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California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

nytimes.com

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Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#241

Post by bduerst »

MichaelGG wrote: post #181
matznerd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why desalination isn't the answer... http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/why-isnt-desalination-th...

Why aren't they simply boiling the water, nuclear powered? That article says membrane desal leaves half the water extra salty, is that right? Does boiling it leave that much? I'd imagine there'd just be a concentrated, mostly-solid byproduct. I'm probably wrong else everyone would already be doing this. OTOH, many people and places seem to be going against nuclear power, so perhaps it isn't just a technical issue. At…

Is nuclear cheaper per joule than other energy on the grid?

They'd essentially be running a nuclear powerplant, which wouldn't turn out any resellable power, just water.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#242

Post by kemiller »

chaostheory wrote: post #193
kemiller wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do need food, but much of what California farms produce is exported, often to places with plenty of water. It doesn't make sense to export water from an arid state in a drought. If the water's real economic value were priced in, that would not be so bad.

You have a point. I just thought water bottlers like Nestle, who continue to use CA water for bottled water, are considered different from agriculture. Besides I feel that people are missing my main point, which is what's wrong with going after low hanging fruit? Reducing our water intake in the form of lawns and in the bathroom is neither a major inconvenience nor is it a financial burden. In fact, it saves people m…

I don't mean literally exporting water, I mean growing water-intensive crops and then exporting those. Same effect.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#243

Post by lerouxb »

aetherson wrote: post #239
lerouxb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is cheaper per watt in many parts of the world, assuming you don't care when you get those watts. You can build more solar capacity than what's needed during daylight hours in which case you can't sell the energy due to there being too much of it, so high price of energy becomes irrelevant. (or: you can't build a large number of solar power plants without affecting the market price of electricity)

Ah, so now your plan to reduce the cost of desalinization is to build so many solar power plants that you literally have more energy than you can possibly sell during the highest demand parts of the day. Well, that sounds like a good cost reduction technique. Oh, wait. No it doesn't.

Are we talking about water or costs?

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#244

Post by seanflyon »

chaostheory wrote: post #226
seanflyon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low hanging fruit mean the most impact for least effort. You are talking about inconveniencing almost all the people so that a few can avoid any changes at all. We should just charge more for water for both residential and agricultural use and let people vote with their dollars on how big of an inconvenience it is to them.

> You are talking about inconveniencing almost all the people That's the thing, it's not a huge inconvenience. I'm not handy and I was able to easily install devices to both the shower and toilet to reduce water usage. This law would also force home owner associations to cut down on water waste for lawns. I really don't see the inconvenience unless I'm missing something. > We should just charge more for water for bot…

We are not talking about a huge inconvenience, but we are also not talking about a huge effect. If we want to have a significant impact we can either have almost everybody cut their usage in half, or have a few cut their usage by a few percent.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#245

Post by tajen »

philwelch wrote: post #233
tajen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I'm suggesting to raise taxes to increase water price. It's not totally capitalism and I wonder whether there's a name for that. In my country: - Left wing politics are about increasing taxes on the rich to redistribute to social systems, - Right wing politics is about making things simpler for companies, including lower taxes, - Capitalist ecologists (which I'm trying to find a better name for) are about tr…

What do you do when petrol consumption diminishes to the point that it's no longer a good revenue source? At that point, government can do things (increase vehicle weight through higher safety standards, refuse to invest in public transportation) to safeguard their cash cow.

> What do you do when petrol consumption diminishes to the point that it's no longer a good revenue source?

... Survive?

I mean that's the goal of it, it's to decrease the consumption of this resource if it's considered harmful to the biodiversity (in the case of petrol) or wasted (in the case of water). At no point is the goal is to make the govt richer, that's why I said income tax should be reduced thereasmuch.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#246

Post by philwelch »

tajen wrote: post #245
philwelch wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when petrol consumption diminishes to the point that it's no longer a good revenue source? At that point, government can do things (increase vehicle weight through higher safety standards, refuse to invest in public transportation) to safeguard their cash cow.

> What do you do when petrol consumption diminishes to the point that it's no longer a good revenue source? ... Survive? I mean that's the goal of it, it's to decrease the consumption of this resource if it's considered harmful to the biodiversity (in the case of petrol) or wasted (in the case of water). At no point is the goal is to make the govt richer, that's why I said income tax should be reduced thereasmuch.

Right, but then you have to raise income taxes again once the revenue stream from petrol dries up.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#247

Post by williamcotton »

vizeroth wrote: post #229
williamcotton wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Central Valley is not and has never been a fully arid desert. While the southern San Joaquin Valley does indeed get very little rainfall, the mountains that drain in to it normally get plenty of water. Tulare Lake, once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, was right in the middle of the driest parts of Kern and Tulare counties. The lake has even reappeared following a period of unusually high…

The Central Valley has never been a fully arid desert as long as there were not farmers there diverting the water. When they created a desert (in the 1800s), the federal government stepped in and diverted water from even further north and east. Of course, the farmers didn't do it all on their own, as lakes were drying up in California before they got here.

This isn't true. There is a natural rain shadow in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

The California Aqueduct takes water from the Sierras and Central Valley and supplies southern cities like San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, LA and Palmdale.

I'm not really sure what you're referring to by "the government stepped in and diverted water" comment. Or by "all the lakes were drying up before they got here".

What are your sources?

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#248

Post by [deleted] »

nawitus wrote: post #95
bduerst wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr: Desal is too energy intensive and expensive to be feasible while other conservation options haven't been tried yet. Also, massive potential environmental impact for water intake and brine output.

I find it odd that it's too expensive. It's cheaper than the price of water in e.g. Finland and many European countries, yet I've never heard anyone complain about the price water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Economics http://www.vercon.fi/fi/tietoa-vedenkulutuksesta/veden-hinta...

[deleted]

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#249

Post by hammock »

kemiller wrote: post #183
hammock wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it is for the foods mentioned in the article: Watermelon......... 8.2 cal/gal Almond............. 7.0 Head of broccoli... 5.9 Cantaloupe......... 3.7 Corn cob........... 1.5 Source: USDA

Do you really mean cal/gal? Corn has fewer calories per gallon of water than watermelon? It's not gal/cal?

Refers to total water used in the cultivation of said product. Not water retained in the final product
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