Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Sure they work, and technological innovation will no doubt bring the price of producing fresh water from a NEIGHBORING ocean down substantially. But our state is over a thousand uphill miles from the nearest ocean. The mechanical energy required to make that water available here would be extremely expensive. If we need this type of water transfer to meets the needs of greatly increased population in the state, you can bet that water use not directly beneficial to humanity will be drastically curtailed.
Agreed I was thinking about it from the standpoint of CO turning off the spigot and coastal states have to build desal plants. It would never be cost effective this far inland.
Sure they work, and technological innovation will no doubt bring the price of producing fresh water from a NEIGHBORING ocean down substantially. But our state is over a thousand uphill miles from the nearest ocean. The mechanical energy required to make that water available here would be extremely expensive. If we need this type of water transfer to meets the needs of greatly increased population in the state, you can bet that water use not directly beneficial to humanity will be drastically curtailed.
Colorado won't use the ocean water but Califnoria will allowing us to use more of the water from our state.
Agreed I was thinking about it from the standpoint of CO turning off the spigot and coastal states have to build desal plants. It would never be cost effective this far inland.
That's very true, but you could shift water sources. For example, as I recall, Colorado River water supplies water to southern California. If that was turned off because desalinization was generally cost effective, the states through which the river flows could access more water from the river.
That's very true, but you could shift water sources. For example, as I recall, Colorado River water supplies water to southern California. If that was turned off because desalinization was generally cost effective, the states through which the river flows could access more water from the river.
Also worth noting is that Utah has a large lake that could serve as a source of water for a desal plant.
I laugh when I read projections that indicate a population in Colorado of 10 million by 2050. It is the most simplistic kind of forecasting there is--take a historical growth trend of a few years, and trend that line far into the future. What that never takes into account is one very important word: LIMITS. Resources, water being one of many, are FINITE. They have limits. And when those limits are reached, long-term trends based on the assumption of there being no limits, well, break. The only question is when the trend breaks, and for Colorado and southwestern water supplies, the limits will be reached soon--sooner than most people think.
My personal prediction is that Colorado's population in 2050 will not be 10 million, it will be amazing if it even is the current population of 5 million. I predict it will very possibly be less than half that. And, if the population is between 5 and 10 million, the quality of life for those residents is going to be very poor--near Third World status--with desertification, contaminated and inadequate water supplies a grave problem in much of the state.
Models of increasing life expectancy are similarly flawed. Typical life expectancy in the United States has likely already peaked. Despite the massive expenditures on US health care, the younger generations in America are now in considerably worse overall health than their parents were at the same age. This even as some very destructive habits engaged in by the Boomers and their parents, such as cigarette smoking, have declined. Things like environmental contamination--water contamination being a major one, bad lifestyle choices--such as poor eating habits and lack of adequate physical activity, and the explosion of antibiotic resistant "superbugs" are going to ravage the population in the years ahead. All of this while the US medical system implodes under unsustainable costs and bureaucratic paralysis. Given the fragility of the completely petroleum-dependent "long-haul" US transportation system, there very likely will also be significant food shortages developing the US in the coming decades. In this region, our decades-long propensity to wildly grow population while de-watering irrigated crop agriculture could disproportionately increase potential food shortages in this region should one develop. Of course, nobody wants to talk about or acknowledge that possibility, either.
Pollyanna's like Josseppie can continue to delude themselves by swallowing all the "happy talk" Kool-Aid being dispensed by the propagandists, but the people who work deep in the innards of things like the Western US water supply infrastructure hold no such happy illusions about what lies ahead. It's bad, and they know it. They may not articulate that a lot publicly (after all, they have some stake in keeping the public calm ahead of disaster), but talk to them privately and what one hears is a much different tune.
While working in the pharmacy I have observed that bacterial infections have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Our arsenal of antibiotics is becoming more limited while at the same time there are more and more antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is only a matter of time before we have a serious outbreak of a completely antibiotic resistant bacteria that we will not be able to stop until many many people succumb to its effects. In this day and age when people are able to move swiftly around the globe, an antibiotic resistant bacteria will also be able to move through the world population quickly and it may not be easy to contain. Do research on Clostridium Dificile and "Nightmare Bacteria."
A prediction of a lower population in the future is definitely not out of line. Maybe this is natures way of restoring balance and bringing the natural world back into equilibrium or homeostasis. Water problem solved.
"With another million or so people expected to arrive along the a Front — the urban area in the north-central part of Utah — in the coming decades, that strain on the lake's water supply is expected to deepen. That's not to mention predictions of warmer temperatures and longer droughts for portions of the West, including Utah." [1]
The Great Salt Lake, lying just west of Salt Lake City, UT, does not have extra water to spare. In fact it resides at a lower level than it naturally would due the removal upstream of water that would otherwise flow into it.
This highly saline lake has no outlet, thus its salinity, with its level dictated by inflow volume and outflow due evaporation. Due its salinity its waters are buoyant, great for just floating about.
If one might recall, this lake even flooded at one point, threatening I-80 running just south of it. There was an article in National Geographic about this, with pictures.
