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The Colorado River is shrinking

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Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#201

Post by tzs »

anonAndOn wrote: post #47
ngngngng wrote: post #10

Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country. In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country…

The US exports massive amounts of water in the form of hay and alfalfa.[0] This practice may not survive once the reservoirs completely dry out. [0] https://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/+symposium/proceedings/2019/Arti...

Very little of the water used to grow hay and alfalfa actually ends up in the hay and alfalfa to be exported. Most of the water ends up in the atmosphere via evapotranspiration.

The amount exported is something like 0.005% of the evapotranspiration amount.

Here are some numbers [1] for Idaho crops. There might be some differences in Utah but they should be in the same ballpark.

> Not much water is exported with alfalfa hay. Potential irrigated alfalfa hay yield at elevations near 4000 feet is about 7.5 tons/acre. Hay harvested at 12% moisture removes 240 lbs water/ton hay, or 1,800 lbs/acre for a normal crop of alfalfa hay per year.

> Evapotranspiration (ET) is the primary use of water by alfalfa and averages about 36 inches/year (900 mm) at Kimberly. The ET at peak periods of 0.4 inches/day (10 mm/day) can reach 4080 tons of water per acre and 45 tons per acre per day.

[1] https://www.uidaho.edu/-/media/UIdaho-Responsive/Files/cals/...

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#202

Post by WkndTriathlete »

rtkwe wrote: post #159
CountDrewku wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, You might as well just say people shouldn't be living in most of the western US then since a majority of it receives very little rainfall. It's very easy to call these people out when you're not directly affected. Yes just strip them of their major sources of income. No issue there.... You need a better plan than just telling the Governor…

You can live out there with little water impact if you don't insist on importing the kind of green water intensive landscaping that the rest of the country wants. People living there is relatively ok from a water point of view (though from a power usage perspective we really should be building very different homes in that area too) it's doing farming in some of the drier parts of the US that seems wasteful when we kn…

Nitpick: in the wet areas of the country it's not that we want green landscaping, it's that it is almost impossible to not have green landscaping because of how much rain we get.

Lay down a layer of rock landscaping over landscaping fabric around a home in suburban Minnesota without maintaining it (e.g. by aggressively applying weed preventer and weeding it) and in 3-5 years it will be covered with native prairie grasses and weeds growing between and around the rock.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#203

Post by vkou »

Nzen wrote: post #174
knuthsat wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a segment on water usage in Cowspiracy for California I think. Water usage in industry is massive. Individuals aren't to blame and shouldn't take any part of the burden. Similarily, CO2.

While the effect of residents is small, the usage of other sectors is, ultimately, in service of residents. People raise cattle in response to or anticipation of demand. Those cattle use more water than if we raised chickens or wheat for seitan. I consider it unlikely that a top down campaign to ration beef, in service of water usage, would succeed without a change in residential culture. I am more apt to agree with…

> While the effect of residents is small, the usage of other sectors is, ultimately, in service of residents

As long as unsustainable water usage continues to be subsidized, I, as a customer, have little ability to prioritize less water intensive products.

If you want consumers to make informed choices, either add the externalities to the monetary price, or enforce rationing.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#204

Post by dylan604 »

Mvhsz wrote: post #185
throwawayboise wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more macro question is can enough alfalfa be grown elsewhere, in areas that don't need so much artifical irrigation, or is the Utah production required to meet demand?

Not a farmer, but alfalfa can be grown many places. I watched a gabe brown video where he mentioned growing it for cattle grazing in North Dakota, which is basically a cold desert. Presumably US farmers in wetter climates like the upper midwest and southeast are capable of growing more profitable crops than cattle feed. Just one example: If we switched to electric cars and eliminated the need for the midwest to grow…

>then a tremendous amount of farmland would open up.

I'm not so sure. CorpFarmUSA will still want to continue growing the exact same crop, and would probably just find alternate buyers. They have so much clout with their lobby. Knee jerk reaction is to Save The Farmers!!!, yet if people actually stopped and looked at what how these farms are operating, the knee jerk reaction might change.

