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Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

latimes.com

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Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#61

Post by odiroot »

beambot wrote: post #28

Quick Google stats: There are 13M households in California. Average household consumes 0.5-1.0 acre-feet of water per year. It costs $419 per acre-foot for desalination. California has a discretionary budget surplus of $49B. Thus: It would cost $2.7B-$5.4B per year to provide desalination-based water to all Californians. With the current budget surplus, we could provide 100% of California's living water needs for 10-…

> acre-feet

Being European, that's the weirdest unit of volume, I've ever seen.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#62

Post by bequanna »

idontwantthis wrote: post #42
d4mi3n wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak to Pheonix, but Las Vegas and the surrounding counties have a history of being very good about stewardship of their water supplies. There's a ton of documentaries on the topic if you go digging around the search engines or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3z_z0Wsk-I

What about the disappearance of Lake Mead?

This has to do with (bad) estimates being based on a particularly wet period that occurred around the time of original dam construction.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#63

Post by yellowapple »

dntrkv wrote: post #31
Victerius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state needs to start overruling the local NIMBYs and build the desal plants the rest of the state needs. And the regulators need to chill out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...

We don't need desal, we have plenty of water for people to live here. The vast majority of water goes to agriculture. If we were just a bit more selective in what we farmed, we could reduce our water usage by a significant amount.

> If we were just a bit more selective in what we farmed, we could reduce our water usage by a significant amount.

If California had spent the last 20 years (let alone 50) building out desal plants, we wouldn't need to be selective.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#65

Post by wildmanx »

noah_buddy wrote: post #57
wildmanx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the typical techie solution to environmental problems. We can solve this with tech! Wait until the aquifers under North America run dry. That's where most irrigation pump up their ground water from. A few dry rivers and smaller lakes are nothing compared to what's going to happen. Forget your desalination plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aquifers_in_the_United... And it's entirely predictable. In fact…

I would suggest you take a look at history, you would see that humanity’s story is one of exploiting resources till collapse

Which is exactly my point.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#66

Post by thehappypm »

29athrowaway wrote: post #39
burlesona wrote: post #6

California is next to the ocean, so if we really wanted to secure the water supply we have technological answers available. Nuclear desalination has been used at scale across the globe for decades, and it's not hard to imagine a less centralized solution powered by solar or wind. https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclea...

Or we could tell the vineyards we need water not wine. Wine makes substantial money for the state but it doesn't make sense if nobody can live in it. Or the almond guys, or other types of unsustainable agriculture in the state.

Vineyards aren’t particularly water intensive, are they? Compared to things like almonds and alfalfa

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#67

Post by pkaye »

Victerius wrote: post #41
dntrkv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need desal, we have plenty of water for people to live here. The vast majority of water goes to agriculture. If we were just a bit more selective in what we farmed, we could reduce our water usage by a significant amount.

"We have enough water, we just need to stop growing food and starve instead." I mean, yes, but no. We could cut on beef, I agree with that, but then the electorate will be enraged at their expensive steaks.

States with plenty of water could grow some of the crops.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#68

Post by BurningFrog »

s0rce wrote: post #49
beambot wrote: post #28

Quick Google stats: There are 13M households in California. Average household consumes 0.5-1.0 acre-feet of water per year. It costs $419 per acre-foot for desalination. California has a discretionary budget surplus of $49B. Thus: It would cost $2.7B-$5.4B per year to provide desalination-based water to all Californians. With the current budget surplus, we could provide 100% of California's living water needs for 10-…

I disagree that we should build desalination, even if we can "afford" it. There are agricultural users of water paying astronomically lower prices due to long standing water rights. It would almost certainly be cheaper to pay them to conserve (grow less of water-wasting crops, leave fields fallow, or upgrade to more efficient drip irrigation). The urban water use is around 20%, making them pay billions for this 20% m…

Yeah, buying out the current water right owners and moving towards market prices on water seems like the best way to handle this.

But that requires a government that can and wants to do things. I hope to be surprised, but I don't see California doing either of these things...

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#69

Post by jrd79 »

datavirtue wrote: post #44
jrd79 wrote: post #18

Modern technology makes it possible to build cities in arid environments, but it doesn't make it wise.

Modern tech also makes it possible to turn arid environments into forests. I would start there. When you do that water starts to collect/accumulate and the area gets cooler. On 99° days of unbearable heat and sun I can stroll under trees and be nice and cool in the 70°s. I do it all the time.

Do you have an example of this being done on a large scale? Sincere question. I've just never heard of it being done.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#70

Post by cgreerrun »

Collecting fog electrostatically is 2x more efficient than desalination. It works by ionizing the droplets in the air and collecting them on wire meshes: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aao5323. The technique also doesn't produce tons of salt waste that you have to dispose of.

It's a potential solution for towns/cities next to the ocean. Desalination is cheap enough already if we get desperate.

It won't be cost or technical feasibility that prevents us from solving the drought problem.

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