California's water woes, solution?

[IGBT]

Oooh! OOOh! Dragging illegals into it!

You know your audience, huh?

be sure to remember that when you are drinking your urine.

 

[MagickMan]

So instead of subsidizing water we should just pay more for food, right?

That'll help the little guy, I'm sure, huh?

You need a link to support that allegation about crops grown mainly for export if you're going to make it.

Yes, they should pay more for food (and a lot of other things), it's supply and demand. So Cal has too many people living there and that will be an incentive for some of them to move.

 

[Jhhnn]

be sure to remember that when you are drinking your urine.

Be sure to dodge the point entirely.

 

[Jhhnn]

Yes, they should pay more for food (and a lot of other things), it's supply and demand. So Cal has too many people living there and that will be an incentive for some of them to move.

Why yes, that worked great back in 1931, huh?

When faced with historical failures of crackpot ideology, Righties just revise history, resort to dogma.

 

[MtnMan]

Pray to Jesus.

while you die of thirst.

Wishing on a star makes more sense, cause at least stars are real.

 

[UglyCasanova]

So instead of subsidizing water we should just pay more for food, right?

That'll help the little guy, I'm sure, huh?

You need a link to support that allegation about crops grown mainly for export if you're going to make it.

You should pay what it costs, yes. By not subsidizing water, farmers will stop growing crops in arid environments. If the full cost of water is borne, the agricultural industry will sort itself out and grow where there is a comparative advantage to grow.

Short term do food prices go up? Probably, but I don't see how that hurts the "little guy" more than not having water. Humans have a tendency to consume, and the cheaper something is the more of it we use. Water included.

 

[UglyCasanova]

And I guess I should clarify what I mean by subsidizing. The government isn't handing out cash to water companies, but the water companies (and anyone who draws from the water table) isn't required to pay the full social, environmental, and economic costs for that water.

 

[Genx87]

I just heard about this from my fiancee's brother over the weekend. He lives in San Mateo. Sounds like cattle may go to slaughter early which will depress meat prices in the short term. But drive them over later.

 

[Exterous]

Stop building oil pipelines like Keystone that sends our oil to other Countries for massive profits while raping Americans and build pipelines that interconnect water resources around the country so we can divert rainwater where it is coming down most to areas where it stopped coming down.

And what makes you think those areas want to give you the water anyway? Water rights have typically been a point of contention between states for rivers let alone pipelines so I don't think there would be much of any headway on your idea

I just heard about this from my fiancee's brother over the weekend. He lives in San Mateo. Sounds like cattle may go to slaughter early which will depress meat prices in the short term. But drive them over later.

Great - just when there was some talk about cattle herds growing in the plain states after a drought rivaling the dust bowl. I guess meat prices are going to stay high

 

[Agent11]

And where is the water / infrastructure support supposed to come from when the chain migration starts from all the illegal aliens?? When Arnold ran for governor he said calif.needs three more Shasta sized hydroDams just to break even on electricity and water i.e.population growth.

CA needs liquid fluoride thorium reactors for cheap electricity, the better to operate desalination plants, but also to feed Yucca mountain to, producing valuable short lived decay chains of waste.

This would produce Pu 238, amongst other highly sought but after short lived enough elements that no longer exist naturally in nature, due to their short half lives. Pu 238 is a gold mine. Invaluable to space exploration, and we are out of it.

So now CA has power, and an isotope business, as well as less waste in Yucca Mountain, desalination plants, a sea salt business. . .

Jobs and resources.

Hydro is more destructive than it is worth, environmentally. Take a look at what they did to the salmon.

 

[bignateyk]

I live in the Los Angeles basin. It's a pretty arid place, naturally only able to support mostly scrub brush. Thanks to the giant aqueduct coming down from the eastern Sierra as well as Colorado river water our huge population can be sustained. We have a couple of rivers coming down from the mountains, but they're just giant, concrete flood control channels now with runoff so dirty that I don't think it ever could be cleaned for consumption. We just dump it into the ocean.

But there hasn't been much snow pack in the Sierra this year, and other sources are drying up.

Should we have a nationwide aqueduct system, so that abundant water from the Pacific Northwest could be brought down to our desert? Wouldn't that be a big, fat, job creating infrastructure project?

Or should we stop populating inhospitable places?

How about you figure out how to get water for yourselves instead of destroying the rivers and ecosystems that can naturally sustain life.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

The solution to this problem is probably the same solution to just about every problem the human race faces across the entire planet:

For a shit load of people to die.

We're up over 7 billion now and rapidly climbing. Problems like this will only get worse, and worse, and worse.

Both humanity and the planet would be better off and happier if we were at about 1 or 2 billion.

I'm not advocating killing anyone, I'm just saying perhaps we shouldn't work so damned hard to make the problem worse by avoiding the inevitable as long as possible so that when it does happen, it's way worse than it could have otherwise been. We could also stop having so many policies which encourage irresponsible breeding.

Take your population complaints to India or China. The U.S. is only 300 million people, underpopulated for the size of the territory.

The solution is more advanced infrastructure.

 

[ForumMaster]

build desalinization plants like Israel?

for basically eternity, we've been living with a water shortage. every time it rains and every weather forecast, you get an update on the water level of the kineret (sea of Galilee which is the national aquifer).

then, two years ago the government decided to invest more then $850 million in new desalinization plants. since then, not only have we not had a water shortage, the plants have actually downscaled production since there is "too" much water.

