Water 2018

[BigDaddy]

the ecrc told bunny's to head west.

FIFY

[Danno]

Climate change, global warming, blah blah. Everybody points at the bathtub ring on Lake Powell and says, look, the world is ending. Can we at least consider one thing? When that dam was built, the population of major western cities was minimal. Vegas didn't even exist, it was the original work camp. .

Benny, we can all read. This is what you said. "That dam" refers to Powell, not Mead, in your sentence; I know you're smart enough to see that. You made an error, you can easily say it was an error in writing but not an error in understanding, that's fine, so why not say that? Why get apoplectic and triple down that you were 100% correct in the first place, on something that was obviously incorrect? Again, it's very Trump-ian.

[old goat]

Ouch

Well you have nothing to worry about at 9300' (soon to be 9290), at least not for a while.

Climate change, global warming, blah blah. Everybody points at the bathtub ring on Lake Powell and says, look, the world is ending. Can we at least consider one thing? When that dam was built, the population of major western cities was minimal. Vegas didn't even exist, it was the original work camp. Now, Furgetabout the thirties and forties, depression and war, no growth. So, since the late fifties and early sixties, just about fifty years (fifty!), there has been massive growth in the population using that water source, and, of course, industrial farming maturing at the same time. How can that be ignored for the reason we're seeing a situation? That's a big straw getting sucked on, every day. But, no, if I hear anything at all, it's, ooh ooh, the earth is warming, the earth is warming. Not, how about stopping the growth? Yeah, right.

China is much worse. They've built these huge cities, at the same time, poisoning their present fresh water supply. They'll be the first to fire the first shot, unless President Arpaio rides in on his horse and directs his Arizona militia to invade most of the American west.

Benny, you're belaboring the obvious. Of course if there were fewer cities, fewer golf courses, less agriculture in the desert there would be less demand for water. That doesn't change the fact that as demand is rising supply is decreased, at least in areas dependent on spring/summer snow melt runoff. (I'm not sure if they've really figured out the effect of global warming on precipitation amounts, but the effect on precipitation type is obvious.) Anyway, the cities are there and will be the last to go. I predict agriculture will go first, followed by irrigated landscaping, followed by golf courses, followed by cities.

Interesting that in CA during the last drought, with mandatory water restrictions, poor and middle class communities did well, while rich enclaves exceeded their limit. They justified it by saying they have a lot of expensive landscaping. The rich aren't just taking the money, they're taking the water. In Sacramento people responded by ripping out their lawns and placing rocks and drought tolerant sparse plantings and stopped watering. In older parts of town with big trees they let the trees die, and the drought tolerant plants aren't generally shade tolerant.

[summit]

Well you have nothing to worry about at 9300' (soon to be 9290), at least not for a while.

That kind of problem has many downstream (upstream?) effects.

[Rideski]

Seems like USA would build more nuke plants before they would let cities die.
Does one nuke plant run a large desal operation?
If we're going to abbreviate desalination to desal, doesn't desalt sound better?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucl..._United_States

None of this helps Capetown of course. But interesting to know.
Football fields of solar power in Death Valley enough to run a desalt plant or no?


Haven't read this yet but looks promising.
https://www.amtaorg.com/wp-content/u...erspective.pdf

Edit: ha! They call it desalt.

[Danno]

Anyone read The Water Knife? Post apocalyptic novel about water wars in the West.

[WTF is dat]

I was reading about the Cape Town situation and the thing that is scary about Cape Town is that even if they were to miraculously get a nice rain storm that dropped an inch or two of rain, the ground and reservoirs are so parched that much of the rainfall would be absorbed by the ground and wouldn’t actually fill the reservoir.

[summit]

Seems like USA would build more nuke plants before they would let cities die.
Does one nuke plant run a large desal operation?
If we're going to abbreviate desalination to desal, doesn't desalt sound better?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucl..._United_States

None of this helps Capetown of course. But interesting to know.
Football fields of solar power in Death Valley enough to run a desalt plant or no?


Haven't read this yet but looks promising.
https://www.amtaorg.com/wp-content/u...erspective.pdf

Edit: ha! They call it desalt.

RO desal they imply that they only need 200MW (continous) of generation to produce 413K acre-ft of water which is the proposed number of RO desal plants.

