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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

#141

Post by peteradio »

303uru wrote: post #114
seoulmetro wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>But where does the water go Not back into aquifers, that takes hundreds if not thousands of years. >Also who cares who eats the beef? If you price in the water usage Ya, that's kinda the point, we don't. If we removed the massive subsidies propping up ranching very few people would be consuming beef. >Don't blame people for enjoying their life I don't think I did, but as you brought it up. I'll absolutely shame peop…

> that takes hundreds if not thousands of years.

Wut. Where are you getting this from? It takes few decades max.

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

#142

Post by defrost »

mech422 wrote: post #130
defrost wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the disclaimer that I'm pro solar your accident based argument is weak as it ignores all accidents in resource mining for renewable infrastructure .. which will only increase as to date renewables make up only a fraction of the energy still generated by coal which is due to be replaced. Make no mistake, accidents (death and injury) in resource mining (non nuclear) greatly outweigh the total deaths and injuries d…

not who you responded to but... Do we even have enough lithium etc. to produce all the solar panels (and batteries for ev's ??) we're gonna need ? P.S. - good point on the dangers of mining!

It's highly probable we will have enough economically viable lithium from ground mining, we have "known measured reserves" that are less than we need (but have been explored, drilled, and modelled) and an excess of indicated resources (which are places trace tested that look a lot like other places with good reserves, but have not yet been drilled).

Then there's seawater (which always gets bought up but isn't really a thing yet).

More to the bigger picture, it's not just lithium - Vanadium redox batteries are better for grid storage where light nimble weight for a mobile vehicle doesn't matter so much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

Not to mention other ongoing battery research and forms of energy storage (thermal mass, hydrogen, ammonia, etc) that make sense in an abundance of renewable energy that may soon arrive.

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

#143

Post by zer00eyz »

defrost wrote: post #120
zer00eyz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With the disclaimer that I'm pro solar your accident based argument is weak as it ignores all accidents in resource mining for renewable infrastructure .. which will only increase as to date renewables make up only a fraction of the energy still generated by coal which is due to be replaced. Make no mistake, accidents (death and injury) in resource mining (non nuclear) greatly outweigh the total deaths and injuries d…

At the point my solar panel is installed all the death is built in. At the point my coal plant explodes, all the death is built in (no more outgassing, health increases going forward in fact).

The problem with the death toll of nuclear is that it's deferred.... So no one can agree what the impact of Chernobyl is. For instance, the UN cites a report and claims 4000 dead post accident. The report itself says 9000. Greenpeace says 90,000. IF we grew nuclear to 2000 plants (and that's just to replace coal) the accident rate is going to go UP. More humans more human factors (greed, angry about stuff at home and makes a mistake) and more "acts of god"...

The other side of the coin is your either going to have to increase mining nuclear materials... OR your going to need to start a breeder reactor program up again (turn that "used" uranium back into fuel)...

and all that uranium, the stuff that's contaminated. It has to go somewhere, for a long time. A timescale that no one can comprehend. https://longnow.org/ideas/the-other-10000-year-project-long-... ....

billions of years for the fuel (uranium) 20k years to move the elephants foot out of chrernoble. No one knows what to do with the fuel melted into the ground at Fukushima. Were closer to the pyramids being built than we are to the impacts of these disasters being cleaned up... at that scale there is the potential for "More harm" to happen past the horizon of every nation on earth today (20k years is older than the oldest human construction, but not artifact).

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

#144

Post by peteradio »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Presumably they didn't have drills.

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

#145

Post by mech422 »

defrost wrote: post #142
mech422 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not who you responded to but... Do we even have enough lithium etc. to produce all the solar panels (and batteries for ev's ??) we're gonna need ? P.S. - good point on the dangers of mining!

It's highly probable we will have enough economically viable lithium from ground mining, we have "known measured reserves" that are less than we need (but have been explored, drilled, and modelled) and an excess of indicated resources (which are places trace tested that look a lot like other places with good reserves, but have not yet been drilled). Then there's seawater (which always gets bought up but isn't really…

oh - the Vanadium thing is interesting... I guess the poor round trip efficiency and poor energy-to-volume ratio are what we're waiting for before they become more common?

speaking of ammonia - what do you think of ammonia engines? I just recently heard of them...

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

#146

Post by zer00eyz »

mech422 wrote: post #130
defrost wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the disclaimer that I'm pro solar your accident based argument is weak as it ignores all accidents in resource mining for renewable infrastructure .. which will only increase as to date renewables make up only a fraction of the energy still generated by coal which is due to be replaced. Make no mistake, accidents (death and injury) in resource mining (non nuclear) greatly outweigh the total deaths and injuries d…

not who you responded to but... Do we even have enough lithium etc. to produce all the solar panels (and batteries for ev's ??) we're gonna need ? P.S. - good point on the dangers of mining!

The battery and the panels we can do.

ITs the upgrades to the grid that we aren't close on and aren't making progress on.

If you have an all electric house, a 3 day battery, all electric appliances and cars to charge... works great.

Now how about a week of rain. Suddenly your either powerless or your utility has to import enough power to keep that all electric everything running. It's more lines, and transformers. We can't maintain global transformer demand today. A large disaster would be crippling (think solar flair, terrorism). It has been a major issue for Ukraine to replace this damaged infrastructure (due to production constraints).

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

#148

Post by mech422 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #146
mech422 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not who you responded to but... Do we even have enough lithium etc. to produce all the solar panels (and batteries for ev's ??) we're gonna need ? P.S. - good point on the dangers of mining!

The battery and the panels we can do. ITs the upgrades to the grid that we aren't close on and aren't making progress on. If you have an all electric house, a 3 day battery, all electric appliances and cars to charge... works great. Now how about a week of rain. Suddenly your either powerless or your utility has to import enough power to keep that all electric everything running. It's more lines, and transformers. We…

I'd assume even if you have all that, you'd still be tied to the city grid, so it wouldn't require any 'extra' over your current connection? (At least, thats how it works here - you might have roof top solar, but you keep your existing grid connection...)

P.S. - I'm curious what (if any) solar flares/storms will have in the near future as we're approaching the 'bad' part of the solar cycle...Doubtful anything will happen since the strongest recorded sun flare was in 2001 and I dont recall any disruptions. We've added a lot more stuff in orbit, and made transistors a lot smaller since then though, so it will be interesting.

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

#149

Post by 57FkMytWjyFu »

mjhay wrote: post #25
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.

Why do you need to desalinate it to use it for energy storage? Seems like an unnecessary step that would not increase the gravitational potential energy at all.

You really don't want to mix salty water with machines unless you have to.

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

#150

Post by oceanplexian »

darth_avocado wrote: post #42
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.

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…

> The priority should be sustainable development.

What does sustainable mean? It sounds like the implication is that if we go backwards technologically that would somehow be sustainable.

If we doubled down on renewable energy or even nuclear energy and desalination maybe we could increase water consumption and reduce our impact on the environment without any compromises. It’s easy to be a cynic and say we should reduce agricultural output or tell people to have a worse quality of life while giving up on finding solutions, because that viewpoint requires no problem solving or innovation. That isn’t sustainability, it’s the exact opposite.

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