California Water Crisis

  On 4/2/2015 at 9:26 AM, fiznuthian said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 6:12 AM, ambermonk said:

666 gallons of H₂O to produce a lb of butter?

 

Dairy cows have to be hydrated to stay alive.

 

And the milk has water it in it. Plus the machines churning the butter (it's not an old woman with a stick and a bucket anymore) have to be lubricated to keep running. Accidents, runoff, externalities, etc.

  On 4/2/2015 at 4:50 AM, luke viia said:

The reason desalination is a bad idea in the US, as I see it, is this: For energy rich, water-poor countries, desalination can be a great idea. That is the case, for instance, in Saudi Arabia. For the US, on the other hand, it is (at the moment) a very lackluster "solution" to a water shortage crisis. Consider that the US's domestic energy production will continue to rely heavily on hydraulic fracking for the forseeable future. It takes upwards of 3 million gallons of water to frack a particular site once, resulting in a gain in natural gas. If we desalinate coastal waters to get more potable water, we will presumably be relying upon domestic energy sources. Our domestic energy is coming, at least partially, from fracking sites, often near large natural groundwater aquifers. We are using water to produce energy to desalinate water. See how this would work out? If we can buy cheap foreign petro-energy, then we wouldn't be relying on water, but why not just buy the water direct?

 

Opposed to this is the much simpler plan of water conservation. The environment desalinates water for us. Most of the US is a temperate zone and gets regular rainfall. Catching and utilizing as much of that water as possible, where nature has done the hard work for us, is a smart solution. Pouring energy into a program to get potable water, by way of domestic energy that risks not only over-using our current water supply, but contaminating the very aquifers we rely on, is a backwards plan. Not to mention the more direct environmental effects of coastal desalination in the first place: excess salt which is dumped back into the ocean, creating dead zones, economically harming the fishing industry and more importantly, destroying the ocean and making future desalination that much more cost prohibitive. I don't know the nitty-gritty behind the cutting edge desalination techinques -perhaps in the future it will be far more energy efficient, and become necessary. For now, I think that plan should be shelved indefinitely.

Thanks for the wordy way of saying what I just said.

except that without accurate numbers it's useless.

this wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_desalination_plant) says it that the Carlsbad plant in cali is supposed to produce 50mil gallons (190k cubic meters) per day once it gets going for 684000kw/h per day.

how much energy can be produced from fracking of one site?

I had a bunch of numbers pulled up last night, but I didn't think everyone would want to hear them. I forgot you were here. :P

http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/east-west-2010.html

Rough conservative estimate looking at california's bar there (fifth from the left)... 34,000+ million gallons/day. So carlsbad's 50 million will supply 0.14% of their water needs per day. And cost $1 billion dollars. And pump a bunch of condensed salt water into the ocean. I dunno, maybe to some people that's a very worthwhile thing to look into.

With that said, check out that graph again - a huge amount of the water use in Cali comes from public use, and it doesn't really need to. Desalinating ocean water so people can overuse it without true need is ridiculous. Irrigation bears the the biggest responsibility for water use in california; again, it is a desert, and from what I've seen, there are plenty of countermeasures that can be taken to stop the over-use of water for irrigation (soil rehabilitation to stop erosion and runoff, avoiding large monocultures wherever possible, far less cows, blah blah blah).

I'm just arm-chairing this btw, I'm not trained in any way, just interested, so this is all just my opinion and it's fine if you disagree. I just have a habit of seeing the behind-the-scenes cost of any new technology and immediately red-flagging it, because most people discuss new "solutions" as if there's no such thing as a down-side. In the long-run, all technologies have downsides, and it's our duty as citizens to seriously look them over before implementing them or encouraging others to do the same, because they are hard to undo. I just want scrutiny before action!

And Braintree, yeah, sorry, I saw your post as I was writing mine, lol.