If you do that (purely) with solar, you need 500MW+ of solar cells and 3x the number of RO plants because that shit don't work at night but you want your RO deal plant running 24/7/365.

If you power it with 1 AP1000 (1170MWe) reactor, you are set and get an additional 970MW of baseload capacity for the grid.... or you could use all the electricity, build more desal plants, and make 2,420K acre-ft. That would increase freshwater supplies in CA by ~4% in a dry year.

But it's California so they'll build the RO plants and someone else will build 200MW of natural gas plants in NV or AZ.

It would probably be cheaper to farm more efficiently and manage urban water more efficiently than to build a massive RO desal network and power it (although all the above may be necessary). It would be very interesting to see environmental economic analysis of various approaches. But usually these things get decided by lobbyists and emotional screeching.

[Benny Profane]

Benny, we can all read. This is what you said. "That dam" refers to Powell, not Mead, in your sentence; I know you're smart enough to see that. You made an error, you can easily say it was an error in writing but not an error in understanding, that's fine, so why not say that? Why get apoplectic and triple down that you were 100% correct in the first place, on something that was obviously incorrect? Again, it's very Trump-ian.

No, counseler, the dam referred to Hoover. I just wrote that poorly. But, it doesn't matter, it's all the same system, a finite water source that most imagine to be bottomless, watering entire cities in THE FUCKING DESERT.

[Danno]

No, counseler, the dam referred to Hoover. I just wrote that poorly. But, it doesn't matter, it's all the same system, a finite water source that most imagine to be bottomless, watering entire cities in THE FUCKING DESERT.

finally, you admit you made a mistake, what you actually wrote indicates glen canyon dam but what you actually meant was Hoover. See, it's ok to admit that you made a mistake. How does that make you feel? Better?

[MagnificentUnicorn]

finally, you admit you made a mistake, what you actually wrote indicates glen canyon dam but what you actually meant was Hoover. See, it's ok to admit that you made a mistake. How does that make you feel? Better?

I think he actually thought that Boulder dam held back Lake Powell.

[Benny Profane]

https://story.californiasunday.com/r...gdom-from-dust

[Rideski]

Feast or famine.
Davenport, IA 2019

[SkiBall]

At some point the east will realize they have too much water, and together east and west can collaborate on some pipelines to help funnel some of the excess west and hopefully alleviate some of this. I have heard talks of this, but flooding gives the east a vested interest. Hard to imagine being done in my lifetime though.

[Rideski]

I’m not an engineer, but it does not sound insurmountable. The biggest hesitation for trans oil pipelines was the potential for leaks, and that just wouldn’t be a danger with freshwater even before purification. Hard to contemplate this year since we are above average water in CO and so that seems to be a good thing for Vegas and California.

[My Pet Powder Goat]

Two words: pool trucks

Sent from my SM-N960U using TGR Forums mobile app

[SkiBall]

Can't get complacent in good years. And most years we could probably fill those compact numbers downstream in a non-flood year. We are just enabling those that chose to live in a desert, but hell, when life gives you lemons...

[Danno]

At some point the east will realize they have too much water, and together east and west can collaborate on some pipelines to help funnel some of the excess west and hopefully alleviate some of this. I have heard talks of this, but flooding gives the east a vested interest. Hard to imagine being done in my lifetime though.

With the greater fluctuations that are to come, the East will start seeing some droughts. They won't always be flooding.

[Harry]

That's OK. The fleet of swimming pool trucks can take the water back east if needed.

[buttahflake]

With the greater fluctuations that are to come, the East will start seeing some droughts. They won't always be flooding.

Not gonna happen, it’s a fucking rainforest back here.

[riser4]

How do you define a drought in northern VT? Three days without rain. Not necessarily in a row.

[iceman]

With the greater fluctuations that are to come, the East will start seeing some droughts. They won't always be flooding.

You're right. Fuck you guys you're on your own.

[Rideski]

2020 Apocalypse Update


https://www.sfchronicle.com/environm...e-15205514.php

[Danno]

2020 Apocalypse Update


https://www.sfchronicle.com/environm...e-15205514.php

Job security.

[Rideski]

Now the Great Lakes are at 100 year highs.