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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

#71

Post by quickthrowman »

leptons wrote: post #36
Workaccount2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF we didn't find fossil fuels, in all likely hood we would still be living in the 18th century.

Electricity came up around the same time and never stopped - the tech involved with electronics and electric everything has far surpassed that of oil and gas. There were electric cars at the same time ICEs were being invented. Oil and gas won for selfish reasons.

Electrical generators were powered by fossil fuels (excluding hydro) until nuclear/solar/wind became economical. There would be no electricity without fossil fuels, full stop.

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

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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

> At least farming feeds people

And Nestle’s water quenches folks’ thirst. They’re both wasteful. Only one is significant.

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

#73

Post by dralley »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #39
snagglemouth wrote: post #5

Meanwhile Nestle is pumping thousands of gallons per minute out of aquifers to put into plastic bottles.

Thousands of gallons per minute is not much on the scale of the US. The Mississippi alone has a flow rate of almost ~6M gallons per minute. The US uses almost ~500M gallons of water per minute. Nestle is a pretty large user of water and if it's even 5k gallons per minute that's 1 in 100,000 gallons. That's about how much 24,000 houses use. On the scale of the US, that's not really a lot. Yes, bottled water is dumb. N…

1) You're taking it too literally

2) It doesn't matter if it's small on the scale of the US if it's big on the scale of individual aquifers

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

#74

Post by seoulmetro »

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…

But where does the water go? It can't simply just vanish. It's a capacity problem, right?

Also who cares who eats the beef? If you price in the water usage then these people eating all the beef will either keep eating and pay for their use or stop.

Don't blame people for enjoying their life. It's akin to blaming people for using electricity when it is powered by coal...

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

#75

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dralley wrote: post #73
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of gallons per minute is not much on the scale of the US. The Mississippi alone has a flow rate of almost ~6M gallons per minute. The US uses almost ~500M gallons of water per minute. Nestle is a pretty large user of water and if it's even 5k gallons per minute that's 1 in 100,000 gallons. That's about how much 24,000 houses use. On the scale of the US, that's not really a lot. Yes, bottled water is dumb. N…

1) You're taking it too literally 2) It doesn't matter if it's small on the scale of the US if it's big on the scale of individual aquifers

> taking it too literally

They’re straw men. The problem is almost entirely inefficient farming. Bottled water and golf courses don’t move the needle, but they do absorb activist resources. It’s an incredibly effective rhetorical technique in a public sphere that chases shiny range-inducing factoids.

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

#76

Post by JumpCrisscross »

alan-hn wrote: post #63
pfannkuchen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> now they have to give money to Nestle to do so while also polluting the planet with plastic bottles

Very few people have to drink Nestle’s products.

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

#77

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> water has been a story for the last few decades already

It’s the leading theory for the collapse of civilisation in Mesopotamia, among the ancestral Pueblo/Anasazi and countless other ancient civilisations.

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

#78

Post by scythe »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
bryanlarsen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water is a lot easier to store than electricity. Desalinate while the sun is shining to fill a reservoir that you can pull from 24/7.

True, but it isn't energy, and desal requires firm generation, so you're not using renewables that would've been curtailed but instead competing with load that needs consistent power. Still hopeful considering the cost decline curve of utility scale storage, but it isn't a silver bullet based on solar being free at noon.

>desal requires firm generation

Most existing plants are designed for this, but it is by no means necessary.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001191642...

>This work analyses the long-term performance of a full-scale brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) desalination plant that has been working under intermittent operating conditions for 14 years (~9 h d−1).

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

#79

Post by toomuchtodo »

scythe wrote: post #78
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it isn't energy, and desal requires firm generation, so you're not using renewables that would've been curtailed but instead competing with load that needs consistent power. Still hopeful considering the cost decline curve of utility scale storage, but it isn't a silver bullet based on solar being free at noon.

>desal requires firm generation Most existing plants are designed for this, but it is by no means necessary. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001191642... >This work analyses the long-term performance of a full-scale brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) desalination plant that has been working under intermittent operating conditions for 14 years (~9 h d−1).

TIL. Appreciate the correction.
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