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If Saudi and the UAE can operate nuclear power plants and supply water to a large populace, so can we. Texas alone has a larger GDP than Saudi. Your concern is completely baseless.
I’m assuming you’ve heard of the domino effect.
It’s completely baseless to you and myself because neither of us will be alive to see our civilizations handy work two, three or four generations down the road.
Its 1000x more than whatever is conserved by giving out tickets to people who water their lawns on the wrong day of the week and other such degrowth nonsense.
Let’s do some napkin math.
In 2010 California used ~38 billion gallons of water per day x 365 = 13.870 trillion gallons a year.
Lawn maintenance accounts for 3.5-5% of California’s annual water usage, so at minimum we are looking a 485 billion gallons a year for lawn upkeep (3.5% figure)
The California Aqueduct loses 11-22 million gallons a year, per mile or 8 billion gallons a year over the entire 4000 mile system (using 22 million gallon figure)
To offset the water loss of aqueduct evaporation, the state would have to reduce total lawn water usage by 1.6% - 0.6%.
Considering water usage isn’t uniform per household, and most business/homes can only irrigate 1-3 days a week, you’re looking at an order of magnitude in water loss savings vs. evaporation from just the implication of being fined.
Go figure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gantz
I am not being aggressive, I am just pointing out the whole "we are running out of water" bs.
Its an engineering/political challenge, not an environmental catastrophe that involves mass relocation of people. Its silly.
The economic benefit of people relocating to these areas overwhelmingly offsets whatever pennies are needed to be spent to insure water abundance for these people. SoCal area alone is $1.6 trillion GDP yearly.
No. It’s engineering/political solutions to mitigate the effects of an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
Humans will always choose the economic benefit over biosphere equilibrium so I don’t get how that’s a counter point?
We have plenty of capability for desalination. There is enough water in the Pacific ocean to supply the whole world for ever. So why invent a theory that there is a water shortage? Are we playing Chicken Little?
If Saudi and the UAE can operate nuclear power plants and supply water to a large populace, so can we. Texas alone has a larger GDP than Saudi. Your concern is completely baseless.
In any event, one must remember that the Kingdom has a lot of oil to use, not much of a population as does the United States, is 810 miles across between one body of water to the other (Dammam to Jeddah), and is probably not trying to irrigate the Empty Quarter or some other such parts of the country.
Desalination is dumb - because there is more than enough water to go around, as others upthread have stated. We aren't Saudi with 0 actual rivers. There's a big difference between living in Phoenix and living in Farmington, one has the water right nearby and lower evaporation rates and the other has to have an elaborate piping mechanism.
As I've stated, the environmental catastrophe would be chewing up the entire piedmont or SE US with subdivisions while leaving our ample resources and rather barren land in the west untapped due to this fake crisis due to political bickering and horrible allocation. Humans can flourish and terrascape arid places, we need to leave the lush environments wild and undeveloped for plant and insect and animal health.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJ Brazen_3133
How many people can get paid to just do R&D or software programmer? Id imagine that will have to be the core industries which will make business services, and finance possible, and be the major determinant of how many people will be employed/to live in said location.
Iowa and similar place shouldn't be the way they are. With all things equal, and all things working the way they should, most people have to live near where their food is made, and water is potable to drink and use. It is the cheapest way and therefore most efficient. Ideally even before all this, much of our population worked in food production for themselves. As much of QOL is about food, and the wages you earn are spent on food, just making your own is most efficient.
What I am seeing now is a mutation. All these people cramming into megalopolises working Amzn warehouse, Doordash, trying to become Youtube famous, being RE agents, opening fine dining hoping for Michelin stars, driving Uber is simply not sustainable and makes everyone involved miserable.
Agreed on the cramming into megalopolises, though that will change with remote work, people are bound to spread out into smaller locations - with housing affordability being a prime driver. But for the live near the food / water, in todays world, as long as it's coming from one state over rather than 6, that is a good arrangement. Ag works better in arid but irrigated places because things can be controlled better, many times it's easier to bring the water in than it is to keep the insects, weeds, and fungi out. That's why AZ is such a cash cow agriculturally speaking, there's so many high value crops that thrive in arid and warm, but irrigated. Same with Nebraska, they get better corn yields there than they do further east.
If anything, the chemical use in farming wet areas is a bigger catastrophe than the water constraints in dry places, again because we're currently so darn inefficient.
Recent Bloomberg podcast: "Understanding the Complex Fight Over Arizona's Water" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/video...water-odd-lots
Arizona agriculture exists because all that sun is good for plants, even if water needs to be imported. So to replace that elsewhere will require different inputs -- e.g., vertical farms can now provide competitively priced leafy greens (a big AZ export) grown with drastically less water, closer to consumers, but require substantial energy input because they run lots of lights. Yet the cost of water is rising, and the cost of electricity is declining.
Speaking of energy, the history of fossil fuel exploitation has everything to do with power and money, and they have a tremendous vested interest in sowing doubt about anything or anyone that threatens their power and money. Yet somehow, people think the status quo (however deadly it is!) is immaculate, and any change to it is a threat.
