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Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

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Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#201

Post by seanp2k2 »

tejohnso wrote: post #126
eldaisfish wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, what i find aggravating is the insistence of many that consumption is the answer. Electric vehicles and their associated manufacturing inputs combined with power grid upgrades will be the solution. No. The solution is to work together as a tribe, not as individuals. Instead of personal electric vehicles, we should be electrifying logistics and improving public transit. Sadly, those who will pay the price…

> The solution is to work together as a tribe, not as individuals. Agreed. It's not about continuing our way of life and maintaining the same mentality, but with alternative tech. The fix for this requires leadership and cooperation and significant culture shift. At a global level. Unfortunately we're not even close to where we need to be socially or diplomatically. And yes, those who are least able to affect change,…

Surely most here have seen and read enough dystopian sci-fi to understand how bad it can get before the wealthy & powerful feel the pain or are encouraged to do anything about it.

I don’t expect this situation to change until it’s more profitable to do the right thing. Capitalism + game theory all the way down. Unfortunately, the governments that can make a dent in this are heavily lobbied by the same industries they’d be changing the economics of, so what we get is misinformation campaigns (“cOnGReSs cReAtED DuSt bOwL” signs all down I5) and large-scale inaction + pleading with the public to just install lower-flow shower heads and only water plants 1x/week.

I grow food in my own backyard in pots and I’m going to keep those alive. Trying to turn the desert green in Central Valley CA just because some people moved there a few generations ago and took advantage of the infrastructure situation isn’t a tenable solution. There’s so much green open space out east that I really don’t buy the “but then where would food come from?” arguments either. People built up in the wrong place. Now it’s a crisis. It’ll take years / decades to build up supply chains and infra in other places; I get that, but if we just keep kicking the can down the road we’re just screwing our selves more and more each year. Time to rip the bandaid off and pass realistic prices down to industrial users and force a mass exodus of that industry to places where it makes a lot more sense to farm.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#202

Post by seanp2k2 »

deaddodo wrote: post #101
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will happen either way, mind you, the only question is whether it destroys the ability of everyone else to live there at all. With how expensive California is - desalination will not make it uninhabitable for the average person. It will be cost prohibitive to desalinate a gallon of water to grow one pistachio, though.

> With how expensive California is - desalination will not make it uninhabitable for the average person. Which is exactly why they have a dozen or so desalination plants in operation, with a couple dozen more set to be spun up in the coming decades. > It will be cost prohibitive to desalinate a gallon of water to grow one pistachio, though. This is it, which is why ag and other industries lobby so hard for "water rig…

The best part is all the bleating and political signage in Central Valley. They don’t even realize how much their lives depend on government subsidies, but they’ll loudly complain about welfare and immigration while employing day laborers and paying them cash, cheating on their own taxes, and receiving tons of benefits from the government.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#203

Post by ncmncm »

rsync wrote: post #184
DannyBee wrote: post #18

It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…

"There is likely no way to fix this without completely destroying the livelihoods of a lot of farmers, and nobody wants to deal with that for real." I disagree. I hate to be the hand-wavy "desalinization" guy but ... We have completely green solar energy and desal (I assume) wouldn't even necessarily require a base load. We could have all the water we need and everyone in California could have a nice green lawn. Or w…

We need all of the solar panels we can array to displace fossil fuel and stave off imminent environmental collapse.

Only after we have built out enough solar and wind generating capacity, and (eventually) storage to entirely displace fossil burning will we have excess power that can justifiably be used for desalination. Even then, synthesizing hydrogen and ammonia for industry will absorb all the excess we can muster.

Anyway, direct solar desalination is a much more efficient method (i.e., 100%) than relying on electric power (typically, in practice, <20%).

