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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

#171

Post by leptons »

zmgsabst wrote: post #167
leptons wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We haven’t switched because electricity (37 qBTU) is only a third (100 qBTU) of our energy production, and we don’t know how to triple the electricity grid. Of our electricity production, 60% is fossil fuels (coal, gas, or petroleum). We have zero clue how to replace our total energy consumption (100 qBTU) with our renewable production (15 qBTU). This is all using official EIA numbers: https://www.eia.gov/energyexpla…

>We haven’t switched because electricity (37 qBTU) is only a third (100 qBTU) of our energy production, and we don’t know how to triple the electricity grid.

Sure, because plenty of money went into oil refineries and not electric infrastructure over the last 100 years.

>Of our electricity production, 60% is fossil fuels (coal, gas, or petroleum).

There's plenty of alternatives that big oil has put its foot on. Nuclear and solar are absolutely great alternatives, but we've wasted the last 100 years spending on big oil infrastructure and jobs.

>We have zero clue how to replace our total energy consumption (100 qBTU) with our renewable production (15 qBTU).

We should have a clue. It's like spending all your time playing video games and then suddenly when your 50 looking back at the wasted time when you're getting kicked out of your parents basement.

My point is that it didn't have to be this way.

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

#172

Post by darth_avocado »

oceanplexian wrote: post #150
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…

> 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 redu…

Desalination increases your environmental footprint because it is ecologically very damaging. It won’t allow you to reduce your impact on the environment.

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

#173

Post by [deleted] »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #90
quickthrowman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From WP: "In 1878, the world's first hydroelectric power scheme was developed at Cragside in Northumberland, England, by William Armstrong. It was used to power a single arc lamp in his art gallery.[13] The old Schoelkopf Power Station No. 1, US, near Niagara Falls, began to produce electricity in 1881. The first Edison hydroelectric power station, the Vulcan Street Plant, began operating September 30, 1882, in Apple…

[deleted]

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #90
quickthrowman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From WP: "In 1878, the world's first hydroelectric power scheme was developed at Cragside in Northumberland, England, by William Armstrong. It was used to power a single arc lamp in his art gallery.[13] The old Schoelkopf Power Station No. 1, US, near Niagara Falls, began to produce electricity in 1881. The first Edison hydroelectric power station, the Vulcan Street Plant, began operating September 30, 1882, in Apple…

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by defrost »

arcticbull wrote: post #170
defrost wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several hundred. Okay, for Part Two .. is that a high number or a low number when compared to a dam burst or a Bhopal type chemical plant accident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster Point being, are we globally casual about all manner of destructive events and relatively over sensitive to OMG! nuclear!! accidents?

Sorry, I'm not the person you were replying to, I suspected they wouldn't so I wanted to share the research I did earlier on. I agree with you, and to me these numbers seem rather low relative to the known harms associated with other generation methods. To steelman, it could certainly have been a lot worse, but also, it wasn't, and much was learned that has been incorporated into modern designs.

My apologies if I seemed combative :)

I noted at the time that you were another commenter and that you seemed in general agreement, I added further framing to point out that while a large number and that all death is tragic it's not been the case that nuclear power accidents have been worse than other industrial | power accidents in world history.

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

#176

Post by arcticbull »

defrost wrote: post #175
arcticbull wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm not the person you were replying to, I suspected they wouldn't so I wanted to share the research I did earlier on. I agree with you, and to me these numbers seem rather low relative to the known harms associated with other generation methods. To steelman, it could certainly have been a lot worse, but also, it wasn't, and much was learned that has been incorporated into modern designs.

My apologies if I seemed combative :) I noted at the time that you were another commenter and that you seemed in general agreement, I added further framing to point out that while a large number and that all death is tragic it's not been the case that nuclear power accidents have been worse than other industrial | power accidents in world history.

Not at all, I would have replied the same way to OP, heh. I agree with you. All death is bad, less death is better, and the scale of nuclear accidents doesn't seem out of line with other industrial accidents. People get spooked by the spicy rocks.

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

#177

Post by seoulmetro »

303uru wrote: post #158
seoulmetro wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, this generation is basically allergic to typical marketing campaigns. Huh? The newest generation is the easiest that's ever been to advertise to. The medium has just changed...

According to who? I'll admit I'm not a marketer, but I'm in meetings with and work alongside our chief sales officer a lot and the sentiment is always that millenials are very hard to sell to and gen-z is damn near impossible. Advertising turns them off.

According to anyone who's been around these people and their marketing tools like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.

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

#178

Post by Fatnino »

I_Am_Nous wrote: post #155
sublinear wrote: post #128

> To an outsized extent, the problems identified in the Nature study are — for Americans at least — problems of California, and of the national food systems’ reliance on the fertile Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and the groundwater beneath. This makes it sound like the only sane option is for the rest of the USA to stop being so dependent on California.

One change which would have to be made is here in the Midwest, we grow a lot of soybeans and corn. We feed most of it to animals. There are likely better uses for that land, especially when talking about modern corn as it is so nitrogen hungry that nearly all farmers apply high nitrogen fertilizer...which runs off into the rivers and causes the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. So, so many things could be better if we…

A lot of that corn goes into ethanol instead.

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

#179

Post by Ekaros »

jackschultz wrote: post #108
justrealist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally 0 impact as compared to farming.

And the amount of water for farming that is used to grow crops for animals rather than humans, with beef needing an absurd amount[0] yet is has always argued on for different research methods and money from sources that want to confused us[1]. To quote another study [2] on the issue. >Agriculture accounts for 92% of the freshwater footprint of humanity; almost one third relates to animal products. ... >In the western…

It all comes down to where crops for animals are produced. If ground water is needed it is probably wrong place. In places where rain covers the water need, we are entirely fine as that water will mostly end up back to cycles or even rivers. Which then if needed can be processed.

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

#180

Post by piva00 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #150
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…

> 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 redu…

It's also easy to wave a magical wand technological solution like desalination instead of looking into the issue more holistically: what is currently wasteful that we could make more efficient?

Desalination is just more waste of energy, it can be part of a solution but shouldn't be the solution. We really need to look into the natural systems we modified/interfered and figure out ways to be much more efficient with them. And that is what usually gets called "sustainable".

It's not being a mennonite, much rather the opposite: be smarter about what we use, extract more from less.

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