We have plenty of capability for desalination. There is enough water in the Pacific ocean to supply the whole world for ever. So why invent a theory that there is a water shortage? Are we playing Chicken Little?
We don't and probably never will have the technology to solely use desalination on the scale to supply the human population. In 2016 desalination consumed 25% of the energy used by the water sector but provided less than 1% of our fresh water.
Agreed on the cramming into megalopolises, though that will change with remote work, people are bound to spread out into smaller locations - with housing affordability being a prime driver. But for the live near the food / water, in todays world, as long as it's coming from one state over rather than 6, that is a good arrangement. Ag works better in arid but irrigated places because things can be controlled better, many times it's easier to bring the water in than it is to keep the insects, weeds, and fungi out. That's why AZ is such a cash cow agriculturally speaking, there's so many high value crops that thrive in arid and warm, but irrigated. Same with Nebraska, they get better corn yields there than they do further east.
If anything, the chemical use in farming wet areas is a bigger catastrophe than the water constraints in dry places, again because we're currently so darn inefficient.
Is the agriculture in the arid deserts really better if the irrigation was not paid for by taxpayers, and they were not allowed to steal as much water possible to destroy local ecosystems? Ok farming already destroys ecosystems wherever they are placed but still less damage when using less of total water supply. Plus it is recoverable. Apparently in Southern California even the possibility of residential/commercial requires the same.
Here is a vid about central valley agriculture and its water supply. I imagine similar has been going on for AZ, and LV. There is a more in depth documentary called Water and Power a California Heist. But you cannot watch it free anymore; only trailers.
Recent Bloomberg podcast: "Understanding the Complex Fight Over Arizona's Water" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/video...water-odd-lots
Arizona agriculture exists because all that sun is good for plants, even if water needs to be imported. So to replace that elsewhere will require different inputs -- e.g., vertical farms can now provide competitively priced leafy greens (a big AZ export) grown with drastically less water, closer to consumers, but require substantial energy input because they run lots of lights. Yet the cost of water is rising, and the cost of electricity is declining.
Speaking of energy, the history of fossil fuel exploitation has everything to do with power and money, and they have a tremendous vested interest in sowing doubt about anything or anyone that threatens their power and money. Yet somehow, people think the status quo (however deadly it is!) is immaculate, and any change to it is a threat.
All that sun creates excessive heat. Heat can kill plants too.
Vertical farms save space. It does not require deserts for its implementation. Any environ will benefit. A vertical farm in a desert will require energy for cooling. A tall enclosed (prevent evaporation) building with all those lights is going to get hot no matter the season.
As long as you feel like you have to wear cleats for 3-4 months out of the year, on top of the other crap, expect this pattern of migration to continue. The human body isn't made for consistent temps below freezing, especially if you're a particular race.
But as I said before: the South is fools gold when it comes to personal economics.
My body loves temps in the 30s and 20s outside...and I love seeing snow in Dec and Jan and Feb...by Mar I don't want to see it anymore.
But how much water is used to do what they do to earn their lifestyle of 200 gallons/day in household also need to be taken into consideration....
And just because the Colorado River can sustain half the US population's homes, does not mean we should push the river to its brink. The surrounding nature, flora/fauna also needs water.
1. The big reason why eastern US cities historically were built around water isn't even 19th-century industrial needs, it's because pre-railroad shipping used to be entirely water-borne, and pre-steam industry was entirely water-powered. (Yes, I'm correcting myself.) Neither has been the case for over two centuries now.
The amount of water used in industry has also declined substantially; treatment is a thing now whereas before the approach was just to rinse everything down the drain. Wastewater recycling is how semiconductor fabrication, one of the most water-intensive manufacturing uses, is thriving in Phoenix.
So yes, both residences and businesses need a lot less water than they used to require. And those factories that still require lots of water? They often require fewer workers, as well; many can set up shop in places like Tennessee, which has plenty of water.
2. The Colorado River is already at the brink; it doesn't reach the sea most years. But 80% of that goes to agriculture, but that's declining (as the price of water rises, most farmers economize and some farmers sell out), and there are alternatives to farming the desert. There's ample water for *urban* use, and to restore wildlife.
3. Even a city the size of Chicago doesn't "need" Lake Michigan quantities of fresh water. It draws one billion gallons a day from the lake -- but that's about as much water as the small Fox River, in the western suburbs, delivers (annual average). You don't *need* a 3,000 year supply of something that you can simply reuse.
4. Speaking of water recycling, even Los Angeles technically doesn't need to import water: ' “It will take a lot of work, but 100 percent local water is possible by 2050,” said Mark Gold, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor of environment and sustainability.' It's technically feasible for LA to support its population on rainwater, groundwater, and recycled water alone -- not even desalination!
5. I used to live in Chicago, and when I did, I used to think the same as the OP. But this is one of those populist notions that intuitively feels right -- but falls apart upon further examination. And I'm not post-hoc justifying Southwestern urbanization; I live in the east, because I enjoy looking at trees and rivers. But I'm not kidding myself that humans need those things.
Last edited by paytonc; 09-08-2023 at 09:13 PM..
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We're being lied to about water