@ Stephen: I don't know a thing about that, looks interesting though!

well you're talking about something completely different here, one plant is not supposed to produce water for all of california, it only needs to stop depletion of natural water sources, to balance things out.

in a post before you presented the whole system as simply feeding on itself without providing anything at all - desalination of water for fracking, and resources from fracking are going to power desalination. that's the thing that needs proper numbers to support.

What I said was:

"If we desalinate coastal waters to get more potable water, we will presumably be relying upon domestic energy sources. Our domestic energy is coming, at least partially, from fracking sites, often near large natural groundwater aquifers. We are using water to produce energy to desalinate water. See how this would work out?"

I was quite drunk, but even then, I think you mis-read my point. I didn't intend to present it as a closed system feeding on itself, just pointing out the relationship between energy acquisition and energy spending - one using water, one producing it - and highlighting that. The argument doesn't rely on in/out numbers for fracking/desalinating, because that's not the root of the issue (just a tangent I like to type about). Conservation in a number of sectors is the issue, like Braintree has pointed out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khFjdmp9sZk

  On 3/27/2015 at 5:40 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

Why are you guys not desalinating ocean water?

Apologies if this has been said already, but a big part of the reason is unfortunately just simple economics. Desalination plants are massively expensive. Though they pay for themselves in the long term, that's not how the market often works. It's also not how the hydrological cycle works. There was a massive drought in the late 80's and early 90's and Cali actually built quite a few desalination plants to deal with it. They were promptly mothballed once the water came back. They still sit derelict in many California cities.

  On 4/2/2015 at 4:55 AM, luke viia said:

We could also stop shitting in our drinking water. That would help.

We could just shit in salt water from the ocean

We had the same thing in UK a few years ago. Then it rained for a few weeks and hilltops were sunk lol. Prince Charles turned up on a boat. He had a nose about. Mumbled some posh mumbles. Fucked off on a Chinook.

We had a hosepipe ban one day... a few weeks later? (and I mean weeks, not months) we were underwater. Fucking crazy.

  On 4/2/2015 at 11:26 PM, Danny O Flannagin said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 4:55 AM, luke viia said:

We could also stop shitting in our drinking water. That would help.

We could just shit in salt water from the ocean

 

Unfortunately salt water is generally extremely corrosive to plumbing/sewage infrastructure.

^ Or grey water that's been used already, but that takes new infrastructure.

We should sent all of our shit to the moon. In 2055 the moon will be a junkyard prison with gnarly gladiator fights, space piracy and political corruption.

There are plenty of water saving products available which could make a difference. There's shower heads which almost halve the output of water (15 to 8 litres apparently). Why not send these out to everyone, imagine the amount of water saved, it's a no-brainer.

Of all the foods produced in California, livestock for meat and dairy require the most H₂O. One pound of beef requires 1,600 gallons of fresh water to produce, more than 10 times greater than protein derived from plants.

  On 4/3/2015 at 12:35 PM, spratters said:

There are plenty of water saving products available which could make a difference. There's shower heads which almost halve the output of water (15 to 8 litres apparently). Why not send these out to everyone, imagine the amount of water saved, it's a no-brainer.

instead of giving away those shower heads, why not make everyone buy them- thus you end up exploiting the situation to great monetary rewards?

we went through a similar problem. our water supply almost ran out. politicians started building pipelines from other states and desal plants. huge restrictions on using water. the desal plant was a major political event sold to us in a campaign of fear. the only reason i was slightly for it was it seemed like a reasonable technology to invest into - even if it wasn't really needed, i think it is enviable that as populations rise we will need more water.

the long and short of it we built the desal plant, people replaced all the water tanks they threw out 10 years prior from the previous el nino drought, it began raining and we had some major flooding that covered most of the east cost of australia, water storage filled back up, desal plant costs billions of dollars to maintain.

however the event was a kick in the pants to make people more aware of waste in systems. lots of people now invest in huge water storage in urban areas. lots of grey water systems are installed now. there is even more efficient energy use, home solar systems, reduction in power usage.