The current lake level, as of today, is about four feet below normal, at 4,196.9 feet (normal lake level being roughly 4,200 feet). [2]
This lake, as with so much else in the West, serves as a sign and gauge of ongoing natural conditions. It will undoubtedly suffer lower levels due climate change. Although expansive in overall size, it does not contain all that much water, with an average depth of but 16 feet. Those thinking to use the waters of this lake would be better off tapping the rivers that flow into it—which is already being done.
While working in the pharmacy I have observed that bacterial infections have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Our arsenal of antibiotics is becoming more limited while at the same time there are more and more antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is only a matter of time before we have a serious outbreak of a completely antibiotic resistant bacteria that we will not be able to stop until many many people succumb to its effects. In this day and age when people are able to move swiftly around the globe, an antibiotic resistant bacteria will also be able to move through the world population quickly and it may not be easy to contain. Do research on Clostridium Dificile and "Nightmare Bacteria."
A prediction of a lower population in the future is definitely not out of line. Maybe this is natures way of restoring balance and bringing the natural world back into equilibrium or homeostasis. Water problem solved.
The outbreak will not be as large as you think, and it will not have a significant impact on the population of our state, our country, or our world.
The Bubonic Plague outbreaks killed 1/3 of the population of Europe. To see something of the same magnitude, we would have to have an outbreak that kills 1.65 million people in Colorado (63% of the Denver metro area), 105 million people in the USA (all the people in CA, NY, TX, FL, and NM), and 2.33 billion people in the world (slightly less than all of India and China combined).
I understand that these scary bacteria exist, but our understanding of how disease spreads, and out ability to quarantine the individuals who contract the bacteria will keep them from spreading widely through the population. Many may die, but to us 10,000 is a lot of deaths. In the global and national population sense, 10,000 is a drop in the bucket.
Population growth worldwide is slowing, not because of disease, but because women are having fewer children. The total fertility rate worldwide is at an all time low. Eventually the population growth will stop and the population may even begin a slow decline, but not because of disease.
While working in the pharmacy I have observed that bacterial infections have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Our arsenal of antibiotics is becoming more limited while at the same time there are more and more antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is only a matter of time before we have a serious outbreak of a completely antibiotic resistant bacteria that we will not be able to stop until many many people succumb to its effects. In this day and age when people are able to move swiftly around the globe, an antibiotic resistant bacteria will also be able to move through the world population quickly and it may not be easy to contain. Do research on Clostridium Dificile and "Nightmare Bacteria."
A prediction of a lower population in the future is definitely not out of line. Maybe this is natures way of restoring balance and bringing the natural world back into equilibrium or homeostasis. Water problem solved.
Unlike the ill-informed Pollyanna's that post on this forum, much of the medical community is extremely concerned about this problem. I personally know of a half-dozen people within a relatively small circle of my friends who are having serious health issues with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Twice in the last few years when I have been hospitalized for surgeries, I was released as soon as possible. Reason given by the doctors? To lessen my chances of contracting potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria endemic to the hospital facilities. The other thing that nearly any honest medical professional will admit, if pressed, is that the American medical system may be proficient at giving INTENSIVE treatment to a relatively small number of patients at a time, but it is almost wholly incapable of deploying EXTENSIVE treatment to large numbers of the population should some sort of deadly disease outbreak demand it. Such relatively small pin-pricks to the health system such as Hurricane Katrina proved that.
Back to the water issue, the problems are similar. The water issues now facing the southwestern United States are now massive and essentially intractable with the region's current population. More population growth can only take them toward complete disaster. The region's water system may still be robust enough, though less so with each additional year of population growth, to withstand some local or watershed-specific supply issues caused by drought, etc., but the system can not withstand a region-wide multi-year assault on water supplies that a widespread multi-year drought would cause. We are very near to that kind of crisis right now--about one more region-wide dry winter will do it.
There are few practical solutions left. More reservoirs? The cheap, easy-to-build ones have already been built (and some of those are facing structural or siltation problems). Desalinization of sea-water? An energy-intensive, capital-intensive impractical pipedream for anything larger than very limited local supply augmentation in areas immediately adjacent to an ocean. Reduction or elimination of agricultural irrigation to augment municipal water supplies? Only if people are willing to sacrifice some of all of the irrigated food production in the US, much of it located in the climatically favorable southwest US and Central Valley of California--irrigated agriculture representing about 25% of total US food production.
In the end, the best--and, in truth, only practical solutions to the southwest's water issues will center on better agricultural water practices coupled with very strict limitations on non-agricultural consumptive uses of water (lawn irrigation being a top one) and the adoption of a "no new taps and no new wells" policy for most municipalities and residential land developments, particularly in areas dependent on transmountain water diversions and/or underground water aquifers.
My feeling about optimism regarding tech advances, etc., is that it is imprudent to live and act *as if* those advances have already occurred and are in place. Until they are, if they are going to be at all, we as a society cannot act as if they are in place before they are. That strikes me as wishful thinking, not responsible reaction.
For the record I am but a humble certified pharmacy technician, CPhT. I have talked to patients who are having difficulties fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria and I have also talked with pharmacists who are very concerned about not having the antibiotics we need to fight new strains of bacteria now and in the future.
Last edited by GStone777; 03-25-2013 at 04:05 PM..
Reason: spelling
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Water of the Great Salt Lake
