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How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

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Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't irrigate during the day in hot climates some crops will die, and the yields will be terrible for most.

> If you don't irrigate during the day in hot climates most crops will die That is clearly not true. Most crops are fine with watering after sunset / before sunrise.

Fair. I just edited my comment because I combined two concepts and muddled them together. It's more common to suffer a poorer yield than total crop loss. But crops like tomatoes can die from lack of water during high heat days if the heat lasts for several days. Also, irrigating only at night (not just evening, but over night) can contribute to fungal and disease issues with some crops.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#52
post #36

I know some farmers in North Texas where they are pulling water out of a depleted aquifer. The water is starting to get salty so they're adjusting to salt tolerant variants of their crops. The ground is also starting to drop due to the aquifer draining. It's crazy to see

I did the math once and the amount of water we’ve pumped out of the aquifers worldwide and not replaced is worth more than a mm of sea level rise.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#53

Viewing humanity like a single organism, this is the strategy where like a slime mold we expand to consume all resources, then most of the organism dies off while some number of spores go on to continue to the process elsewhere. If we'd like that not to happen, because we like our civilizations and like not to see them crumble, we must develop some kind of governance mechanism to prevent slime mold behavior. Seeing s…

Stephen Harrod Bruhner once said that society is like of like a plant. It produces its off spring to spread out when it is at its peak health. It makes the biggest fruit just before it dies.

That we started sending intergalactic space probes in the 1970s when, in the west, the energy use per capita was to start to peaking is a funny conincience. Some of those are probably accidentally carrying microbes that will be suspended in state for potentially hundreds of millions of years.

It isnt something to take too seriously but it is a fun concept to contemplate.

Maybe we have the exact same intelligence for logevity as a tomato.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picture a roller coaster where the carts have little steering wheels .. that do nothing. We like to imagine we are in control, but zoomed out we behave quite predictably, chasing that unsustainable growth. I feel you, and I'm not sure how to explain this to children. How honest should we be? I believe there is no version of this that ends well, we are left with outcomes to our decisions on the spectrum of awful to re…

I actually argue the opposite zooming out. Zooming out our trajectory is up and to the right, like a hockey stick. Almost on every level. We’ve done that with all these disasters that have always happened. Almost like we can innovate or something

Technocrats on this site are very fond of your argument, so fond that I stored the reply I saw years back when someone else said the same thing.

There is no monitoring dashboard for the planet. News articles like this are your warnings. There is no innovation to be had that fixes global aquifer levels.

>>>

Original Mathusianism should be distinguished from neo-Malthusianism, in that the latter does at least have some evidential basis in that it is based on measurement of resource levels and their rate of use, not just some political philosopher's wooly notion of overpopulation.

The problem, as I see it, is that even if you are optimistic about the theoretical capacity of the planet to sustain human life, its practical capacity is limited by how efficiently we use the resources to hand, and the current system does not properly incentivise efficient use. More often, it's the complete opposite, because the price of resources like water and soil does not reflect their true scarcity.

It's like having a large store of firewood. Enough, in theory, to heat your home through several years of harsh winters. Then you burn the whole stockpile in a great bonfire on the first cold Autumn night. That night, by every metric, you'll be warmer and cosier than you ever have been before, but you'll still have doomed yourself.

* * *

Reminds me of the well-known type of question in introductory calculus:

Q: "A population of bacteria in a petri-dish doubles every hour, after 24 hours the petri-dish reaches 100% saturation. At what time did the petri-dish reach 50% saturation?"

A: 23 hours.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picture a roller coaster where the carts have little steering wheels .. that do nothing. We like to imagine we are in control, but zoomed out we behave quite predictably, chasing that unsustainable growth. I feel you, and I'm not sure how to explain this to children. How honest should we be? I believe there is no version of this that ends well, we are left with outcomes to our decisions on the spectrum of awful to re…

I actually argue the opposite zooming out. Zooming out our trajectory is up and to the right, like a hockey stick. Almost on every level. We’ve done that with all these disasters that have always happened. Almost like we can innovate or something

To be fair the steepest part of the hockey stick is tiny compared to the history of out species. Heck even written texts are a comparitively new invention on that scale. The problem with overshoot is that the situation looks best after the point of sustainablility is long gone. Like flying off a ramp. The peak of heigh comes after you have left it.

You could be right, and there are plenty if examples of that. It is just a case of we wont know the full story until a long time in the future.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#56
post #52
post #36

I know some farmers in North Texas where they are pulling water out of a depleted aquifer. The water is starting to get salty so they're adjusting to salt tolerant variants of their crops. The ground is also starting to drop due to the aquifer draining. It's crazy to see

I did the math once and the amount of water we’ve pumped out of the aquifers worldwide and not replaced is worth more than a mm of sea level rise.

Please show the math and sources, I would love to see the sauce.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#57
post #21

The margins are doubtless so narrow that it's not feasible, but pumping during the day into a storage tank, and irrigating at night (while evaporation is relatively low) would be a way to slightly improve soil (though not aquifer) recharge. Certainly it would require less water volume , but again, the infrastructure costs for panels + submersible + storage are probably untenable in precisely the places this is needed…

If you don't irrigate during the day in hot climates some crops will die, and the yields will be terrible for most.

Doesn't that mean we should stop growing crops in such regions?

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually argue the opposite zooming out. Zooming out our trajectory is up and to the right, like a hockey stick. Almost on every level. We’ve done that with all these disasters that have always happened. Almost like we can innovate or something

Technocrats on this site are very fond of your argument, so fond that I stored the reply I saw years back when someone else said the same thing. There is no monitoring dashboard for the planet. News articles like this are your warnings. There is no innovation to be had that fixes global aquifer levels. >>> Original Mathusianism should be distinguished from neo-Malthusianism, in that the latter does at least have some…

What about the birth rate collapse[0] and how this affects things? It’s easy to project out with holding population levels but as the oldest among us die in the next 20-30 years there will be significant drops in population worldwide, before factoring other forms of population decline it’s already naturally going to happen.

I wonder how this factors into all this.

[0]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertilit...

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technocrats on this site are very fond of your argument, so fond that I stored the reply I saw years back when someone else said the same thing. There is no monitoring dashboard for the planet. News articles like this are your warnings. There is no innovation to be had that fixes global aquifer levels. >>> Original Mathusianism should be distinguished from neo-Malthusianism, in that the latter does at least have some…

What about the birth rate collapse[0] and how this affects things? It’s easy to project out with holding population levels but as the oldest among us die in the next 20-30 years there will be significant drops in population worldwide, before factoring other forms of population decline it’s already naturally going to happen. I wonder how this factors into all this. [0]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/glo…

population is still rising into 2050 by conservative estimates, and it's not counting the energy requirements per person that's exploding.

on a century scale, we will fix this by either getting to space or having a lower population. but the pressure is going to crack our systems long before that. I'm still hoping we get better as pressure increases, but there's nothing in nature that says that has to be true. the system will correct itself but how we will look as a species on the other side can be vastly different.

Re: How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater

#60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the math once and the amount of water we’ve pumped out of the aquifers worldwide and not replaced is worth more than a mm of sea level rise.

Please show the math and sources, I would love to see the sauce.

Me too because that sounds impossible to calculate.
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