Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Colorado River is shrinking

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 258 posts

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#181

Post by simiones »

autokad wrote: post #59
01100011 wrote: post #43

The choice is pretty clear to me. We need a national water grid. Desalinization is great and a piece of the puzzle, but we need a way to distribute water across the country. It could also be leveraged as an energy storage device if we continue to add more reservoirs at various elevations. It's not going to be cheap or easy, but we'd be stupid not to start on it now. The climate changes, and we need to plan for it. Pl…

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.

Fusion will likely never happen (maintenance costs are simply untenable - any fusion plant would need to be rebuilt about once every 20 years because of structural issues caused by the high-energy radiation that escapes the reactor that makes any material porous and radioactive). The amount of energy required to water the country through desalination would be mind-boggling. Not to mention the impact on ocean ecosystems of dumping that much salt near the shore.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#182

Post by Integrape »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #116
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I want to visit the Maybel Syrup Dessert Farm

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#183

Post by allemagne »

krferriter wrote: post #41
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…

We grow crops in the desert because there is so much sun there that the crops grow faster and to a higher consistent quality, and because there is much fewer pests that damage the plants.

I appreciate the context here.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#184

Post by brewdad »

fooey wrote: post #32
User23 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Many of the old neighborhoods and a few remaining urban farms are flood irrigated in Phoenix. The small city park in my old neighborhood was also flooded once a week to keep the grass green all summer.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#185

Post by Mvhsz »

throwawayboise wrote: post #175
dv_dt wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change to “another crop” is like a farmer telling a software company built on Java to switch to a C++ stack because it’s just another language. There is crop specific knowledge that makes it not just planting something else. It’s also not just the knowledge and technology capital involved, like many startups here, it’s connection to markets that matter to produce income. Ag wise it’s not clear what other, lower water…

The more macro question is can enough alfalfa be grown elsewhere, in areas that don't need so much artifical irrigation, or is the Utah production required to meet demand?

Not a farmer, but alfalfa can be grown many places. I watched a gabe brown video where he mentioned growing it for cattle grazing in North Dakota, which is basically a cold desert. Presumably US farmers in wetter climates like the upper midwest and southeast are capable of growing more profitable crops than cattle feed.

Just one example: If we switched to electric cars and eliminated the need for the midwest to grow corn for ethanol, then a tremendous amount of farmland would open up. So you're right to ask the macro question, it's just that the answer is complicated.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#186

Post by dogman144 »

mdorazio wrote: post #125
dogman144 wrote: post #49

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..

It works just fine, but it's expensive and requires a lot of power as well as access to an ocean. You can read about the one that San Diego uses for something like 7% of total water needs here: https://www.carlsbaddesal.com/ and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...

thanks!

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#187

Post by dogman144 »

blooalien wrote: post #138
dogman144 wrote: post #49

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..

I've read about some pretty interesting recent developments in desalination and other water "cleaning" technologies lately, but they're all still "in the lab" as it were. Nothing of the newest and most amazing stuff I've read about has yet progressed to the point of being in any widespread use. As another reply mentions, existing technologies that are in use tend to be quite expensive (in terms of cost and power/reso…

my sense as well

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#188

Post by bluGill »

01100011 wrote: post #78
autokad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively?

No. The Colorado river is big. I mean really big. And we are using it all.

Sure the Mississippi has more than enough water, but the elevation of the source of the Mississippi (where you can walk across it) is a lot lower than most of the Colorado river. That means we need massive numbers of pumps to get that work to where it is needed. We can't afford that, either economically, or CO2.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#189

Post by dogman144 »

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.

Ya frozen chosen up there, spent some time as well but not for years. figure it'll get better though if climate all pans out as people are concerned about.

MSPL tech is (or used to: unclear if remote work will change this) appealing b/c of the corporate cluster around there, and the city's future despite last year seems ok as it's the main eastern urban hub for all the rural farming stretching west of it. I work with a lot of remote folks from MSPL, so seems like there is a tech community.

Chicago seems interesting, but as I understand it the state finances are upside down because of pensions and the like, and it's slowly reflecting in income taxes.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#190

Post by wott »

Diederich wrote: post #68
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…

"Coastal areas will be flooded due to increasing sea levels." I don't mean to nit pick, but clarification in this context is appropriate I think. For example, I live about 500 meters from the Pacific ocean, but my house is in absolutely no danger of flooding, because we're about 100 meters above sea level, and we are at the top of a rise. There's nothing 'above' us, so no rain flooding is possible. Many costal areas…

Cliffs get eaten by the ocean too. Depending on the type of material and other factors, the ocean may get closer to your home by several metres each decade. It has become a problem in several places in France, where they thought they were safe because they were not low and on the sand but high and on the rock, but they are not safe any more.
Post reply on HN