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The Colorado River is shrinking

sciencemag.org

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Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#81

Post by cmrdporcupine »

wombatpm wrote: post #74
dogman144 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not silly. I'm sitting in a coastal tech city but with a remote job for cultural reasons, and looking at what's next after this lease and long term. I'm not sure how I want to balance the pragmatism I can execute on with this mobility to move to somewhere tolerable in the midwest (MN comes to mind), vs. a common nihilistic trend that warming will affect everyone*, might as well live where I want to live (not MN…

Having lived in MN I would point out that 90% of Canadians live south of the Twin Cities.

Yes, most of us cluster in a latitude about parallel with northern California or southern Oregon.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#82

Post by kortilla »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #19
avgDev wrote: post #6

I know this may be silly but one reason why I stay in the "Great lakes states" and own property here is because of global warming and my lack of hope that tech/governments/capitalism will solve it before we reach a point of no return during which we will experience massive property and life loss in the US. Only then significant change will occur IMO. There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered b…

I don't think it's silly, it's honestly why my wife and I keep deciding to keep our family here in Ontario despite the rest of my family being out west. We keep talking about moving to British Columbia for lifestyle and social reasons (skiing, family, scenery, politics etc.) but every time I go out west to visit family in Alberta & BC there's forest fires, talk of drought, shrinking glaciers (that supply all drinking…

> and yeah, amazing you're getting downvoted. I've been downvoted here for expressing the same sentiment before.

Because it’s an irrational prioritization. It’s like refusing to move to a new location for your dream job because the cost of milk is a little higher.

People like yourself and OP tend to struggle with this because it’s hard to imagine water not being an unlimited free resource. Once you think of it like food or any other utility, you’ll realize there is a always a price point where you can get it and it’s just one of another many costs you analyze in a place.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#83

Post by briga »

dleslie wrote: post #61
briga wrote: post #29

Just like we fight deforestation by planting trees maybe we should fight drought by re-watering our land. It's a massive logistical problem, to be sure, but it seems like humans already have a pretty good handle on draining water from the land. They could start by banning lawns and golf courses in the desert. No reason someone living in Phoenix needs a verdant green lawn. Maybe place some limits on unsustainable agri…

The lawns and golf courses are a small fraction of use compared to farming.

Definitely, but highly wasteful nonetheless. Easier to tell someone to stop growing their lawn than telling a farmer to stop growing their crops

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#84

Post by giantg2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
giantg2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It's hard to call something untenable if the alternative is failed agriculture, unsustainable industry, and people being rationed water. The federal government could eminent domain water rights in the region and exert controls that would force out / buy out the largest users and influence population migrations.

It might not be palatable, but it will look better the worse things get.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#85

Post by cmrdporcupine »

dleslie wrote: post #63
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really three different ecozones we're talking about here. Coastal, interior, and northern. Yes, there's lots of rain along the coast, but that doesn't help the interior. And it's pretty damned hard to build the infrastructure for rain storage on the scale we're talking about. That said, the recent heat wave hit the coast pretty badly, too.

The southern interior hosts a desert; definitely not a lot of rain there. ;) We're building rain storage right now, in the form of Site C.

Wouldn't you say Site C more of a glacial-melt supplied reservoir?

EDIT: It's a dam built on the Peace, which is out of the Rockies, on the other side from most of BC. And a long way from anywhere in B.C. that will be requiring drinking water or irrigation really. The farm land that would be irrigated I would imagine would be primarily on the Alberta side.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#86

Post by cmrdporcupine »

kortilla wrote: post #82
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's silly, it's honestly why my wife and I keep deciding to keep our family here in Ontario despite the rest of my family being out west. We keep talking about moving to British Columbia for lifestyle and social reasons (skiing, family, scenery, politics etc.) but every time I go out west to visit family in Alberta & BC there's forest fires, talk of drought, shrinking glaciers (that supply all drinking…

> and yeah, amazing you're getting downvoted. I've been downvoted here for expressing the same sentiment before. Because it’s an irrational prioritization. It’s like refusing to move to a new location for your dream job because the cost of milk is a little higher. People like yourself and OP tend to struggle with this because it’s hard to imagine water not being an unlimited free resource. Once you think of it like f…

Holy crap you're arrogant.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#87

Post by tfigment »

D13Fd wrote: post #56
ajross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think the question is how much less water would be used with a modern irrigation system rather than flood irrigation.

Ostensibly you could grow hydroponically and have very little waste but order of magnitude cost increase in power needs. Every other solution falls in between I guess.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#88

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

D13Fd wrote: post #70
jb775 wrote: post #44

This reminds me of how the glaciers were supposed to be gone by 2020[1]. [1] https://lidblog.com/national-park-service-glaciers/

Are you saying the aquifers aren't actually drying up? That Lake Mead and Lake Powell aren't actually at historic lows? This is talking about the facts on the ground today, not some projection of the future.

He's citing a source that's less reliable because it is compulsively agenda-driven - that is, a site that chooses it's conclusion first and then seeks out info appears to support it.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#89

Post by treis »

kylecordes wrote: post #55
JohnWhigham wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are right... but if I understood the above, it's not the modern amenities using up the bulk of the water, it's the agriculture.

Because people don't really "use" water. When you flush the toilet or take a shower the water doesn't get destroyed. The vast majority of it gets treated and put back into the river.

The water used in agriculture will mostly evaporate or become part of the plant. Little of it will make it back to the source.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#90

Post by downismorefun »

jb775 wrote: post #44

This reminds me of how the glaciers were supposed to be gone by 2020[1]. [1] https://lidblog.com/national-park-service-glaciers/

Across the board reductions in glacier size looks pretty grim to me https://www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/retreat-glaciers...
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