5 ms·

The choice is pretty clear to me. We need a national water grid. Desalinization is great and a piece of the puzzle, but we need a way to distribute water acro

The choice is pretty clear to me. We need a national water grid. Desalinization is great and a piece of the puzzle, but we need a way to distribute water across the country. It could also be leveraged as an energy storage device if we continue to add more reservoirs at various elevations. It's not going to be cheap or easy, but we'd be stupid not to start on it now. The climate changes, and we need to plan for it. Places in the west have historically, long before humans started increasing carbon dioxide, seen extended droughts lasting tens or hundreds of years. Human driven climate change could exacerbate this issue. If we want to be a people that lasts thousands of years we need to plan for events that happen in a thousand years.

selectodude 5y ago
No. The Great Lakes are not leaving the Great Lakes area. Ever.
- 01100011 5y ago
  What does this even mean? What does a national water grid have to do with the Great Lakes? Is there some sort of regional paranoia that the rest of the country is coming for "your water"? If you look at a map you'll notice that there is quite a lot of water available beyond the great lakes. Is there a reason freshwater can't be pulled from the mouths of great rivers like the St. Lawrence, the Columbia, and the Mississippi right before it reaches the sea? Is there a reason why flood control systems can't be built to sequester excess precipitation so that it can be reclaimed?
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    It would be extremely energy intensive to push water from sea level to upland farms, basically you'd be running hydro plants in reverse.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      Desalination is also energy intensive. Shipping food from foreign countries is energy intensive. Starving because those countries also experience the effects of global warming and decide to feed their populations first is economically and socially expensive. Choose your costs. You're going to spend energy one way or another, or you're going to sacrifice your quality of life(or potentially your life). I don't see this as being a convincing argument against a nationwide hydro grid, just one of many tradeoffs.
      - thehappypm 5y ago
        How about the argument that it’s completely unnecessary? Such a grid exists, they’re called rivers. We just happened to fuck it up and put the most water-hungry farms far away from the rivers.
        01100011 5y ago
        The places with the most sunshine and some of the most fertile land happen to be far away from places with rivers. The rivers are not a grid and we can't pull anything close to the full flow of the river for our uses without serious agricultural consequences. A national(or international) water grid allows us to distribute our impact on regional water supplies.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    >Is there some sort of regional paranoia that the rest of the country is coming for "your water"? Yes, very much so. So much, in fact, that there's a multinational treaty that says water in the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes watershed. It contains 90 percent of North America's freshwater. If other places start coming for water from outside, there's really nowhere else to look. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
    - 01100011 5y ago
      > If other places start coming for water from outside, there's really nowhere else to look. Can you explain this statement, because it doesn't make much sense to me. Are you saying that if we take some water from the watershed, there is therefore no other place to obtain water?
- mastax 5y ago
  I was just up around Lake Superior and there were lots of signs protesting someone wanting to sell bottled water from a well on their land near Lake Superior. I doubt that an individual's bespoke bottled water company could ever make a significant difference to anything, and the campaign's energy could be better spent on numerous other issues affecting the lake. However, it illustrates how protective people are of the lake water which I think is a good thing. Our governments already spend absurd amounts of money subsidizing the property values of people who live in flood plains, in deserts, etc. It will be painful but the longer we spend trying to bandage the issue the harder it will be once it reaches the breaking point.
spamizbad 5y ago
Good luck getting the Great Lakes Compact broken up.
autokad 5y ago
seems like desalination parried with nuclear and solar power (because desalination is expensive electricity wise) is the solution. most of our problems comes down to energy, to which fusion power will one day solve. we just need some stop gaps.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Why would we desalinate water when there is water already desalinated by nature available for us? Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not against desalination, it just seems crazy to leverage it to supply all of our water shortfall. Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively?
  - CrazyStat 5y ago
    You would still need a network of canals and pipelines, because places like Colorado and Utah facing imminent water shortages aren't close to the ocean. Desalinating plus pumping water up to those places would be insanely expensive though. It's not economically feasible for the primary uses of fresh water (farming).
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      Maybe places like Colorado and Utah just aren't meant for water-intensive farming. Why should the ecological sins of the past just be grandfathered in?
    - 01100011 5y ago
      Well yeah, how else would you move the water? USPS? You need a massive network of canals, pipelines, pumps and reservoirs. I'm really glad our ancestors had the foresight to build the national electrical grid and the national highway system because with an attitude like I'm seeing in this thread I think the folks today would just throw up their hands and say it's too big and too difficult.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    It's arrogant to expect that water irresponsible states should have any claim whatsoever to the water in states that are responsible with their supply.
thehappypm 5y ago
Water pipelines are also a national security issue. Imagine an enemy being able to ruin our agricultural sector with a few bombs.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Now say the same thing about roads or the electrical grid and see how silly it sounds.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    The electrical grid IS a national security problem. A big one.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      Is that an inherent feature of a national electrical grid or the way we've let ours decay? Failing to stockpile backup equipment which must be sourced from competing nations is not an inherent feature of the grid. Same with insecure control systems. Are you advocating for regional energy independence? I'm all for redundancy, but why would you avoid national distribution?

selectodude 5y ago

No. The Great Lakes are not leaving the Great Lakes area. Ever.

