much simpler to have one price per water source and pay citizens their share of the proceeds after costs.
Food shock =~ meat shock. 95% of our agriculture is dedicated to raising meat. Cutting meat production immediately relieves any and all water problems.
Yes, there is and should be a concern. The problem with predictions like this - e.g., "We need GMOs..." - is they presume we'll continue to be completely stupid. Yes, change is difficult. But it's not impossible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In economics what you are describing is typically referred to as a Negative Externality ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative ). It's hard to reframe these for the obvious reason that the parties involved directly in the transaction benefit from ignoring them (at least in the short term...)
I think it's what they call the tragedy of the commons. Wikipedia says an externality "imposes a negative effect on an unrelated third party". For example, pollution from a coal-fired power plant that pollutes the air of people living somewhere else.
yes, and i'd argue that is certainly the case here.
but the two are closely related.
http://ipeatunc.blogspot.com/2011/08/negative-externalities-...
i think the above is a bit over the top for my taste:
> Secondly, is it really clear that people in Bangladesh (say) have a rights claim to an climate environment that is not two or three degrees warmer than it is right now? How did they acquire this right?
... because yes, I'd say they do have that right, but the point about the expectations being tied to some kind of property rights [physical or fundamental] as a differentiating factor seems to be a strong one.
here they describe the tragedy of the commons as a specific sub category of negative externality (in direct contradiction to the preceding link):
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's what they call the tragedy of the commons. Wikipedia says an externality "imposes a negative effect on an unrelated third party". For example, pollution from a coal-fired power plant that pollutes the air of people living somewhere else.
> imposes a negative effect on an unrelated third party yes, and i'd argue that is certainly the case here. but the two are closely related. http://ipeatunc.blogspot.com/2011/08/negative-externalities-... i think the above is a bit over the top for my taste: > Secondly, is it really clear that people in Bangladesh (say) have a rights claim to an climate environment that is not two or three degrees warmer than it is r…
But is there such an externality in the use of water? Is there some side effect that doesn't involve the use of water itself? Isn't the tragedy, the depletion of the supply, the problem? That isn't external.
It is surprising to not see desalinization mentioned, here or in the article. Consider https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the... or https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534996/megascale-desalina... . I have no special knowledge of desalinization apart from a distant relative who has worked on such projects, but the absence of it in the discussion is notable given its recent prominence.
Not picking on you specifically, but I wish that the default hacker mindset, when it comes across a complicated subject that it thinks it has an easy answer for, would be, "what is it about this problem that I don't understand?"
Let's do a quick overview of what desalination would mean for one of the state's central valley agricultural counties. I picked San Joaquin county, because it's a large producer, but not the largest, and because all of the other problems it would have with desalination -- rate of consumption and the challenge of getting fresh water into the county -- put it roughly in the middle of the set. There are counties that produce more agriculture, and there are counties that would be harder to feed water to. We'll just go with San Joaquin for now.
San Joaquin county produces almonds, apples, apricots, blueberries, cherries, grapes, olives, peaches, pears, walnuts, "biomass", beans, corn, hay, rice, safflower, wheat, asparagus, cucumbers, melons, onions, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, and tomatoes. [1]
California is large and mountainous. To get water into San Joaquin county, you have to pump it 1300 feet uphill, twice (!), over a distance of nearly 50 miles, to get over the coastal range that lies between San Joaquin county and the San Mateo bay. I made a map with an elevation profile for you [2]. And that's taking a short, as-the-bird-flies route, and putting the desal plant into the bay, which I'm sure a few people would have something to say about.
San Joaquin county uses somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 million gallons per day of water. [3] Firm official numbers are hard to come by, because the nature of agricultural water consumption makes it difficult to measure and also because it's a political hot potato, but this appears to be a number that's somewhere within the range of plausible.
The billion-dollar, ultra-modern, newly-constructed Carlsbad desalination plant can produce around 50 million gallons per day of fresh water (and an equal amount of briney waste water) [4]. It would cost 10 billion dollars to reduce San Joaquin county's agricultural water draw by just 30% through desalination, and that doesn't include any of the expense or logistical challenges of actually getting the water into that county or dealing with the massive ecological problem the waste would create.
And that's just one county.
In one state.
That's why the people that are in charge of the state's water issues -- the most complex such in the world [5] -- don't take desal as a serious solution to the state's water problems.
I have no idea how you'd apply desal to a situation like Kansas.
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[1]: https://www.sjgov.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=25373 [pdf]
[2]: http://i.imgur.com/tD4hMYu.jpg
[3]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_uwTsIh... [pdf; original doesn't load]
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_desalination_plant
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desal can potentially alleviate drought in urban environments -- at a steep energy and environmental cost -- but is simply not in the running for producing food at a large scale. For example, ag in California alone consumes ~30 million acre-feet (MAF) a year [1]. The total installed desal capacity worldwide is around 35 MAF/yr [2]. [1] http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108 [2] https://www.researchgate.…
Desalination seems perfectly capable of creating enough fresh water for agriculture. Desal requires plenty of electricity but with a big investment into new nuclear power plants these demands could be easily met. Switching to irrigation with desal water will come at a cost but I don't think it will be dramatic in the developed world.
There's some irony in this, because one consequence is that a country's oldest (and hence least safe) reactors will be kept online for longer than planned.
Happily, desal can be powered by solar as well, and in fact this is one application that's OK to run just in the daytime, as the daytime's fresh water can be buffered overnight.
"thirsty grains like rice and wheat".. Yet again no mention of animal agriculture. How much water a day does a cow need Vs wheat?
But I can raise cattle on land that wont grow wheat. I say this as someone that grew up near the Idaho Rockies. The land is incredibly rocky, seemingly barren looking, and EXTREMELY plow unfriendly. But cattle graze without a problem. Now, as for the giant feed lots that you probably think all cattle are raised in, those are a thing. But so are open range cattle.
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_More_ fossil water may not be the solution we seek.
Explain?
Granted, though, if 100 centuries' worth of water is really extractable, this may be pushing the problem so far into the future that we can buy a lot of timer for better solutions.
Food shock =~ meat shock. 95% of our agriculture is dedicated to raising meat. Cutting meat production immediately relieves any and all water problems.
95% sounds over the top but it's certainly true that raising animals for human consumption is resource intensive. Yes, there is and should be a concern. The problem with predictions like this - e.g., "We need GMOs..." - is they presume we'll continue to be completely stupid. Yes, change is difficult. But it's not impossible.
