The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor • Hacker News Board

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#371

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Aug 29, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

wudangmonk wrote: post #150

karaterobot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime thin…

I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no g…

"... you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points". Nicely done!

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#372

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Aug 29, 2022, 10:08 PM UTC

gsk22 wrote: post #309

nradov wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has a different option about equity when it comes to distribution of natural resources. It's highly subjective.

For other natural resources, sure. But without water humans _die_. That's not subjective.

People die without water to drink. Nobody dies without water to grow artichokes.

As a bonus, not using all that water to grow artichokes leaves more water for people to drink.

So, yeah. Like samatman said, "Let's try making it efficient first, and then see if we need to add equity."

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#373

Post by Bud » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #367

TheRealPomax wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale is not about money alone. Building one of them: entirely doable. And can be started on today, let's go! But we don't need one, we'd need 10+ of them just for California alone, and there is literally no way to perform all the environmental impact studies necessary to determine that building 10+ desalination plants along the coast all at the same time wouldn't just make the problem exponentially worse. You know w…

Ten is a tiny number and you can do an analysis of similar quality to a smaller setup. I really don't understand your argument here. If you put the pipes far out then that's so so so much ocean involved to get a river's worth of water. The right design could even reduce the salinity near shore as runoff increases (or trivially counteract that, of course).

Have you done ten seconds of research about this yet? You should find time for that. Would clear up a lot of things for you.

Short version: we are far, far too late to start building infrastructure now and make up for a Colorado River's worth of water, and desalination tech right now uses a LOT of energy. Which exacerbates all the climate issues that are causing this to begin with.

Were you asleep for the last 40 years while this was all being discussed?

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#374

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:46 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #355

dredmorbius wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resurrect NAWPA, GRAND, and GCNA!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_D... >

I suspect there should be some open discussion about things akin to these, if not them exactly. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of our issues are caused by the older projects having been incredibly massive in scope and daring, and now refusing to consider similar projects with what we have and know now. For example, I'm not sure we'd even consider let alone build the Oroville or Hoover dam today. That may be a…

Starting by studying closely why the original proposals ultimately became Instant Hot Steaming Death might be a good starting point.

The proposals are not politically popular / are highly politically divisive.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#375

Post by kortilla » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

juve1996 wrote: post #347

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not understand that this thought experiment reduced residential usage to ZERO ?

So split it in half. Imagine living in a world where we say "it's pointless! don't do anything, it's all out of your control." That's what we always say. Imagine saying to someone losing weight "don't bother, losing 2 lbs this week is meaningless when you're 100 overweight." Defeatist ideology. I get it, you want to be "right" while the problems continue. A classic problem with engineers - think of everyway it is mea…

> Imagine saying to someone losing weight "don't bother, losing 2 lbs this week is meaningless when you're 100 overweight."

You’re not gripping the math here. The correct analogy is, someone is obese and is constantly gaining weight. They are running a 1000 calorie surplus and 100 calories of that comes from breakfast. You’re sitting here arguing about taking 20-30 calories away from breakfast because that’s the only meal you help prepare. It’s nearly completely worthless, doesn’t address the fundamental problem, and you’re convinced it will “help”.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#376

Post by kortilla » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #284

kortilla wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water. What’s difficult to understand? Why should society be subsidizing these senior water rights holders? Nobody is saying they can’t access water, they should just fucking pay for it the same way the rest of the world does.

Society isn't paying subsidies to water rights holders. Water rights are property rights. Legally they can't just be taken away. You can complain that it shouldn't be that way, but that is the legal reality.

> Legally they can't just be taken away. You can complain that it shouldn't be that way, but that is the legal reality.

The constitution can just be changed. They are not inalienable

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#377

Post by kortilla » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 6:00 AM UTC

shlurpy wrote: post #120

kortilla wrote: post #107

Typical stupid California government response. Rather than charge the market rate for water we’ll come up with elaborate Orwellian schemes to have people get visibly shamed and have to visibly cutback to comply. Meanwhile this reduces total state water usage by maybe 0.5% while industrial and agricultural use hums along each consuming far more than all of residential combined. This is banning restaurants from handing…

Water is a necessity. Making it unaffordable literally is a death sentence. Those who would mass murder poor people rather then have a yellow lawn are morally reprehensible.

Forest for the trees my friend, forest for the trees.

If every water user paid market rate, including industrial and agriculture, the residential rate would likely be lower than what it is right now.

You fell into the same classism distraction trap designed to cause residential users to go at each other’s throats rather than address the whale users.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#378

Post by kortilla » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 6:05 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #303

s0rce wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean, what cities in the desert near the central valley? Reno, Lancaster?

I'm not sure "cities in the desert" the GGP was meaning. Typically this means places like Phoenix, but that's not in California.

All of socal is a desert. So Bakersfield, San Bernardino, etc. pulling from the Colorado river.

Sacramento, Fresno, etc pulling from the Sierras.

Heat has little relevance here, so LA is just as bad as PHX for residential water consumption (excluding lawns).

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#379

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 8:24 AM UTC

Bud wrote: post #373

Dylan16807 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten is a tiny number and you can do an analysis of similar quality to a smaller setup. I really don't understand your argument here. If you put the pipes far out then that's so so so much ocean involved to get a river's worth of water. The right design could even reduce the salinity near shore as runoff increases (or trivially counteract that, of course).

Have you done ten seconds of research about this yet? You should find time for that. Would clear up a lot of things for you. Short version: we are far, far too late to start building infrastructure now and make up for a Colorado River's worth of water, and desalination tech right now uses a LOT of energy. Which exacerbates all the climate issues that are causing this to begin with. Were you asleep for the last 40 yea…

> Have you done ten seconds of research about this yet? You should find time for that. Would clear up a lot of things for you.

Point me to whatever source you think supports your argument that it can't be done.

> Short version: we are far, far too late to start building infrastructure now and make up for a Colorado River's worth of water,

We're going to need water forever. It's never too late.

> and desalination tech right now uses a LOT of energy. Which exacerbates all the climate issues that are causing this to begin with.

So build power plants that don't release carbon. If you want to get really particular, sell the water at a price that lets you build 2x as many power plants as you need, so even after considering construction costs you're reducing the net CO2 output.

But also, what are you talking about when you say it's not solvable or buildable? Adding 50% more water to the residential supply would be 3 million acre-feet, which would take 15-30 terawatt hours of power each year. California already uses 260TWh. That's very obviously feasible.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#380

Post by juve1996 » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #375

juve1996 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So split it in half. Imagine living in a world where we say "it's pointless! don't do anything, it's all out of your control." That's what we always say. Imagine saying to someone losing weight "don't bother, losing 2 lbs this week is meaningless when you're 100 overweight." Defeatist ideology. I get it, you want to be "right" while the problems continue. A classic problem with engineers - think of everyway it is mea…

> Imagine saying to someone losing weight "don't bother, losing 2 lbs this week is meaningless when you're 100 overweight." You’re not gripping the math here. The correct analogy is, someone is obese and is constantly gaining weight. They are running a 1000 calorie surplus and 100 calories of that comes from breakfast. You’re sitting here arguing about taking 20-30 calories away from breakfast because that’s the only…

You're not gripping reality here. It always helps. Using less water means we have water for longer.

Running at a deficit of 10% vs 5% would make an enormous difference. It would extend the water we have now as we identify ways to mitigate the problem. If it's wasted water it's wasted water. That "slight difference" could be 20 extra years. A drought could end in that time frame.

That 100 calories saved could mean 20 lbs, the difference between getting a back surgery or not because it's too dangerous at weights above X (this is real, btw.) It matters. Even if it doesn't seem like it to you.