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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

#191

Post by humanrebar »

philwelch wrote: post #162
humanrebar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be cultural, but it may just be economics. I'd like to see that list controlled for cost of living. States away from the East and West Coasts tend to be much more affordable, which makes having extra kids more feasible. http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/ind... EDIT: Scroll about halfway down for a ranked list similar to the one on Wikipedia.

I was referring mostly to Mormons, though there's a large Catholic population from the Hispanic population in the southwest.

I didn't have any particularly prolific group in mind. I was thinking that ascribing birth rates to culture and morality might be premature, especially considering the low birth rates in other developed countries.

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

#192

Post by moocowduckquack »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #168
moocowduckquack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pump seawater to Nevada and cover it in desalination greenhouses. http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com/

I spent years volunteering with Seawater Greenhouse and Charlie Paton, the inventor, including working in one of the pilot plants in Australia for a short while. They are very interesting technology and if I wasn't working on the organization I am working on now I would probably be working with a large scale Seawater Greenhouse installation somewhere today.

That is really good of you. Massive amounts of respect. Out of interest, what is it you are now working on?

edit - I just had a look at what you are doing through your username, akvo looks pretty cool.

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

#193

Post by gwern »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #186
gwern wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What...would ever... Those words sound like the tell-tale signs of the short-sightedness that drives some of these decisions. I believe the next sentence, which may not be uttered until years later, is "Doh!", while face-palming. And half a million dollars is really nothing, meaning the eventual face palm is even more likely. Not to mention it could become even less costly to access it in the future.

> Those words sound like the tell-tale signs of the short-sightedness that drives some of these decisions.

Not really. The West has been colonized for centuries. We have a pretty good idea of what is valuable out there and what isn't, and for the most part, extractive is what is valuable out there.

> Not to mention it could become even less costly to access it in the future.

Talk about one-sided reasoning - and there could be even less reason to ever want to access it in the future too. Rural areas in the plains have been depopulating for decades.

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

#194

Post by drivers99 »

mikeash wrote: post #182
drivers99 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this radioactive contaminated lake in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

And there I was thinking Windscale was the dumbest reactor design ever built.

I had never heard of this.

"In an effort to help cool the pile, the airflow was increased. This fed more oxygen to the fire and lifted radioactive materials up the chimney and into the filter galleries. It was then that workers in the control room realised that the radiation monitoring devices which measured activity at the top of the discharge stack were at full scale reading."

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

#195

Post by pilom »

Theodores wrote: post #83
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 b…

Edward Abbey is on my reading list but I haven't gotten there yet. I will definitely recommend The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. It says its a story of the fastest trip down the Grand Canyon but its really a story of the history of the river and the balance that society has currently chosen between recreation/conservation and development. It also has a great description of the major problems at the Glen Canyon Dam in 1983

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

#196

Post by schiffern »

Zancarius wrote: post #67
schiffern wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>comments like the one you replied to are exactly the kind we don't need. GP here. :) I'm 100% in favor of using technology "to offset much of what we've done, largely as a fault of technological advancement." After all, rainwater collection is technology! But desalination isn't that kind of technology — it's the destructive kind. My question was genuine. What advantage does plastic greenhouse desalination have over…

> But desalination isn't that kind of technology — it's the destructive kind. But is it really? You're effectively doing what occurs in nature. Clearing land and building a distribution infrastructure is destructive, but certainly no more than what is already going to happen regardless of whether or not desalinization is used. Pumping from salt water aquifers might qualify as well. > My question was genuine. It was,…

>You're effectively doing what occurs in nature.

Remember, the alternative I'm comparing it to is restoring the land to a forested state (specifically one with much higher food production).

>draining much of the run off into large basins

…from which it evaporates, leaving the salt. Not a great plan.

You have to design for the desert: evaporation > rainfall. That means getting the water shaded asap. Further, run-off is not a given. It's better to design for in-place infiltration instead of run-off by remediating hardpan, imprinting, contour earthworks, etc.

>water ingress likely far outpaces whatever could be pumped out of the ground

The Ogallala aquifer is currently pumped 6x faster than it's being recharged, and that's not even a desert yet. http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Blog/2013/08/28/Ogallala-Aqu...