 

[brycejones]

nm

 

[IGBT]

CA needs liquid fluoride thorium reactors for cheap electricity, the better to operate desalination plants, but also to feed Yucca mountain to, producing valuable short lived decay chains of waste.

This would produce Pu 238, amongst other highly sought but after short lived enough elements that no longer exist naturally in nature, due to their short half lives. Pu 238 is a gold mine. Invaluable to space exploration, and we are out of it.

So now CA has power, and an isotope business, as well as less waste in Yucca Mountain, desalination plants, a sea salt business. . .

Jobs and resources.

Hydro is more destructive than it is worth, environmentally. Take a look at what they did to the salmon.

the eco-KOOKS will stand in the way. As long as eco-KOOKS are part of the public policy loop you can expect nothing to happen. No hydro dams no desalination. S.Calif should have deployed desal.Plants decades ago but the eco-KOOKS thwarted every step forward toward that goal. Get the eco-KOOKS out of the public policy loop if you want cost effective progress.

 

[Genx87]

build desalinization plants like Israel?

for basically eternity, we've been living with a water shortage. every time it rains and every weather forecast, you get an update on the water level of the kineret (sea of Galilee which is the national aquifer).

then, two years ago the government decided to invest more then $850 million in new desalinization plants. since then, not only have we not had a water shortage, the plants have actually downscaled production since there is "too" much water.

I've wondered about this as well. At what point is it economically feasible to build these plants along the coasts?

The midwest will have its own issues in the coming decades as the aquifer is being depleted at a rate higher than it can be restored.

 

[bradly1101]

How about you figure out how to get water for yourselves instead of destroying the rivers and ecosystems that can naturally sustain life.

We've been cheating the earth to support humanity for eons. Lots of what we do irrigation-ally, agriculturally and for the basic maintenance of society everywhere threatens ecosystems. Should we stop all that too?

 

[IGBT]

We've been cheating the earth to support humanity for eons. Lots of what we do irrigation-ally, agriculturally and for the basic maintenance of society everywhere threatens ecosystems. Should we stop all that too?

ecosystems come and go. spend some time in the desert and you will learn that. to pretend that all existing systems have always been here or will always be here is ridiculous. "Cheating" the earth clearly represents a eco-KOOK mentality. Go cry me a river the next time a volcano lets loose.

 

[piasabird]

Why cant they build desalinization plants? If you just take most of the salt out of the water it would be usable for sewage and swimming pools. I remember this picture of Dubai and they use sewage trucks to pump out sewage. I can recall seeing articles on solar power and how they use dry composting toilets. I have no clue how they work.

 

[piasabird]

Irrigation can actually save water and keep it for just during the planting season then in fall and winter and early spring store it in reservoirs. In Idaho a private company manages the water for farmers.

 

[Newell Steamer]

If you took the entire world's population, and we lived in the density of the people in Manhattan; we could all live in Texas; http://www.treehugger.com/sustainab...he-worlds-population-could-live-in-texas.html

The issue is not space on this planet, it is transporation and movement of what we need; water, food etc.

LA was just a poorly planned city.

 

[MagickMan]

Why yes, that worked great back in 1931, huh?

When faced with historical failures of crackpot ideology, Righties just revise history, resort to dogma.

You're comparing a nation-wide collapse to a small portion of California. Go back and re-think that. The same thing happened in Hawaii and the people who couldn't afford it moved elsewhere in the US, not everyone can afford to live just anywhere.

 

[Wreckem]

And what makes you think those areas want to give you the water anyway? Water rights have typically been a point of contention between states for rivers let alone pipelines so I don't think there would be much of any headway on your idea



Great - just when there was some talk about cattle herds growing in the plain states after a drought rivaling the dust bowl. I guess meat prices are going to stay high

Actually, overall the US cattle herd has further shrank. They are expecting beef prices to go up 4% this year. The droughts in most cattle states/cattle regions never really broke. It only went from terrible drought, to slightly less terrible drought.

 

[K1052]

I've wondered about this as well. At what point is it economically feasible to build these plants along the coasts?

The midwest will have its own issues in the coming decades as the aquifer is being depleted at a rate higher than it can be restored.

Estimates on the low end are $2000 per acre foot. Current supply out there costs about $1000 per acre foot. Mind you that plant in Tampa was claimed $1000 per acre foot but actually turns it out closer to $2000...even after years of delays and about a 50% cost overrun to get working correctly. Also the electrical power required to serve these plants is pretty staggering. Building more than a few would require substantial additional investments in power generation.

This problem is a little easier to solve in the Midwest since it still gets a decent amount of rain. Impounding more of that that rain and also redirecting treated municipal outflows would go a long way along with implementing conservation measures.

 

[Wreckem]

You're comparing a nation-wide collapse to a small portion of California. Go back and re-think that. The same thing happened in Hawaii and the people who couldn't afford it moved elsewhere in the US, not everyone can afford to live just anywhere.

Its actually a large portion of CA.

CA also happens to be the largest farm state. It is also in the top 5 in cattle production. CA's water problems are significant problem for the entire nation.

So are Texas' long term water crisis.