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A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

story.californiasunday.com

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Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#81

Post by ebcode »

anamexis wrote: post #71
ebcode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. But I wouldn't classify the water usage label as "penalizing". It's more, um, informational. So if you're in CA, you might set an ideal "virtual water budget" for yourself (100 kl/mo for example), but if you're in VA, your ideal could be several times that.

But where you are located isn't what matters, it's where the water was consumed. It does not matter where you are eating Californian almonds; those almonds still used Californian water.

That's another good point. Then the only way I could see it working universally is if you assign a price to the water consumed, where it's costlier in CA than VA.

Then you can say that a single almond grown in CA uses $.001 H2O, but in VA it's $.0001 H2O, or something like that.

It's just a thought experiment, of course. But it seems like a worthwhile one, if only to introduce the idea of accountability for the cost of water consumption in various foods.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#82

Post by hourislate »

sremani wrote: post #58
hourislate wrote: post #5

California is a special place. No where else in the USA/Canada do you have such a wonderful climate where you can have so many growing seasons (6?). It is the Bread Basket of NA. It would be worth helping find a solution to provide this area of the country with water.

Unless North America is into eating Strawberry flavored Almond Bread, CA is not bread Basket of NA. Garlic basket - Yes, Strawberry Basket - Yes, Nut Basket - For sure (if you count hollywood celeb and eccentric world saviors of SV). But bread basket .. nope. The people of CA think the sun rotates around them. The most arable land in 'Murica is the mid-west and Mississippi river system. America with out CA will happi…

Yeah, I just love the Mid-West and Mississippi fresh fruit and fresh vegetables in the middle of Winter. Who knew they had a harvest of Lettuce in January.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#83

Post by F_r_k »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #80
dodobirdlord wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water is heavy, and almost none of the water used in the world is used for human consumption. It will never make more economic sense to ship water long distances than to move the economic activities that require it to the source of the water. This is leaving aside the subject of aqueducts, but there's really only so long you can make an aqueduct, and most countries border countries in roughly similar economic situati…

> there's really only so long you can make an aqueduct This doesn't make any sense. Oil pipelines cross continents.

Good luck watering your fields with a 1m diam pipeline...

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#84

Post by analog31 »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #35
Scramblejams wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the article is correct that water will become more valuable than oil, then of course you're gonna ship that water to California. The economics will mandate it. Now whether the article is correct about that prediction is another question. It's an understatement to say I'm skeptical. Desalination plants produce expensive water, but not that expensive...

I'm skeptical that this "water more valuable than oil" prediction will come to pass. Currently, a thousand gallons of freshwater from a desalination plant costs between $2.50 to $5 to the end consumer in the US. By contrast, a thousand gallons of West Texas Intermediate crude oil costs around $2500. And oil is becoming more scarce as we burn through it. https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-05-15/desalination-expensiv...

Perhaps a different way of looking at it, is to consider the cost relative to how much we use. For instance, I use one or two gallons of water every time I flush the toilet, and I could certainly look up my water bill to see how much I use overall. But I rarely go through a gallon of gasoline per day in my car.

The main cost of water is probably energy, so the two are probably tied together. Water is less dense in energy terms, thus harder to transport if it can't be obtained locally.

This makes me think that depleting local water sources will have more of an effect on geographic distribution of populations, than oil.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#85

Post by GavinMcG »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #79
bilbo0s wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically like the states that want to take water from the great lakes. Texas is crying foul because of New Mexico's actions. Florida expects to be given access to the water resources of Georgia, (even though the Army Corps of Engineers has been clear that Georgia needs the resources for things like navigation and, crucially, flood control.) States like Nevada expect access to Great Lakes water. You even have really…

> Florida expects to be given access to the water resources of Georgia, (even though the Army Corps of Engineers has been clear that Georgia needs the resources for things like navigation and, crucially, flood control.) My dumb model says that adding a large drain to Georgia's water system (aqueducts to Florida) is a pretty strong flood control in itself. How does this damage Georgia's flood control capacity?

