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The Colorado River is shrinking

sciencemag.org

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Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#31

Post by [deleted] »

SamBam wrote: post #13
giantg2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, let's ignore the simple solution - stop consuming so much water" I agree that it's a demand-side issue, but the solutions are not "simple".

Large federal grants/subsidies to stimulate farming in the Northern states, coupled with a progressive/tiered taxes on using more than [edit] xx million gallons of water in places like California and Colorado? ...I could see how the residents of those latter states would not be too happy with that solution, though. But it's not like the Federal Government isn't already constantly picking favorites for subsidies (see…

[deleted]

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#32

Post by fooey »

User23 wrote: post #24
fooey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Southern Utah, which is part of the Mojave Desert, the farmers still doing plain old flood irrigation. It's so staggeringly wasteful it's hard to understand

Are there good figures on how much of that water is “wasted” and how much ends up replenishing groundwater reservoirs? Utah isn’t that close to the Pacific so that water has a lot of opportunities to do something other than flow into the ocean.

I don't know any numbers, but we're over 100 all summer, so I imagine it mostly evaporates.

Flood irrigation here is just as bad as if they were doing it in Phoenix or Las Vegas

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#33

Post by giantg2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
giantg2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, let's ignore the simple solution - stop consuming so much water" I agree that it's a demand-side issue, but the solutions are not "simple".

There are no solutions. Those who can will use what they can, those who can't will be left high and dry. This is expected when supply rapidly declines when demand remains constant or increases over time. The watershed will change faster than human behavior and policy will adapt. There was already not enough water for the rights distributed in the 1922 Colorado River Compact [1]: > The delegates figured allocations on…

"There are no solutions."

There are solutions, but they are not simple. You could relocate the main users, like agriculture and industrial users, to areas that are not as arid. This would also cause some migration of individuals. I mean, that is the driver of the scarcity - building cities in the desert.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#34

Post by VLM »

downrightmike wrote: post #4
tomc1985 wrote: post #2

Maybe we need to look at cloud-seeding or other rainmaking solutions like the UAE is doing

It works, but it requires tons of precious metals to get to work and we could never recover the amount of water or even the metals themselves to make it efficient. Do-able, just going to cost money like no tomorrow. Literally the definition of throwing money at the problem. When you have a uber rich oil state with plenty of cash to burn, it'll work until they run out of cash or desire.

The UAE does not have a Mississippi river.

One side of the country is a desert unsuitable for growing crops, naturally stubborn Americans grow crops there anyway at staggering economic and environmental cost.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Mississippi, where I live, we get around three to four feet of rain per year for free, and corn grows pretty well most years without artificial irrigation.

It makes a lot more sense to move the farmers and their farms than to move the water or implement other hyper-high tech nonsense. The UAE of course has no choice so best of luck to them, but it probably won't work as well as simply moving the farms.

"We" do something similar with cows. In some states it costs 100000 gallons of irrigation water per pound of produced beef or whatever nonsense. In my state, we just call it rain water, and its free, LOL. Americans being Americans naturally we go to enormous expensive effort to make sure we grow cows where cows should not be grown, rather than simply moving the cows.

"We" also do something similar with humans. There's nothing special about a job done by humans in a desert, other than its an environmental, and eventually economic, disaster. Americans being Americans, we will spend everything we got and then some, to make sure that people can work from home in an uninhabitable unimaginably expensive desert rather than working from home in a nice easy place to live. We'll destroy the entire planet before we make people move from Vegas to Chicago. Which I guess says something about Chicago (LOL just kidding)

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#35

Post by jdavis703 »

giantg2 wrote: post #7
tomc1985 wrote: post #2

Maybe we need to look at cloud-seeding or other rainmaking solutions like the UAE is doing

If the goal is just for human use, then that might make sense. This article also includes the ecosystem. Increasing the rainfall in the region could alter the other aspects of the ecosystem. The real issue is on the demand side with ever increasing populations.

The issue is with ever increasing consumption. For water conservation a change in diet to move away from water intensive calories like almonds and beef could be replaced with less water intensive crops like poultry and peanuts.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#36

Post by ajross »

User23 wrote: post #24
fooey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Southern Utah, which is part of the Mojave Desert, the farmers still doing plain old flood irrigation. It's so staggeringly wasteful it's hard to understand

Are there good figures on how much of that water is “wasted” and how much ends up replenishing groundwater reservoirs? Utah isn’t that close to the Pacific so that water has a lot of opportunities to do something other than flow into the ocean.

Virtually all agricultural irrigation evaporates. It doesn't even run off into local streams (which you can verify by, heh, the lack of local streams in the Utah desert), much less seep into the ground.

Underground aquifers fill over decades and centuries, and in this environment, almost always laterally, not from seepage from rainfall. I think the demand for proof needs to go the other way, honestly. Presumptively this water is pretty clearly "wasted".

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#37

Post by 1270018080 »

ngngngng wrote: post #10

Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country. In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country…

The Salt Lake in Salt Lake City won't even exist in a few years. I think it's lost 50% of it's volume in the last 20 years.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#38

Post by toomuchtodo »

giantg2 wrote: post #33
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no solutions. Those who can will use what they can, those who can't will be left high and dry. This is expected when supply rapidly declines when demand remains constant or increases over time. The watershed will change faster than human behavior and policy will adapt. There was already not enough water for the rights distributed in the 1922 Colorado River Compact [1]: > The delegates figured allocations on…

"There are no solutions." There are solutions, but they are not simple. You could relocate the main users, like agriculture and industrial users, to areas that are not as arid. This would also cause some migration of individuals. I mean, that is the driver of the scarcity - building cities in the desert.

My apologies. "The solutions are untenable and no amount of realistic effort would enable their implementation." would've been a more accurate statement.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#39

Post by Koshkin »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #28
ngngngng wrote: post #10

Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country. In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country…

Expecting all the modern amenities of life while living in the desert is just pure arrogance. I seriously don't know why governments subsidize it.

Talk about sending people to Mars...

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#40

Post by giantg2 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #26
giantg2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, let's ignore the simple solution - stop consuming so much water" I agree that it's a demand-side issue, but the solutions are not "simple".

Some of them are. Like we could stop making how green your lawn is into some kind of class marker. The first step would be defanging whatever legal machinery HOA's use to ensure that you keep up with the Joneses re: how much water you can afford to waste.

That is something that people should look at, but Agriculture and industry are the main users.
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