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

Post by donkeysquid » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 12:55 AM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #119

darth_avocado wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like trying to use a hammer to screw some bolts. The priority should be sustainable development. We have enough water, just not great usage. The water infrastructure we have today is aged and needs to expand to allow for the population growth the country has seen. On top of that, we are expanding cities in parts of the country where water is scarce. We are growing water intensive crops in parts of the country th…

93 billion gallons of fresh water falls on Los Angeles every year. (12 inches / y over the whole surface area[1]) They have ~2 million households[2], and a household uses an average of 3,000 g/m or 36,000 g/y/h or about 80 billion gallons / y for all households. Huge coincidence, that's pretty close to balanced out. And yet, we shuffle the rainfall to the ocean and pray for snowpack in the mountains and protest Nestl…

Post by mech422 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 12:57 AM UTC

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…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 1:05 AM UTC

leptons wrote: post #124

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #93

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O&G won because the energy density is so extremely high.

Gasoline may be a lot more energy dense, but ICE are about 20% to 40% efficiency while electric motors are about 60% - 80% efficient. So the differences aren't as great as you might think. If we hadn't just jumped at gasoline and money hadn't flowed so readily towards that tech, there's no telling how far battery tech would be today. A lot further than it is now, I have no doubt. The fact is that big oil has killed o…

Post by mech422 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 1:11 AM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #116

mech422 wrote: post #92

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iirc, I live near the largest nuke plant in the US. No complaints. Perhaps the issue is more with the people running the plants, then the plants themselves. Also, recycling nuke waste like many countries do cuts the amount of waste down dramatically. P.S. - we also use grey water for cooling the plant, limiting the amount of fresh water needed. Edit: According to 1, "All of the nuclear waste collected at Palo Verde o…

Lets round up its generate to 4gw Solar last year: 228gw was ADDED globally. SO about 57 plants of the size of the one near your house every year. 400 nuclear plants will give us about 2 major accidents every 50 years at current rate. We can assume this is pretty close to a constant as plants age, natural disasters happen and everything gets more complicated. Meanwhile solar is not responsive and doesn't work after d…

Post by voisin » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 1:12 AM UTC

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.