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Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

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Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#51

Post by Faaak »

Solvency wrote: post #21
arcticbull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way - it mostly provides for dairy, which is an incredibly lossy operation. The "alfalfa in the desert" stuff you hear about isn't for salads. It's feed for cattle. A gallon of milk requires [edit](4-5 gallons excluding consumption for growing feed, ~800 gallons, contested, fully realized)[1, 2] and a pound of beef requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 gallons. [3] Beef is where the water goes, not Nest…

Do you realize that the US native buffalo population used to be as high as 30 to 60 million before we decimated them? 30 to 60. million. grazers. Roaming the countryside, eating and pooping and fertilizing our soil. Remember when the US had some of the most fertile, nutrient-rich soil in the entire world? Remember how perfectly balanced our ecosystem was before we ruined it? The issue is not ruminants. It's everythin…

there are ~90M cattle in the US, so more than before ?

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#52

Post by [deleted] »

phpisthebest wrote: post #47
arcticbull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way - it mostly provides for dairy, which is an incredibly lossy operation. The "alfalfa in the desert" stuff you hear about isn't for salads. It's feed for cattle. A gallon of milk requires [edit](4-5 gallons excluding consumption for growing feed, ~800 gallons, contested, fully realized)[1, 2] and a pound of beef requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 gallons. [3] Beef is where the water goes, not Nest…

now do almonds..... Which alot of people want to use as a replacement for things like Milk, or Flour....

[deleted]

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#53

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

arcticbull wrote: post #14
alan-hn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least farming feeds people rather than taking water from communities purely for profit

In a way - it mostly provides for dairy, which is an incredibly lossy operation. The "alfalfa in the desert" stuff you hear about isn't for salads. It's feed for cattle. A gallon of milk requires [edit](4-5 gallons excluding consumption for growing feed, ~800 gallons, contested, fully realized)[1, 2] and a pound of beef requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 gallons. [3] Beef is where the water goes, not Nest…

> The "alfalfa in the desert" stuff you hear about isn't for salads. It's feed for cattle.

Worse. It's feed for Chinese cattle in China. Alfalfa is shippable, and it gets shipped to the Chinese mainland. Economically speaking, alfalfa and water are pretty fungible, one's as good as the other, and they're buying it up subsidized by the US government to the detriment of American taxpayers. If we taxed alfalfa sold abroad to make the price reasonable, that nonsense would stop immediately.

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#54

Post by arcticbull »

phpisthebest wrote: post #47
arcticbull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way - it mostly provides for dairy, which is an incredibly lossy operation. The "alfalfa in the desert" stuff you hear about isn't for salads. It's feed for cattle. A gallon of milk requires [edit](4-5 gallons excluding consumption for growing feed, ~800 gallons, contested, fully realized)[1, 2] and a pound of beef requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 gallons. [3] Beef is where the water goes, not Nest…

now do almonds..... Which alot of people want to use as a replacement for things like Milk, or Flour....

Yes, almonds require a lot of water to grow also. Oat, soy and coconut require orders of magnitude less.

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#55

Post by darth_avocado »

Solvency wrote: post #21
arcticbull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way - it mostly provides for dairy, which is an incredibly lossy operation. The "alfalfa in the desert" stuff you hear about isn't for salads. It's feed for cattle. A gallon of milk requires [edit](4-5 gallons excluding consumption for growing feed, ~800 gallons, contested, fully realized)[1, 2] and a pound of beef requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 gallons. [3] Beef is where the water goes, not Nest…

Do you realize that the US native buffalo population used to be as high as 30 to 60 million before we decimated them? 30 to 60. million. grazers. Roaming the countryside, eating and pooping and fertilizing our soil. Remember when the US had some of the most fertile, nutrient-rich soil in the entire world? Remember how perfectly balanced our ecosystem was before we ruined it? The issue is not ruminants. It's everythin…

We eat about 40 million cows and 125 million pigs every year, and more than 8 Billion chicken. These are just the ones that are killed each year, the actual livestock inventory is much higher for cows, around 90 million cows. We absolutely will have to cut back production if we want to "sustainably" farm cattle.

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#56

Post by arcticbull »

zer00eyz wrote: post #50
arcticbull wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody died in Fukushima, except in a bungled evacuation of the surrounding area. Maybe one person in the fullness of time. Nuclear power is literally the safest power source in deaths per TWh - right between wind and solar. [1] We have safe nuclear power, so I'm pleased to inform you that your concern was mitigated, about 50 years ago. [edit] Also, I would point out the worst nuclear accident in history killed 4000…

Great, we're looking at deaths till the point of generation. 4.5 billion years, is the half life of uranium. Come back to me with stats then.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster We're going to be pouring money into that shit show for probably a 1000 years, and an exclusion zone for 20,000. So if you want to move next to Fukushima or Chernobyl you can preach safe nuclear from there, other wise stop the…

This really smacks of Brandolini's law, or the "bullshit asymmetry principle" where debunking claims takes much more effort than making them. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#58

Post by phpisthebest »

arcticbull wrote: post #54
phpisthebest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now do almonds..... Which alot of people want to use as a replacement for things like Milk, or Flour....

Yes, almonds require a lot of water to grow also. Oat, soy and coconut require orders of magnitude less.

"It takes a bonkers 1,611 US gallons (6,098 litres) to produce 1 litre of almond milk,” says the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Pete Hemingway." [1]

So that would be 6,000 gallons of water to make 1 Gallon of Almond Milk... that seems to be more than your 800 Gallon figure for cow milk....

Also you will take my Steak and Hamburger over my dead body... America will never, not in may life time, give up Beef, it is after all what is for dinner.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-almon...

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#59

Post by isk517 »

nwah1 wrote: post #2

With solar energy prices plummeting, it may make sense during peak production hours to use it to do desalination and/or extract water from the air, depending on where you are.

Cool, out of everything in Star Wars it turns out moisture farming was the thing that would make it to real life.

Re: Majority of America's underground water stores are drying up, study finds

#60

Post by arcticbull »

phpisthebest wrote: post #58
arcticbull wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, almonds require a lot of water to grow also. Oat, soy and coconut require orders of magnitude less.

"It takes a bonkers 1,611 US gallons (6,098 litres) to produce 1 litre of almond milk,” says the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Pete Hemingway." [1] So that would be 6,000 gallons of water to make 1 Gallon of Almond Milk... that seems to be more than your 800 Gallon figure for cow milk.... Also you will take my Steak and Hamburger over my dead body... America will never, not in may life time, give up Beef, it i…

Where did you get the idea I supported almond production for milk substitutes. I specifically cited other much lower water usage milk substitutes like oat and soy.

> Also you will take my Steak and Hamburger over my dead body... America will never, not in may life time, give up Beef, it is after all what is for dinner.

Also not relevant, but ok. I'll make a note of it.

Personally, I think meat should just be much more expensive, representing the actual consumption of resources in its production. That way we could just let the market sort it out.

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