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

#197

Post by jessaustin »

webmaven wrote: post #187
unabridged wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tried to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... But "environmentalists" stepped in and ended funding. Now we are stuck with the current situation of pretty much every power plant for themselves and storage all over the country.

The main problems with Yucca Mountain were that the site wasn't really suitable (permeable geology, nearby water table, seismic activity). Unfortunately, the best sites for such a long term storage facility would be in the northeast under a geologically stable mountain made of impermeable granite, but those sites were removed from consideration by congressional fiat a while back.

This is what I mean. With nuclear, the rabbit hole always goes deeper. We've been working on this for seventy years now, and however much the government subsidizes it, however many disasters we have, however many "new designs" are tried, however many "impermeable" storage depots are built, nuclear power always comes up with more ways to fail.

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

#198

Post by Theodores »

pilom wrote: post #195
Theodores wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Edward Abbey is on my reading list but I haven't gotten there yet. I will definitely recommend The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. It says its a story of the fastest trip down the Grand Canyon but its really a story of the history of the river and the balance that society has currently chosen between recreation/conservation and development. It also has a great description of the major problems at the Glen Canyon Dam i…

Looks like I might have to revisit the South West via words alone. Thanks for the recommend. Powell's book looks good too, with a touch of Shackleton grit to it.

I too second Desert Solitaire as a must read, it is not a novel like Monkey Wrench Gang, it made me think again about values of freedom and what it is to be alive without having to suspend one's belief in a way that pure fiction demands.

I also recommend walking down the Grand Canyon and up the other side carrying very little and without knowing what is going to happen to you. By very little I mean a light snack, some water and a picnic rug to sleep on (under the stars at the bottom of the Canyon).

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

#199

Post by unclebucknasty »

gwern wrote: post #193
unclebucknasty wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What...would ever... Those words sound like the tell-tale signs of the short-sightedness that drives some of these decisions. I believe the next sentence, which may not be uttered until years later, is "Doh!", while face-palming. And half a million dollars is really nothing, meaning the eventual face palm is even more likely. Not to mention it could become even less costly to access it in the future.

> Those words sound like the tell-tale signs of the short-sightedness that drives some of these decisions. Not really. The West has been colonized for centuries. We have a pretty good idea of what is valuable out there and what isn't, and for the most part, extractive is what is valuable out there. > Not to mention it could become even less costly to access it in the future. Talk about one-sided reasoning - and there…

>We have a pretty good idea of what is valuable out there and what isn't

So far. In relative terms.

>extractive is what is valuable out there.

In some places, water is an extractive.

>Talk about one-sided reasoning - and there could be even less reason to ever want to access it in the future too.

Possibly, but then, I wasn't the one making definitive statements like "what would ever justify...". See the difference? I'm showing you another side, not declaring it inevitable. That's why I used the word could instead of will.

In general, you made a one-sided statement that also ignored the fact that your assumptions could change. I pointed that out, along with possible alternatives. Then, you reply that I am being one-sided? You're talking in circles.

Contortions aside, your posture makes no sense to me. You're saying there is no need now and may never be, so let's destroy it. I'm saying there may be a need, so let's think about that. If we don't know, then why burn the bridge? One approach gives us a way back, whereas the other doesn't.

And, that's the entire point of the article. The Mexicans are now having to dig deeper than they thought would be necessary or viable. At some point, they were saying "what would ever justify...".

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

#200

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

cbr wrote: post #96
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Pretty much every drop of the Colorado River is owned by someone. The river is actually overcommitted: When the Colorado River Compact was drafted in the 1920s, it was based on barely 30 years of streamflow records that suggested an average annual flow of 17.5 million acre feet past Lee's Ferry. Modern studies of tree rings revealed that those three decades were probably the wettest in the past 500 to 1,200 years – a…

I had heard that, but I didn't find the reference quickly, and I had to post. Didn't want to make unsubstantiated claims. Thanks for the follow-up. :)

As a result we've been in violation with a treaty with Mexico over the lack of promised water volume over most of that time as well. Again, too busy to find the link.

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