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A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

science.org

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Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#31

Post by stevenwoo »

marking-time wrote: post #15

>In an aquifer that’s permanently collapsed, artificial recharge—pumping water forcibly back underground—is the only option, according to Shirzaei. That’s expensive and carries the risk of triggering earthquakes. I have spent most of my life in the San Joaquin Valley and what I have been wondering about over the past few years is what is the effect removing all that water from the faults. Specifically, does this wate…

Toward the end it briefly discusses a possible solution - expensive injection of water into aquifers that might have the side effect of triggering earthquakes like fracking for petroleum or some types of geothermal - there’s no winning.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#32

Post by hiitsmyaccount »

ericd wrote: post #26
p-e-w wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole pension fund concept only works because it declares how much is going to be paid out. Who’s going to pay in if the fund expects a guaranteed commitment but refuses to give such in return?

401ks don’t guarantee results for a given amount of input, and people still stuff away lots into them?

[dead]

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#33

Post by darth_avocado »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #12
morkalork wrote: post #2

You all knew how it was going to end, for decades, and did nothing. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/location-maximum-land-subs...

> You all knew how it was going to end, for decades, and did nothing. And the same is true for global carbon-related climate change, for which the real bill will become increasingly due over the next 10 years. We are all insanely fucked and our response is still just to mostly to ignore it and hope it goes away.

> We are all insanely fucked and our response is still just to mostly to ignore it and hope it goes away.

Correction. It’s the next generations who are insanely fucked. People don’t hope it goes away, they think they won’t be around to see the consequences.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#35

Post by skeeter2020 »

arjie wrote: post #28
p-e-w wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole pension fund concept only works because it declares how much is going to be paid out. Who’s going to pay in if the fund expects a guaranteed commitment but refuses to give such in return?

It’s called a defined contribution pension as opposed to a defined benefit pension. They exist.

not only do they exist, they are by far the more common variant. Whenever you hear about a massive unfunded pension liability it's a defined benefit plan.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#36

Post by stevenwoo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

> The only way to know for sure whether permanent compaction has occurred is through expensive core samples or other measurements at depth Wouldn't it be for rain to fall and the aquifer's levels to rebound less than expected?

That is what the one expert quoted said but others thought it might still come back over a longer time period - I interpreted it to mean that method as being more accurate than the one season refill rate.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#37

Post by arjie »

p-e-w wrote: post #20
morkalork wrote: post #2

You all knew how it was going to end, for decades, and did nothing. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/location-maximum-land-subs...

Doing something about this is the job of the government, not of “you all”. If taking care of such essential matters is somehow the responsibility of society as a whole, we may as well get rid of governments altogether.

Governments are just a structure for people to coordinate collective action. In democracies, it’s not that distinct from “us all”. We exercise this responsibility through representatives but they are our agents not our rulers. Outcomes depend on our ability to direct them, and the ability of our opponents to do so likewise.

For the most part, I like to forward evolve solutions so I happily don’t care if Las Vegas runs out of water or whatever. I’ll find a way later. So I take responsibility for my bit. I just don’t care about this particular negative outcome.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#38

Post by ares623 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #33
bayarearefugee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You all knew how it was going to end, for decades, and did nothing. And the same is true for global carbon-related climate change, for which the real bill will become increasingly due over the next 10 years. We are all insanely fucked and our response is still just to mostly to ignore it and hope it goes away.

> We are all insanely fucked and our response is still just to mostly to ignore it and hope it goes away. Correction. It’s the next generations who are insanely fucked. People don’t hope it goes away, they think they won’t be around to see the consequences.

Mother Nature has always been historically very considerate with regards to our schedules.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#39

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

[deleted]

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#40

Post by fastball »

rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

The thing about data centers and thermoelectric power plants is that you can make them effectively closed cycle, vs agriculture where that is somewhat intractable.

Not saying that is true today though.

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