121–130 of 258 posts
Maybe we need to look at cloud-seeding or other rainmaking solutions like the UAE is doing
Sure, let's ignore the simple solution - stop consuming so much water - and jump to a high-tech, unknown impact, expensive, complex, expensive solution. What could go wrong?
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Chinese and other overseas investors own those US desert farms. They were attracted here by the massively generous water rights they get automagically. ref: https://grist.org/agriculture/u-s-southwest-already-parched-...
Damn I want a dessert farm
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.
No heavy metals or consumable materials needed?
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/fake-rain-the-uae-tha...
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seems like desalination parried with nuclear and solar power (because desalination is expensive electricity wise) is the solution. most of our problems comes down to energy, to which fusion power will one day solve. we just need some stop gaps.
Why would we desalinate water when there is water already desalinated by nature available for us? Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not against desalination, it just seems crazy to leverage it to supply all of our water shortfall. Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively?
Desalinating plus pumping water up to those places would be insanely expensive though. It's not economically feasible for the primary uses of fresh water (farming).
Does anyone have educated views on desalinization tech? That seems to be the few ways out of this that's totally within our control. I imagine we'll rob Peter to pay Paul with it via extincting a bunch fish we didn't mean to in desal turbines or something unexpected like that, but that aside..
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Definitely, but highly wasteful nonetheless. Easier to tell someone to stop growing their lawn than telling a farmer to stop growing their crops
Is it? Farming represents 3% of California's GDP, but 40% of the water. If California decided to simply sell that water to other states and then give the money to the farmers in exchange for not farming, the farmers would probably come out ahead. It's also a lot easier to enforce than making sure people don't grow lawns.
It might be easier to convince people to not grow lawns if we'd do away with some of the stupid laws and ordinances that require people to have "well groomed" lawns in places where such grass is an unnatural imported occurrence.
Perhaps even offer some tax breaks or other incentives to "zeroscape" or landscape their yards using native plant life suited to the climate. A yard without a lush verdant lawn need not be an ugly yard. It can still have plants and look nice without grass, if we'd "normalize" more nature/planet friendly practices instead of punishing people for not being destructive to their environment.
I bring this point up because here in Utah many neighborhoods will actually fine you if you don't have a lush green lawn in your yard. (Unless of course you're rich, then somehow you magically get approval to go the zeroscape route if you so desire.)
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> 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Of the remaining 18%, ~ 8% goes to commercial/industrial use ~ 10% goes to municipal residential use (outdoor: 6%, indoor: 4%) [1] [1] https://le.utah.gov/interim/2012/pdf/00002706.pdf
i.e. taking shorter showers ain't gonna cut it
Water usage in industry is massive. Individuals aren't to blame and shouldn't take any part of the burden. Similarily, CO2.
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…
So, whatever helps you sleep at night.
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.
It's better than what we usually do: destroy natural bio-diverse habitats along rivers and coasts and replace them with housing and strip malls.
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seems like desalination parried with nuclear and solar power (because desalination is expensive electricity wise) is the solution. most of our problems comes down to energy, to which fusion power will one day solve. we just need some stop gaps.
Why would we desalinate water when there is water already desalinated by nature available for us? Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not against desalination, it just seems crazy to leverage it to supply all of our water shortfall. Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively?