4 ms·

Sigh (emphasis added): > “We are facing the growing reality that water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry and cities are no longer stabl

by jmyeet 4y ago

Sigh (emphasis added): > “We are facing the growing reality that water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry and cities are no longer stable due to climate change,” Trujillo said. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. See Figure 2 (page 10) [1]. This is a decades-long trend of outflows increasing based on estimates of inflows that were unrealistic from a particularly wet period. In some ways this is just like the mass shooting problem: people look around for all sorts of reasons that aren't the obvious, which is the easy access to firearms. Here too people look around for any reason but the obvious: agriculture is using too much water. Agriculture is simply going to have to transition to using less water-intensive crops. We're still "exporting water" to China in the form of alfalfa [2] in addition to other water intensive crops like almonds. We don't need desalination. We don't need cities to cut back on water. agriculture will have to take the hit on this one. [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/ColoradoRiver/CRBS_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989

thehappypm 4y ago
Climate change is the ultimate scapegoat for everything! It’s a politicians’ dream, something nobody can solve but everyone can blame
- javajosh 4y ago
  Yeah, I've been following some climate folk on twitter. All they do is make dire warnings and ask for money. Personally, I know climate change is very real and quite dire, but so much "climate activism" seems to only exist to exist, and not to solve anything. I mean, all I want to see is a threat model and a list of realistic policies. But all I get is, "The earth is burning, and they don't care, so DONATE NOW!" Pathetic, and disheartening.
  - smt88 4y ago
    > so much "climate activism" seems to only exist to exist, and not to solve anything. I mean, all I want to see is a threat model and a list of realistic policies. The problem is Twitter, not the activists. Real organizations and professionals in the industry write the kinds of analysis you're asking for all the time. You literally only need to Google something climate-change related and it's all you will see. They include realistic scenarios with sensitivity analyses, and they enormous troves of data that you can download yourself if you want to see where it came from. The problem isn't that this information is missing, it's that you're looking in the wrong place (and seemingly spending not even 10 seconds of effort to find it). Here are the first five Google results for "climate change scenario": - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_scenario (includes citations for further reading) - https://climatescenarios.org/primer/ https://climatescenarios.org/primer/ (explains what they are, includes citations, and overlays multiple climate models onto the same graph so you can see the differences) - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/5-possible-climate-futures-from-the-optimistic-to-the-strange https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/5-pos... (summarizes the IPCC report, which is exactly what you're describing) - https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/sres-en.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/sres-en.pdf (an actual ICC report
  - newsclues 4y ago
    When did the switch from activism to grifters occur?
    - hnusersarelame 4y ago
    - Lammy 4y ago
      IMO a “switch” from one to the other is the wrong way to look at it. There are plenty of people who legitimately care about the environment for the environment’s sake, like myself and probably anybody else on this website. What you should be looking for are the secondary and tertiary effects of climate legislation with a mind toward ideologies besides your own which would benefit from those effects. As always, correlation is not causation, but check out the inflection point for environmental interest among “American English” publications at the time of the first civil rights act in 1964: https://i.imgur.com/kP8ugvH.png https://i.imgur.com/kP8ugvH.png Since we’ve been picking on California in this thread this is also a good time to remember 1964 as the year California passed a state ballot proposition with the explicit intent of nullifying a state-level fair housing act passed one year earlier in 1963: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_14 Obviously California is a huge state with a huge number of conflicting ideologies, but I think it’s important to be mindful of ways one’s good intentions may be misdirected and misused.
  - yababa_y 4y ago
    Like Project Drawdown? https://drawdown.org/ https://drawdown.org/
    - javajosh 4y ago
      Really like that website, thanks! It's hard to find sober, practical content on climate change (with the exception of the IPCC itself).
  - jzellis 4y ago
    That's just the usual NGO and charity crowd. You know why nobody solves anything? Because there's no solutions to be had. It's far too late for solutioneering, there's no sprints here, no hackathons, absolutely nothing that can be done because the only solutions require global consensus and we still can't even all agree that wars are bad and gay marriage is good. So no, save your money and put it into hookers and blow or whatever makes you happy, as long as you can, because we're about to go off a very steep cliff and there's nothing the very smartest people on earth could do about it at this point.
- roguecoder 4y ago
  We can solve it. The Great Depression measurably delayed the impact of climate change, and with advances in fusion and solar technology carbon capture is rapidly becoming a reality. That we so far haven't bothered trying because it would cost rich people some money is unconscionable, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. The science of environmental repair will need a broad base of support, but it is our best hope to still be able to exist as a species.
  - MisterMower 4y ago
    Are you suggesting another Great Depression would be good because it would forestall the effects of climate change?
    - thehappypm 4y ago
      That seems to be the proposal, yes. Rather than possible future problems, let’s cause them now!
rjbwork 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
svnpenn 4y ago
I think climate change is real, but I completely agree with your position here. Big Ag is just using climate change as a scapegoat, in order to maintain the status quo of sucking the lakes dry.
- tzs 4y ago
  I'm having trouble following your reasoning here. How would using climate change as a scapegoat help maintain the status quo? If we were taking aggressive steps to avert climate change I can see that might work, because they could argue that the taking care of climate change will take care of the water problems and so we don't need any separate action now on water. But we aren't taking aggressive steps on climate change. So tying that water problems to climate change actually strengthens that case for taking separate aggressive action on water usage, which is the opposite of what those who want to maintain the status quo want.
  - svnpenn 4y ago
    The point is, the blame the problem on climate change, rather than the real culprit. As long as people think climate change is the problem, then Big Ag can do whatever they want, because people wont be looking at them. Also the situation is compounded by the fact that a good chunk of the population don't even think climate change is real. So Big Ag can lobby against climate change, making the problem even worse.
jelliclesfarm 4y ago
I agree with everything you say. Calfiornia is growing lettuce and strawberries with field irrigation when we can go indoors and CEA. These crops are low calorie and low nutrition and trucked nationwide. Over 40% wastage cold refrigerated trucks have to be used. Criminal waste of water and fuel. There is no excuse to grow almonds in this drought to export them worldwide. And sending alfafa to China for their dairy in boxes. California has lost the plot long time ago.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  What about the non-native lawns, flowers, shrubs, and trees populated by millions of homes in the states fed by the Colorado? All of which require irrigation.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Are you prepared to regulate individual homeowner's yards?
    - mbg721 4y ago
      Everyone in the US seems to be; it's a national sport.
    - brokensegue 4y ago
      Just regulate lawn water usage. It's already done during droughts.
    - xref 4y ago
      Uhh like the thousands of existing regulations? Personally I’m banned from having roosters in my yard, banned from watering on even-numbered days, banned from renting my lawn to campers, banned from having political signs outside of the 6 weeks pre & post election… Also I’m fine with all these.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    They do require water (some lawns are watered in the form of irrigation; some aren't). But if you look at the water usage statistics, agriculture uses far more than homes (including their lawns). So if you want to do something about water use, it makes more sense to go after agriculture, because that's where the most use is.
cyanydeez 4y ago
That's not how water capture works. Also, mass shootings are guns. I hope you understand that a flood is not captures water
dillondoyle 4y ago
It can be all of the above (though sure technically what you wrote is correct if nit picking the word due to mean solely caused by - but I don't feel like that's the intention / argument made) And yes agriculture is wasting way more water than climate change. But climate change does have an effect. USGS paper showing climate change affects https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aay9187 https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aay9187 "Drought and warming have been shrinking Colorado River flow for many years. Milly and Dunne used a hydrologic model and historical observations to show that this decrease is due mainly to increased evapotranspiration caused by a reduction of albedo from snow loss and the associated rise in the absorption of solar radiation (see the Perspective by Hobbins and Barsugli). This drying will be greater than the projected precipitation increases expected from climate warming, increasing the risk of severe water shortages in an already vulnerable region."
- lolinder 4y ago
  I don't think anyone here is disputing that climate change plays a role, but we live in a world where, if we simply stopped shipping almonds overseas, California would have enough water for three more cities the size of LA.[0] That's just one example of the ridiculous agricultural inefficiencies we're dealing with: 80% of California's water goes to agriculture.[1] Climate change is hurting things for sure, but it's still agriculture that needs to adapt if we stand any chance. Marginal improvements in residential usage will not solve the problem. [0] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/real-problem-almonds/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/real-problem... [1] https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agricultural-Water-Use-Efficiency https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > if we simply stopped shipping almonds overseas, California would have enough water for three more cities the size of LA. Only for a while. Things are likely to dry up a whole lot faster and quicker than you're expecting. Paleo-climatology has revealed that this whole corner of the US has historically been much drier than it is presently, particularly during the Medieval Warming Period (which we've blown past.) The same dynamics which dried up California Climate change is going to make the entire region much dryer than it ever has been in recorded history. It's not just the Colorado river of course. A lot of people seem to think the Central Valley will be fine, or could be fine if we got rid of the farms, but the coming droughts will be felt there hardest of all. One way or the other, the agriculture will go. But that won't bring the rain back.
clairity 4y ago
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Those deaths _are_ vastly more prevalent in the US than other jurisdictions. Ditto accidental shootings by children...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - clairity 4y ago
    no, the prevalence of guns is not the primary cause of mass shootings. and these deaths are so few that they're prone to variance and statistical error, not to mention political and ideological bias. over half of gun deaths in the US are suicides. much of the rest is murder, but over 99% of murders are not via mass shootings. most murders are between people who know each other. if you fear death by gun shooting, you should be worried about yourself first, and then those close to you, and no one else (not even "terrorists"). even in the US, you should basically never fear a stranger killing you with a gun.
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      - clairity 4y ago
tzs 4y ago
> We're still "exporting water" to China in the form of alfalfa [2] in addition to other water intensive crops like almonds. That BBC article is off by a factor of about 20000. Most of the water (99.995%) used to grow alfalfa ends up in the in the California atmosphere, not in China. For almonds most of the water (99.97%) ends up in the California atmosphere. I wonder if it would be possible to grow these crops in some sort of enclosed place so that all that water could be captured and reused? Based on the export numbers for alfalfa to China, I get that you'd need about 800 km^2 of greenhouses. That's a lot of area, about equal to the total area of all agricultural greenhouses in Spain, Italy, and France.
tzs 4y ago
On the climate change angle, what they said on the NPR story I heard about this today was that climate change has pushed up the schedule. Water reduction that they had planned to phase in over the next several years now has to be done much sooner.
rkagerer 4y ago
Is there something wrong with desalination? I mean, just like inventing power generation a magnitude of order better than before advances civilization, couldn't cheap and clean desalination let us utilize water more liberally?
- jzellis 4y ago
  There's a lot wrong with it. People like to point out Israel as an example of successful desalination, but that ignores the fact that Israel is a quarter of the size of San Bernardino County and basically a narrow strip of land next to an ocean. You would need to build 4-8 plants the size of the largest desal plant Israel has for each major population center in the Southwest, and you'd have to do it very very quickly. But even that's not the problem. The problem is physics. The entire West, an area the size of Europe, is basically the Rockies sloping down to the Pacific, with a few inland coastal mountain ranges like the Cascades to break the flow. The rivers start in the mountains from snowmelt and flow downward and generally westward from there. So you'd need to reverse the hydrology of the entire region and pump that water uphill thousands of feet and inland over hundreds - thousands - of miles of terrain that is often rough enough that people still don't really live there. A region in which many areas are regularly seeing temperatures approaching 120°F for much of the year. And you'll have to do this in a matter of single digit years, not decades, in a country that's facing the worst political divisions since the Civil War, with an economy teetering on the edge of recession and possibly - almost certainly if he domino effect of this water crisis plays out the way a lot of people, myself included, think it will - actual collapse. So it's fine in theory, but absolutely impossible in practice. The civilizational complexity of the American West is about to be reduced, and nothing short of a deus ex machina will stop it.
  - danaris 4y ago
    You're talking about it as if desalination alone would be expected to entirely reverse the water loss of the region, as opposed to it being one aspect of a holistic approach to the problem. Desalination can absolutely make a huge difference, here and in many other places, if we can get it refined to the point that it's (relatively) cheap to run (both in money and in other resources). That doesn't mean we shouldn't stop growing almonds in a desert.

by jmyeet 4y ago

thehappypm 4y ago

Climate change is the ultimate scapegoat for everything! It’s a politicians’ dream, something nobody can solve but everyone can blame

javajosh 4y ago
Yeah, I've been following some climate folk on twitter. All they do is make dire warnings and ask for money. Personally, I know climate change is very real and quite dire, but so much "climate activism" seems to only exist to exist, and not to solve anything. I mean, all I want to see is a threat model and a list of realistic policies. But all I get is, "The earth is burning, and they don't care, so DONATE NOW!" Pathetic, and disheartening.
- smt88 4y ago
  > so much "climate activism" seems to only exist to exist, and not to solve anything. I mean, all I want to see is a threat model and a list of realistic policies. The problem is Twitter, not the activists. Real organizations and professionals in the industry write the kinds of analysis you're asking for all the time. You literally only need to Google something climate-change related and it's all you will see. They include realistic scenarios with sensitivity analyses, and they enormous troves of data that you can download yourself if you want to see where it came from. The problem isn't that this information is missing, it's that you're looking in the wrong place (and seemingly spending not even 10 seconds of effort to find it). Here are the first five Google results for "climate change scenario": - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_scenario (includes citations for further reading) - https://climatescenarios.org/primer/ https://climatescenarios.org/primer/ (explains what they are, includes citations, and overlays multiple climate models onto the same graph so you can see the differences) - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/5-possible-climate-futures-from-the-optimistic-to-the-strange https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/5-pos... (summarizes the IPCC report, which is exactly what you're describing) - https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/sres-en.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/sres-en.pdf (an actual ICC report
- newsclues 4y ago
  When did the switch from activism to grifters occur?
  - hnusersarelame 4y ago
  - Lammy 4y ago
    IMO a “switch” from one to the other is the wrong way to look at it. There are plenty of people who legitimately care about the environment for the environment’s sake, like myself and probably anybody else on this website. What you should be looking for are the secondary and tertiary effects of climate legislation with a mind toward ideologies besides your own which would benefit from those effects. As always, correlation is not causation, but check out the inflection point for environmental interest among “American English” publications at the time of the first civil rights act in 1964: https://i.imgur.com/kP8ugvH.png https://i.imgur.com/kP8ugvH.png Since we’ve been picking on California in this thread this is also a good time to remember 1964 as the year California passed a state ballot proposition with the explicit intent of nullifying a state-level fair housing act passed one year earlier in 1963: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_14 Obviously California is a huge state with a huge number of conflicting ideologies, but I think it’s important to be mindful of ways one’s good intentions may be misdirected and misused.
- yababa_y 4y ago
  Like Project Drawdown? https://drawdown.org/ https://drawdown.org/
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Really like that website, thanks! It's hard to find sober, practical content on climate change (with the exception of the IPCC itself).
- jzellis 4y ago
  That's just the usual NGO and charity crowd. You know why nobody solves anything? Because there's no solutions to be had. It's far too late for solutioneering, there's no sprints here, no hackathons, absolutely nothing that can be done because the only solutions require global consensus and we still can't even all agree that wars are bad and gay marriage is good. So no, save your money and put it into hookers and blow or whatever makes you happy, as long as you can, because we're about to go off a very steep cliff and there's nothing the very smartest people on earth could do about it at this point.
roguecoder 4y ago
We can solve it. The Great Depression measurably delayed the impact of climate change, and with advances in fusion and solar technology carbon capture is rapidly becoming a reality. That we so far haven't bothered trying because it would cost rich people some money is unconscionable, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. The science of environmental repair will need a broad base of support, but it is our best hope to still be able to exist as a species.
- MisterMower 4y ago
  Are you suggesting another Great Depression would be good because it would forestall the effects of climate change?
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    That seems to be the proposal, yes. Rather than possible future problems, let’s cause them now!

rjbwork 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

svnpenn 4y ago

I think climate change is real, but I completely agree with your position here. Big Ag is just using climate change as a scapegoat, in order to maintain the status quo of sucking the lakes dry.

tzs 4y ago
I'm having trouble following your reasoning here. How would using climate change as a scapegoat help maintain the status quo? If we were taking aggressive steps to avert climate change I can see that might work, because they could argue that the taking care of climate change will take care of the water problems and so we don't need any separate action now on water. But we aren't taking aggressive steps on climate change. So tying that water problems to climate change actually strengthens that case for taking separate aggressive action on water usage, which is the opposite of what those who want to maintain the status quo want.
- svnpenn 4y ago
  The point is, the blame the problem on climate change, rather than the real culprit. As long as people think climate change is the problem, then Big Ag can do whatever they want, because people wont be looking at them. Also the situation is compounded by the fact that a good chunk of the population don't even think climate change is real. So Big Ag can lobby against climate change, making the problem even worse.

jelliclesfarm 4y ago

I agree with everything you say. Calfiornia is growing lettuce and strawberries with field irrigation when we can go indoors and CEA. These crops are low calorie and low nutrition and trucked nationwide. Over 40% wastage cold refrigerated trucks have to be used. Criminal waste of water and fuel. There is no excuse to grow almonds in this drought to export them worldwide. And sending alfafa to China for their dairy in boxes. California has lost the plot long time ago.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
What about the non-native lawns, flowers, shrubs, and trees populated by millions of homes in the states fed by the Colorado? All of which require irrigation.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Are you prepared to regulate individual homeowner's yards?
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Everyone in the US seems to be; it's a national sport.
  - brokensegue 4y ago
    Just regulate lawn water usage. It's already done during droughts.
  - xref 4y ago
    Uhh like the thousands of existing regulations? Personally I’m banned from having roosters in my yard, banned from watering on even-numbered days, banned from renting my lawn to campers, banned from having political signs outside of the 6 weeks pre & post election… Also I’m fine with all these.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  They do require water (some lawns are watered in the form of irrigation; some aren't). But if you look at the water usage statistics, agriculture uses far more than homes (including their lawns). So if you want to do something about water use, it makes more sense to go after agriculture, because that's where the most use is.

cyanydeez 4y ago

That's not how water capture works. Also, mass shootings are guns. I hope you understand that a flood is not captures water

dillondoyle 4y ago

It can be all of the above (though sure technically what you wrote is correct if nit picking the word due to mean solely caused by - but I don't feel like that's the intention / argument made) And yes agriculture is wasting way more water than climate change. But climate change does have an effect. USGS paper showing climate change affects https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aay9187 https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aay9187 "Drought and warming have been shrinking Colorado River flow for many years. Milly and Dunne used a hydrologic model and historical observations to show that this decrease is due mainly to increased evapotranspiration caused by a reduction of albedo from snow loss and the associated rise in the absorption of solar radiation (see the Perspective by Hobbins and Barsugli). This drying will be greater than the projected precipitation increases expected from climate warming, increasing the risk of severe water shortages in an already vulnerable region."