01100011 5y ago
What does this even mean? What does a national water grid have to do with the Great Lakes? Is there some sort of regional paranoia that the rest of the country is coming for "your water"? If you look at a map you'll notice that there is quite a lot of water available beyond the great lakes. Is there a reason freshwater can't be pulled from the mouths of great rivers like the St. Lawrence, the Columbia, and the Mississippi right before it reaches the sea? Is there a reason why flood control systems can't be built to sequester excess precipitation so that it can be reclaimed?
- thehappypm 5y ago
  It would be extremely energy intensive to push water from sea level to upland farms, basically you'd be running hydro plants in reverse.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    Desalination is also energy intensive. Shipping food from foreign countries is energy intensive. Starving because those countries also experience the effects of global warming and decide to feed their populations first is economically and socially expensive. Choose your costs. You're going to spend energy one way or another, or you're going to sacrifice your quality of life(or potentially your life). I don't see this as being a convincing argument against a nationwide hydro grid, just one of many tradeoffs.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      How about the argument that it’s completely unnecessary? Such a grid exists, they’re called rivers. We just happened to fuck it up and put the most water-hungry farms far away from the rivers.
      - 01100011 5y ago
        The places with the most sunshine and some of the most fertile land happen to be far away from places with rivers. The rivers are not a grid and we can't pull anything close to the full flow of the river for our uses without serious agricultural consequences. A national(or international) water grid allows us to distribute our impact on regional water supplies.
- selectodude 5y ago
  >Is there some sort of regional paranoia that the rest of the country is coming for "your water"? Yes, very much so. So much, in fact, that there's a multinational treaty that says water in the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes watershed. It contains 90 percent of North America's freshwater. If other places start coming for water from outside, there's really nowhere else to look. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
  - 01100011 5y ago
    > If other places start coming for water from outside, there's really nowhere else to look. Can you explain this statement, because it doesn't make much sense to me. Are you saying that if we take some water from the watershed, there is therefore no other place to obtain water?
mastax 5y ago
I was just up around Lake Superior and there were lots of signs protesting someone wanting to sell bottled water from a well on their land near Lake Superior. I doubt that an individual's bespoke bottled water company could ever make a significant difference to anything, and the campaign's energy could be better spent on numerous other issues affecting the lake. However, it illustrates how protective people are of the lake water which I think is a good thing. Our governments already spend absurd amounts of money subsidizing the property values of people who live in flood plains, in deserts, etc. It will be painful but the longer we spend trying to bandage the issue the harder it will be once it reaches the breaking point.

spamizbad 5y ago

Good luck getting the Great Lakes Compact broken up.

autokad 5y ago

seems like desalination parried with nuclear and solar power (because desalination is expensive electricity wise) is the solution. most of our problems comes down to energy, to which fusion power will one day solve. we just need some stop gaps.

01100011 5y ago
Why would we desalinate water when there is water already desalinated by nature available for us? Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not against desalination, it just seems crazy to leverage it to supply all of our water shortfall. Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively?
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  You would still need a network of canals and pipelines, because places like Colorado and Utah facing imminent water shortages aren't close to the ocean. Desalinating plus pumping water up to those places would be insanely expensive though. It's not economically feasible for the primary uses of fresh water (farming).
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Maybe places like Colorado and Utah just aren't meant for water-intensive farming. Why should the ecological sins of the past just be grandfathered in?
  - 01100011 5y ago
    Well yeah, how else would you move the water? USPS? You need a massive network of canals, pipelines, pumps and reservoirs. I'm really glad our ancestors had the foresight to build the national electrical grid and the national highway system because with an attitude like I'm seeing in this thread I think the folks today would just throw up their hands and say it's too big and too difficult.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  It's arrogant to expect that water irresponsible states should have any claim whatsoever to the water in states that are responsible with their supply.

thehappypm 5y ago

Water pipelines are also a national security issue. Imagine an enemy being able to ruin our agricultural sector with a few bombs.

01100011 5y ago
Now say the same thing about roads or the electrical grid and see how silly it sounds.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  The electrical grid IS a national security problem. A big one.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    Is that an inherent feature of a national electrical grid or the way we've let ours decay? Failing to stockpile backup equipment which must be sourced from competing nations is not an inherent feature of the grid. Same with insecure control systems. Are you advocating for regional energy independence? I'm all for redundancy, but why would you avoid national distribution?