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Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

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Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#81

Post by ars »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #77
mrottenkolber wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me? Does one of those plants have to blow up in your neighbourhood until you can relate to the fact that some risks are not worth taking? These things are dirty bombs, period. Edit: To clarify, I am not arguing for coal. Just against nuclear power. I live next to a garbage->energy and gas turbine plant. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant.

Guess fukushima was too long ago. Oh wait, its still leaking a tons of gene-pool destroying toxin every day. I knew people first hand who died from chernobyl's toxic rain. Took 10 years for their faces to completely fall apart.

And coal power is like a constant never ending fukushima.

It's gut, but un-informed feelings like yours that are the cause of so much environmental destruction.

> I knew people first hand who died from chernobyl's toxic rain.

And I know of people who today are suffering from asthma and lung cancer from coal's toxic exhaust. And newsflash: There are way way way way more of them.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#82

Post by techdmn »

ars wrote: post #65
schiffern wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And solar is rapidly out-competing and out-innovating both.

Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Becaus…

I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#83

Post by Theodores »

pilom wrote: post #6

Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now which is all about water policy in the western US. The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or d…

I read Cadillac Desert more than twenty years ago and I got a lot out of it. I really wanted to loan my copy to someone, but, being British and living in the UK, I just did not find anyone to share the joy of that book with. It helps to have a love and a fascination for the American West, sadly none of my friends on this side of the pond have that so I never loaned out Cadillac Desert.

Anyway, you have made my day by merely mentioning that read, and I will have anything else you care to share on your reading list. I take it you are also an Edward Abbey fan?!?

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#85

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

gwern wrote: post #68
peterwwillis wrote: post #17

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…

What in rural Wyoming would ever justify spending half a million dollars for a single water well? I do not think an example like the massive urban conglomeration of Mexico City (greater area: 21.2 million people) naturally analogizes to such areas.

They redirect water from Northern to Southern California. Why not from rural Wyoming to, say, Colorado? We may have 5M people here, and are chronically short of water.

The water from Colorado (via the Colorado River) also supplies Utah, Arizona, Southern California, Nevada, and Mexico with water. All of those areas need more water; even if Colorado stays at its current demand level, you could imagine one or more of those areas funding a well in Wyoming to divert water to Colorado to either send directly down the river or to take the place of water that would otherwise be removed from the river, so that their allocation could be correspondingly increased. (Pretty much every drop of the Colorado River is owned by someone. [1])

Water is life. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#86

Post by mrottenkolber »

ars wrote: post #81
mrottenkolber wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess fukushima was too long ago. Oh wait, its still leaking a tons of gene-pool destroying toxin every day. I knew people first hand who died from chernobyl's toxic rain. Took 10 years for their faces to completely fall apart.

And coal power is like a constant never ending fukushima. It's gut, but un-informed feelings like yours that are the cause of so much environmental destruction. > I knew people first hand who died from chernobyl's toxic rain. And I know of people who today are suffering from asthma and lung cancer from coal's toxic exhaust. And newsflash: There are way way way way more of them.

Why do you assume I am defending coal?

It's irrational confidence like yours that nuclear power is in any way safe, and therefore a good replacement. Coal doesn't need a replacement, we need to start using energy responsibly. That means not using energy when we don't have it. A nuclear plant is not an acceptable way to generate energy.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#87

Post by zackmorris »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #41
jessaustin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and it's somewhat disturbing to see "environmentalists" tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to argue for nuclear with a straight face.

I'm not against nuclear power, per se, but the way we do it is seriously warped, mostly by its associations with the weaponry. A uranium mine isn't just a fuel source, it is also part of a military arsenal at the highest level, so really it isn't that surprising to see so little care given to the externalities. Personally I think that solar/storage is about to outcompete the pants off most everything else anyway, giv…

I saw my first hybrid solar/natural gas (continually running) power plant commercial on TV the other night from a fossil fuel company (can't remember which one). I think you're right, that solar thermal storage (in hot oil for now and eventually salt) with trough reflectors instead of photovoltaics, will be the eventual winner, even against wind.

My excitement for it is that it relies on 19th century technologies that anyone can implement and doesn't need a fab or another country to provide solid state solar panels.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#88

Post by rayiner »

pilom wrote: post #6

Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now which is all about water policy in the western US. The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or d…

The whole southwestern U.S. is basically a mistake caused by Big Government. "Manifest destiny" led the federal government to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to irrigate all these places that wouldn't have been habitable otherwise, and now we have a bunch of people living in places that are simply inappropriate for civilization given the water constraints.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#89

Post by joshuahedlund »

pilom wrote: post #6

Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now which is all about water policy in the western US. The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or d…

It's bad enough to consume more water than is replenished by precipitation, but it's even worse considering that the recent century or so of precipitation (i.e. the entire development of the West) may have been a pretty wet outlier compared to the last millennium.[0] At the same time, I've learned never to underestimate the power of people to respond to incentives, and I don't want to overstate the doom-factor. But it sure gives me another reason not to move to California.

[0]http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-dr...

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#90

Post by nerfhammer »

monkeyspaw wrote: post #35
philwelch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Much of the inland West is populated by people who culturally value high reproduction. 2. People immigrate to developed countries.

I was curious, so I looked at US fertility rates by state. Fortunately, wikipedia has a nice chart. The birth rates do appear to be higher in Western states than in the east. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territo...

People don't reproduce in New England apparently
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