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

thehill.com

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

#61

Post by scythe »

mjhay wrote: post #18
freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #11

Article mentions California a lot. There is absolutely zero reason that California's cities cannot be fed with nuclear heated desalinated seawater or heck, traditionally desalinated sea water. The only thing holding back this engineering solution are NIMBYs, naive greenies, and mountains of legal paperwork. Water doesn't go away and we have the solutions to make freshwater. The problems are political, not technical.…

The great majority of water usage in California is for agriculture, not "coastal cities." Things like drip irrigation and not growing alfalfa in the desert are far more realistic (and cheaper) than what you are proposing. This is a solvable problem, even with climate change, but there aren't going to be any silver bullets.

You're both right. The Owens River Valley was desiccated to ship the water to the Los Angeles region, back when the latter was primarily agricultural in the 1920s.

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

#62

Post by cardamomo »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #32
okokwhatever wrote: post #24

[flagged]

Technically, water has been a story for the last few decades already. Not new. It's bit overshadowed lately by other world events. There was even a James Bond movie made about it. Water used to be the biggest concern. Guess other problems caught up to it.

I'll keep plugging Paolo Bacigalupi's 2015 novel The Water Knife. It's sci-fi, but set against a near-future Southwest US where many contemporary crises have only gotten worse.

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

#63

Post by alan-hn »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #19
alan-hn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People do drink the water, presumably.

They could have drank it for free or for minimal tax investment but now they have to give money to Nestle to do so while also polluting the planet with plastic bottles

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by justinclift »

Faaak wrote: post #51
Solvency wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Wonder much the average buffalo consumes vs the average cow?

It's probably relevant in order to provide some kind of scaling factor. :)

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

#67

Post by maxglute »

303uru wrote: post #33

There may be good news on this front. Most of this water is being used to farm, specifically to grow feed crops for cattle. Anyone that can hearken back to elementary school will remember that you lose a lot of energy in the food chain. It takes an absolute shitton of water to get to a steak, 1800 gallons for one 16oz cut ( https://www.denverwater.org/tap/whats-beef-water ). But a demographic crises is coming. I was…

That is a positive trend, but a few good marketing campaigns can increase eating beef again.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #53
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…

> 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 abro…

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by aaron695 »

303uru wrote: post #33

There may be good news on this front. Most of this water is being used to farm, specifically to grow feed crops for cattle. Anyone that can hearken back to elementary school will remember that you lose a lot of energy in the food chain. It takes an absolute shitton of water to get to a steak, 1800 gallons for one 16oz cut ( https://www.denverwater.org/tap/whats-beef-water ). But a demographic crises is coming. I was…

[dead]

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

#70

Post by WalterBright »

alan-hn wrote: post #9
justrealist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally 0 impact as compared to farming.

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

You would better blame the people who buy it. It's an insanely expensive way to drink water, when out of the tap it costs what, 3 cents a gallon?

As for why people are in business, they are in it for profit. The only way they make a profit is if people want to buy their stuff. There's nothing shameful about it.

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