desal currently is really bad for the environment. it takes so much energy to run and pumps out brine into the ocean. that brine will usually be destructive to the environment. while they say will be pumped far out into the ocean and not have an effect they usually try to cut costs and the first thing to go is the long underwater brine pipeline.

from what i have read it is far more efficient to take human water out of water than salt - funny that these systems are rare and the primary solution is desal

  On 4/4/2015 at 8:54 AM, Luka said:

we went through a similar problem. our water supply almost ran out. politicians started building pipelines from other states and desal plants. huge restrictions on using water. the desal plant was a major political event sold to us in a campaign of fear. the only reason i was slightly for it was it seemed like a reasonable technology to invest into - even if it wasn't really needed, i think it is enviable that as populations rise we will need more water.

 

the long and short of it we built the desal plant, people replaced all the water tanks they threw out 10 years prior from the previous el nino drought, it began raining and we had some major flooding that covered most of the east cost of australia, water storage filled back up, desal plant costs billions of dollars to maintain.

 

however the event was a kick in the pants to make people more aware of waste in systems. lots of people now invest in huge water storage in urban areas. lots of grey water systems are installed now. there is even more efficient energy use, home solar systems, reduction in power usage.

 

desal currently is really bad for the environment. it takes so much energy to run and pumps out brine into the ocean. that brine will usually be destructive to the environment. while they say will be pumped far out into the ocean and not have an effect they usually try to cut costs and the first thing to go is the long underwater brine pipeline.

 

from what i have read it is far more efficient to take human water out of water than salt - funny that these systems are rare and the primary solution is desal

Proper comprehensive conservation efforts should really be the first thing to go after...low hanging fruit. People aren't talking enough about how much our consumption of meat in this country is accelerating the problem dramatically, or other water-intensive agricultural practices like almond farming (not to mention companies like Nestle collecting CA water and shipping it elsewhere). So much water is unnecessarily wasted in this country...we could easily make a big dent in the problem just by discussing it logically and implementing needed changes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoMqril0q-U

  On 4/4/2015 at 2:52 AM, Nebraska said:

 

  On 4/3/2015 at 12:35 PM, spratters said:

There are plenty of water saving products available which could make a difference. There's shower heads which almost halve the output of water (15 to 8 litres apparently). Why not send these out to everyone, imagine the amount of water saved, it's a no-brainer.

instead of giving away those shower heads, why not make everyone buy them- thus you end up exploiting the situation to great monetary rewards?

The Night Show's solution to water crisis: have Jenny McCarthy tell women that almonds cause autism in children.

  On 4/23/2015 at 5:29 PM, Nebraska said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoMqril0q-U

Awesome corporate PR vid spoof!

  On 4/23/2015 at 7:10 PM, patternoverlap said:

The Night Show's solution to water crisis: have Jenny McCarthy tell women that almonds cause autism in children.

oh my FLOL!1

  On 4/23/2015 at 6:34 PM, spratters said:

 

  On 4/4/2015 at 2:52 AM, Nebraska said:

 

  On 4/3/2015 at 12:35 PM, spratters said:

There are plenty of water saving products available which could make a difference. There's shower heads which almost halve the output of water (15 to 8 litres apparently). Why not send these out to everyone, imagine the amount of water saved, it's a no-brainer.

instead of giving away those shower heads, why not make everyone buy them- thus you end up exploiting the situation to great monetary rewards?

I imagine there'd be uproar by a fair few people who refuse to pay.

 

I think he's being facetious. Americans have a knack for capitalizing on a catastrophe.

  On 3/28/2015 at 12:26 AM, Nebraska said:

 

  On 3/27/2015 at 5:40 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

Why are you guys not desalinating ocean water?

 

because we contaminated it

 

we contaminated it again this time with 21,000 gallons of oil

Good job!

  On 5/21/2015 at 10:48 PM, Gocab said:

Good job!

thanks. couple of shout-outs here for those that like to contribute and never seem to get the accolades they deserve