Because the issue is flood control. Simply lowering Georgia's water table doesn't change the fact that there's variable input.

Also places with less water can still flood. See Arizona.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#86

Post by gpm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #79
bilbo0s wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically like the states that want to take water from the great lakes. Texas is crying foul because of New Mexico's actions. Florida expects to be given access to the water resources of Georgia, (even though the Army Corps of Engineers has been clear that Georgia needs the resources for things like navigation and, crucially, flood control.) States like Nevada expect access to Great Lakes water. You even have really…

> Florida expects to be given access to the water resources of Georgia, (even though the Army Corps of Engineers has been clear that Georgia needs the resources for things like navigation and, crucially, flood control.) My dumb model says that adding a large drain to Georgia's water system (aqueducts to Florida) is a pretty strong flood control in itself. How does this damage Georgia's flood control capacity?

I don't know about Georgia, but a problem that I've heard of is that dry land is worse at absorbing water than wet land, so if you dry land out too much and then it rains you are more prone to flooding.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#87

Post by sremani »

hourislate wrote: post #82
sremani wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless North America is into eating Strawberry flavored Almond Bread, CA is not bread Basket of NA. Garlic basket - Yes, Strawberry Basket - Yes, Nut Basket - For sure (if you count hollywood celeb and eccentric world saviors of SV). But bread basket .. nope. The people of CA think the sun rotates around them. The most arable land in 'Murica is the mid-west and Mississippi river system. America with out CA will happi…

Yeah, I just love the Mid-West and Mississippi fresh fruit and fresh vegetables in the middle of Winter. Who knew they had a harvest of Lettuce in January.

From Wikipedia:

The breadbasket of a country is a region which, because of the richness of the soil and/or advantageous climate, produces large quantities of wheat or other grain.

note: Your smugness is nauseating!

note2: can some one explain flagging rules on HN.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#88

Post by gpm »

m0zg wrote: post #16

Help me out here. Why is using such vast quantities of water necessarily a bad thing? It evaporates right back into the atmosphere and then condenses and finds its way to the rivers again and again. It doesn't disappear. It doesn't get irretrievably ruined with industrial chemicals. Is this mostly about limited capacity?

Most rainfall (77% according to this [0]) falls over the ocean. So we suck fresh water out of the ground and then turn it into salt water.

[0] https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/233/what-is...

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#89

Post by dang »

hourislate wrote: post #82
sremani wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless North America is into eating Strawberry flavored Almond Bread, CA is not bread Basket of NA. Garlic basket - Yes, Strawberry Basket - Yes, Nut Basket - For sure (if you count hollywood celeb and eccentric world saviors of SV). But bread basket .. nope. The people of CA think the sun rotates around them. The most arable land in 'Murica is the mid-west and Mississippi river system. America with out CA will happi…

Yeah, I just love the Mid-West and Mississippi fresh fruit and fresh vegetables in the middle of Winter. Who knew they had a harvest of Lettuce in January.

This comment breaks the site guidelines. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here. They include "Don't be snarky."

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#90

Post by dang »

sremani wrote: post #58
hourislate wrote: post #5

California is a special place. No where else in the USA/Canada do you have such a wonderful climate where you can have so many growing seasons (6?). It is the Bread Basket of NA. It would be worth helping find a solution to provide this area of the country with water.

Unless North America is into eating Strawberry flavored Almond Bread, CA is not bread Basket of NA. Garlic basket - Yes, Strawberry Basket - Yes, Nut Basket - For sure (if you count hollywood celeb and eccentric world saviors of SV). But bread basket .. nope. The people of CA think the sun rotates around them. The most arable land in 'Murica is the mid-west and Mississippi river system. America with out CA will happi…

> The people of CA think the sun rotates around them.

Regional swipes like that break the site guidelines. Please make your substantive points without stooping to that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Doubly so for "Your smugness is nauseating!" below, even though you were provoked. I'm sure you already know that.)

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