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#204

Post by splitstud »

newbamboo wrote: post #129
formerkrogemp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirsty folks from California and the Southwest wanting more water to be piped in to feed their water intensive crops and lawns in the desert. I'm sure that'll go down well in outlying regions. Maybe change in meteorological patterns and population levels hitting critical mass without the attendant infrastructure are bad for water levels. Aquifers are depleted. Rainfall is reduced. There's no more snowmelt to bank on…

“folks from California and the Southwest wanting more water” People don’t complain about Floridians or iowaians. It’s always the brown bodies from California “driving up prices” and “drinking all the water.” California is a dog whistle for anti-immigrant viewpoints. “Folks from California.” We know who you mean when you say that. Immigrants and other “water drinkers.”

No post body was provided.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#205

Post by seanp2k2 »

amluto wrote: post #88
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within the already small residential slice, regulations are weird. When my parents lived in the LA area, they had a large swimming pool and an irrigated lawn but were required to have ultra low flush toilets. The amount of water saved by those toilets (which often required multiple flushes to empty the bowl of waste) paled in comparison with the government approved swimming pool and sprinkler systems.

A modern low flush toilet is excellent. They flush considerably better than the old 5 gpf toilets. I’ve seen plumbers advise replacing old 5 gpf toilets with 1.28 gpf toilets to reduce the frequency of clogs. For amusement, you can look up MAPS testing. People flush varying amounts of standardized pretend poop to make sure that toilets work well. (But yes, there was a generation of low flush toilets that were essenti…

Good points about toilets, but look on sat maps and see how many people have covered vs uncovered pools.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#206

Post by seanp2k2 »

mistrial9 wrote: post #109
Sharlin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawns in general are a truly horrendous idea. Lawns in a literal desert are probably one of the worst ideas that have ever became popular.

golf

Golf courses in Vegas and LA

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#207

Post by ncmncm »

bradleyjg wrote: post #124
pjc50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which species and ecosystems are you proposing eliminating? ("environmental use" really means "leave it in the river"; reducing environmental use to zero means making rivers never reach the sea because you've extracted 100% of the water.)

Dams dramatically increase evaporation. Pull down the dams on the Colorado and other rivers and you’ll decrease that 50%. It’ll be good for fish, and species that depend on fish, too.

Floating solar farms on the reservoirs will radically reduce evaporation, besides providing power. The power generated can be used, in many cases, to pump water back up to the next higher reservoir.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#208

Post by ncmncm »

Spooky23 wrote: post #32
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA water use is 50% environment, 40% agriculture, 10% residential. Maybe we should focus on reducing that 50%? It was nice and all when we had plenty of water to waste but it’s time to revisit those policies. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

So we should turn the Northern California wilderness into a desert as well? Maybe the people who want to secede have a point after all! That’s pretty monstrous.

Especially since the people who want to secede are identically the people most eager to drive all other species to extinction.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#209

Post by danans »

rsync wrote: post #188
danans wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saltwater is in the ocean, and the agricultural areas lacking water (south central valley) are on the other side of the coastal mountain range. So it will be a huge energy expenditure to 1) desalinate and 2) pump the water over the mountain range. I suspect it would be too expensive for agriculture, which relies on artificially cheap water.

"The saltwater is in the ocean, and the agricultural areas lacking water (south central valley) are on the other side of the coastal mountain range. So it will be a huge energy expenditure to 1) desalinate and 2) pump the water over the mountain range." I'm not so sure ... A large amount of municipal/consumer water, from reservoirs, comes down those mountains - and if the coastal users reduced that demand (as they re…

> A large amount of municipal/consumer water, from reservoirs, comes down those mountains - and if the coastal users reduced that demand (as they received water, locally, from desal) then that water could either stay in the mountains or be redirected elsewhere - with gravity.

Given how small of piece of the water pie municipal/household consumption is, that would have little impact on the overall water crisis, but result in a massive increase in energy consumption, which will not primarily come from renewables. Who should pay for that desalination infrastructure and the energy to run them (to say nothing of the externalities of all that extra fossil fuel consumed)?

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#210

Post by beej71 »

neverartful wrote: post #52
DannyBee wrote: post #18

It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…

At what point should desalination plants be considered for agriculture irrigation in California?

I ran the numbers once and you'd have to basically turn the entire coast into desal plants to make enough water for ag. I don't think it's viable, either environmentally or economically.
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