However, it is 2021 and I'm very cynical, so I do not believe people are willing to consider any view outside their own to be able to come to comprimise.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#205

Post by blooalien »

delecti wrote: post #160
blooalien wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that in this particular issue the natural systems of the planet are straight up breaking down and soon could spiral so out of control as to be entirely beyond our ability to do anything about the issue. The longer we wait, the higher the odds it becomes "unfixable".

I don't disagree with any of that. I'm not saying things will be good globally, or even in very many places. I'm just saying that it's likely that climate change will leave some areas of the planet better than they are now. Whether or not we have the ability now, or will have the ability in the future, to reverse course on climate change was entirely unrelated to the point I was trying to make.

> … "it's likely that climate change will leave some areas of the planet better than they are now."

Almost certain to be true … temporarily.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#206

Post by blooalien »

Niglodonicus wrote: post #155
blooalien wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I been upvoting everyone who makes realistic and valid points, even if I don't like what they have to say, because especially in discussions about this particular topic, we need to entertain a wide variety of viewpoints and be willing to accept that not any one magical solution is gonna fix this. The reality is that the whole "climate crisis" thing is gonna require humanity in general to gang up on the pr…

It's a lot bigger of an issue than merely the climate crisis. Regarding trying to prevent it (and related issues), we would not only needed to have started 50+ years ago (when it was already clear what was happening), but the incentives in our economic system just do not work in such a way to allow for all the capitalist decision makers to all collectively stop turning a profit. The system is somewhat like rolling a…

> https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/index#wiki_what_would...

Some good info at that link. Thank you for that.

(Gonna take me a while to read through it all, but at least it gives me something to do with my time besides just storing up survival resources and stress-levels while I wait for it to happen.)

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#207

Post by e40 »

ngngngng wrote: post #10

Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country. In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country…

We have removed conflict of interest completely from the conversations of today. Jesus, that's one huge conflict of interest, but no one in power and the voters just don't care. Depressing!!

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#208

Post by rory »

OldHand2018 wrote: post #156
mastax wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Great Lakes Compact forbids that. As an agreement between states it went through US Congress, so theoretically an act of Congress could repeal or modify it. However this seems unlikely to me due to the Midwest's outsized political influence and how protective locals are of the lakes.

The Great Lakes Compact has a giant loophole you could drive a train full of water right through. You can export water out of the watershed in containers no larger than 5.7 gallons (~21.5 liters) Build a short loop of rail, half in the watershed and half out of it. Drive a train in a circle continuously. When you are inside the watershed, fill up the 5.7 gallon containers (just make it a continuous waterfall that you…

> There's nothing anybody could do about it.

All the states with GL watershed agreed to the compact not-so-long ago. In a case of such egregious rule-skirting, couldn't they just agree to close the loophole?

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#209

Post by WkndTriathlete »

01100011 wrote: post #196
bluGill wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively? No. The Colorado river is big. I mean really big. And we are using it all. Sure the Mississippi has more than enough water, but the elevation of the source of the Mississippi (where you can walk across it) is a lot lower than most of the Colorado river. That means we need massive numbers of pumps to…

So we can run desalination plants, with all of their various pumps and external costs related to their consumables, with magical free energy(solar? nuclear?) but we can't pump water uphill because energy. Did I understand that right?

Well energy, #1, and you should actually do the napkin math to figure out that it takes an enormous amount of energy to pump 14.8 maf/year (which is the average annual flow of the Colorado) of water uphill. (Hint: Desalination of water for California comes out to far less than petajoules.)

But #2, the Great Lakes are effectively staying level right now. Pumping 14.8 maf/year out of the Great Lakes would eventually deplete those as well.

The Mississippi flow is 73.1 maf/year, but diverting 14.8 maf/year would result in catastrophic devastation to the surrounding ecosystem and other uses of the river.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#210

Post by vmception »

avgDev wrote: post #142
vmception wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that you aren't correct on some time frame, its more so that you have to live your life there for the entire duration that you aren't correct. So, whatever helps you sleep at night.

But I don't. I just plan to hold onto the property, if I buy another house. As dev with a dual citizenship and ability to work anywhere in Europe, I have pretty high mobility and I can always move.

I considered that but you wrote "why I stay in the "Great lakes states""

In any case, yes it is a bet to hold property there for that reason. Good luck.

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