lolinder 4y ago
I don't think anyone here is disputing that climate change plays a role, but we live in a world where, if we simply stopped shipping almonds overseas, California would have enough water for three more cities the size of LA.[0] That's just one example of the ridiculous agricultural inefficiencies we're dealing with: 80% of California's water goes to agriculture.[1] Climate change is hurting things for sure, but it's still agriculture that needs to adapt if we stand any chance. Marginal improvements in residential usage will not solve the problem. [0] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/real-problem-almonds/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/real-problem... [1] https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agricultural-Water-Use-Efficiency https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
- robonerd 4y ago
  > if we simply stopped shipping almonds overseas, California would have enough water for three more cities the size of LA. Only for a while. Things are likely to dry up a whole lot faster and quicker than you're expecting. Paleo-climatology has revealed that this whole corner of the US has historically been much drier than it is presently, particularly during the Medieval Warming Period (which we've blown past.) The same dynamics which dried up California Climate change is going to make the entire region much dryer than it ever has been in recorded history. It's not just the Colorado river of course. A lot of people seem to think the Central Valley will be fine, or could be fine if we got rid of the farms, but the coming droughts will be felt there hardest of all. One way or the other, the agriculture will go. But that won't bring the rain back.

clairity 4y ago

EdwardDiego 4y ago
Those deaths _are_ vastly more prevalent in the US than other jurisdictions. Ditto accidental shootings by children...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- clairity 4y ago
  no, the prevalence of guns is not the primary cause of mass shootings. and these deaths are so few that they're prone to variance and statistical error, not to mention political and ideological bias. over half of gun deaths in the US are suicides. much of the rest is murder, but over 99% of murders are not via mass shootings. most murders are between people who know each other. if you fear death by gun shooting, you should be worried about yourself first, and then those close to you, and no one else (not even "terrorists"). even in the US, you should basically never fear a stranger killing you with a gun.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    - clairity 4y ago

tzs 4y ago

> We're still "exporting water" to China in the form of alfalfa [2] in addition to other water intensive crops like almonds. That BBC article is off by a factor of about 20000. Most of the water (99.995%) used to grow alfalfa ends up in the in the California atmosphere, not in China. For almonds most of the water (99.97%) ends up in the California atmosphere. I wonder if it would be possible to grow these crops in some sort of enclosed place so that all that water could be captured and reused? Based on the export numbers for alfalfa to China, I get that you'd need about 800 km^2 of greenhouses. That's a lot of area, about equal to the total area of all agricultural greenhouses in Spain, Italy, and France.

tzs 4y ago

On the climate change angle, what they said on the NPR story I heard about this today was that climate change has pushed up the schedule. Water reduction that they had planned to phase in over the next several years now has to be done much sooner.

rkagerer 4y ago

Is there something wrong with desalination? I mean, just like inventing power generation a magnitude of order better than before advances civilization, couldn't cheap and clean desalination let us utilize water more liberally?

jzellis 4y ago
There's a lot wrong with it. People like to point out Israel as an example of successful desalination, but that ignores the fact that Israel is a quarter of the size of San Bernardino County and basically a narrow strip of land next to an ocean. You would need to build 4-8 plants the size of the largest desal plant Israel has for each major population center in the Southwest, and you'd have to do it very very quickly. But even that's not the problem. The problem is physics. The entire West, an area the size of Europe, is basically the Rockies sloping down to the Pacific, with a few inland coastal mountain ranges like the Cascades to break the flow. The rivers start in the mountains from snowmelt and flow downward and generally westward from there. So you'd need to reverse the hydrology of the entire region and pump that water uphill thousands of feet and inland over hundreds - thousands - of miles of terrain that is often rough enough that people still don't really live there. A region in which many areas are regularly seeing temperatures approaching 120°F for much of the year. And you'll have to do this in a matter of single digit years, not decades, in a country that's facing the worst political divisions since the Civil War, with an economy teetering on the edge of recession and possibly - almost certainly if he domino effect of this water crisis plays out the way a lot of people, myself included, think it will - actual collapse. So it's fine in theory, but absolutely impossible in practice. The civilizational complexity of the American West is about to be reduced, and nothing short of a deus ex machina will stop it.
- danaris 4y ago
  You're talking about it as if desalination alone would be expected to entirely reverse the water loss of the region, as opposed to it being one aspect of a holistic approach to the problem. Desalination can absolutely make a huge difference, here and in many other places, if we can get it refined to the point that it's (relatively) cheap to run (both in money and in other resources). That doesn't mean we shouldn't stop growing almonds in a desert.