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The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

cnn.com

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Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#71

Post by hasmanean »

mcphage wrote: post #68
hasmanean wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydroponics allow you grow crops in PVC pipes with a lot less water wastage and theoretically maybe even move them around on trucks. You could grow something on a parking lot. Could be the future if climate change results in unpredictable weather and you don’t want to lose your crop to an early frost. Northern Ontario has tons of lakes, nice summers and lots of rock to anchor humongous hydroponic towers to.

> Hydroponics allow you grow crops in PVC pipes with a lot less water wastage and theoretically maybe even move them around on trucks. You could grow something on a parking lot. I really like hydroponics, but you never (rarely?) see it used to grow heavier, food-dense foods like potatoes, or anything that grows on a tree. It’s all leafy salad greens and strawberries. I don’t really know why that is.

Maybe because they’d have to be sealed against light to grow root vegetables.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#72

Post by AlotOfReading »

xref wrote: post #65
AlotOfReading wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona today is using less water now than it did in the 50s, despite that massive increase in population. There's hope that by the end of the decade it will be entirely groundwater neutral. The population is not really the issue, especially given that domestic usage isn't anywhere close to the largest consumer.

Crossposting from yesterday’s thread where Phoenix is somehow getting held up as the platonic ideal of water responsibility: > Phoenix has made strides, but largely because it started from such a low, low bar. Exemplified by the Navajo Generating Plant, one of the largest coal fired power plants ever built, just to power pumps for lifting Colorado River water 2900ft up to Phoenix. > Not to mention the damage to the C…

The Colorado is a far more complicated discussion to have. Arizona contributes to overuse with the CAP, but it's a bit misleading to frame that discussion without bringing in the wider context of border politics, the all-american canal, and how the CAP water gets used.

As for the NGS, you're aware that it was built after hydro was (rightly) rejected by environmental groups in the 70s and has already been torn down?

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#73

Post by zepto »

rocknor wrote: post #36
neverminder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> climate change isn't some liberal fetish It's not and I'm pretty sure most people agree. But the activists are focusing their efforts in all the wrong places. We have Extinction Rebellion extremists gluing themselves to electric trains in London. Electric. In the mean while, the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializ…

> the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializing. The growing number of people is the main problem. Bullshit. The western ignorance and entitlement is unreal. Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. If someone is…

> Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population.

Historical levels are irrelevant. Only present and future levels matter.

> If someone is to be blamed for climate change, it's them.

Blaming dead people is irrelevant.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#74

Post by diveanon »

sbierwagen wrote: post #38
diveanon wrote: post #13

For anyone interested in what this may look like, I highly recommend the book “The Water Knife”. It focuses on the water rights disputes of a future dystopian US where states fight proxy wars with each other to secure access to water. It’s set in Los Vegas and Arizona as they are coping with a refugee crisis of Floridians and Texans fleeing the impact of climate change. The author Paola Bacigalupi also wrote “The Win…

Windup Girl is not exactly diamond-hard science fiction, since the biopunk genre waves a wand and makes electronics largely go away. Energy storage is done by winding springs with working animals, genetic engineering features prominently, but for aesthetic reasons you never see the words "solar" or "electric motor". This was plausible-ish in 2009, (At the time the only EV on the road was the obscure and blisteringly…

My understanding of this was that they lost the ability to manufacture semi-conductors during the collapse and that the mining and refining process of rare earths was too energy intensive to be profitable in a resource starved economy.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#75

Post by rocknor »

zepto wrote: post #73
rocknor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializing. The growing number of people is the main problem. Bullshit. The western ignorance and entitlement is unreal. Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. If someone is…

> Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. Historical levels are irrelevant. Only present and future levels matter. > If someone is to be blamed for climate change, it's them. Blaming dead people is irrelevant.

> Historical levels are irrelevant

Yeah, no. The west industrialized by polluting the world, and it still reaping its benefits at the expense of the rest of the world. Historical emissions are absolutely relevant because they affect the present. Nice try though.

> Only present and future levels matter.

Yes. But present levels are high because of the historical emissions of the west. And presently the west is using way more than their allocated CO2 footprint.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#76

Post by rocknor »

tomjen3 wrote: post #67
rocknor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializing. The growing number of people is the main problem. Bullshit. The western ignorance and entitlement is unreal. Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. If someone is…

Historically the west has pumped out more CO2, but we are not talking about historic levels, we are talking about current and future levels as those are what we can do something about. And here China and India is going to be the main issue in the growing CO2 production. This has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with physics. We haven't made great renewables for the same reason we haven't made flying ca…

> but we are not talking about historic levels, we are talking about current and future levels

That's the problem. We need to talk about it. The west is causing a disproportionate amount of emissions despite the climate emergency, and still their citizens are blissfully unaware and ignorant. That's obviously unfair so justice is relevant here. Talking educates people and allows them to do something about it.

Yes it's going to be an issue, but nothing can be done about it. For poor countries like India, industrialization with climate consequences is still way better than poverty!

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#77

Post by sbierwagen »

diveanon wrote: post #74
sbierwagen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windup Girl is not exactly diamond-hard science fiction, since the biopunk genre waves a wand and makes electronics largely go away. Energy storage is done by winding springs with working animals, genetic engineering features prominently, but for aesthetic reasons you never see the words "solar" or "electric motor". This was plausible-ish in 2009, (At the time the only EV on the road was the obscure and blisteringly…

My understanding of this was that they lost the ability to manufacture semi-conductors during the collapse and that the mining and refining process of rare earths was too energy intensive to be profitable in a resource starved economy.

Sure, but like, coal exists. At our current consumption rate there is centuries of coal still in the ground: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/how-much-coal-is-le...

It would be rather rude to burn it in a post sealevel-rise world, but it is still there. Even after peak oil there would be electricity and heavy industry. It wouldn't be hard to lose advanced semiconductor manufacturing, (A war in Taiwan would do it) but halting production of advanced chips just rewinds us to 1980, not 1600.

PV production is ultra high volume and geographically dispersed. I don't see any way to take it all out without hundreds of EMP bombs or some kind of ultra-solar flare that fries all electronics worldwide.

In which case you wouldn't have genetic engineering. Or cities. What's left of humanity would be in small villages, engaging in subsidence agriculture.

You could set a novel in such a future, but it would be rather monotonous and unpleasant.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#78

Post by zepto »

rocknor wrote: post #75
zepto wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. Historical levels are irrelevant. Only present and future levels matter. > If someone is to be blamed for climate change, it's them. Blaming dead people is irrelevant.

> Historical levels are irrelevant Yeah, no. The west industrialized by polluting the world, and it still reaping its benefits at the expense of the rest of the world. Historical emissions are absolutely relevant because they affect the present. Nice try though. > Only present and future levels matter. Yes. But present levels are high because of the historical emissions of the west. And presently the west is using wa…

> Yeah, no. The west industrialized by polluting the world,

That’s not relevant, unless all you care about is blame.

> and it still reaping its benefits at the expense of the rest of the world.

Anyone who industrializes or uses the products of industrialization reaps the benefits of the west’s industrialization.

If ‘the expense’ you refer to is climate change, the west will experience that too.

> Historical emissions are absolutely relevant because they affect the present.

They aren’t relevant because the past is not changeable.

> Nice try though.

Nice try at what?

> present levels are high because of the historical emissions of the west.

And because of the historical emissions of everyone else, but that’s not relevant to the future.

> And presently the west is using way more than their allocated CO2 footprint.

Who allocated a footprint?

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