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For water. Its proven we can build many thousand miles of pipeline for 10s of billions. Which is vastly cheap enough and sufficient to solve this problem. Much

For water. Its proven we can build many thousand miles of pipeline for 10s of billions. Which is vastly cheap enough and sufficient to solve this problem. Much cheaper than alternatives

mikeyouse 4y ago
I love how arm chair engineers have solved the water crises in the south by suggesting people "just build pipelines!". Just the lack of understanding of like 15 different aspects of the problem with that idea and the confidence to defend regardless is kind of amazing.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  You're right, piping water from point A to B is perhaps one of humanity's most challenging problems. What's really sad is that so many people are brainless enough to believe that this is not possible to solve, and easily so, once incentives drive it forward. Your comment does remind me of many of the 0.1-0.5x engineers I've worked with though. We need hundreds of people to maintain a mobile client, it's not possible to do it with a handful!
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    I'm sure those "0.1x" engineers found you a treat to work with. One of the more impressive combinations of abject ignorance and misplaced confidence I've seen in a long time. Believe it or not, but there are indeed people who've designed large volume water piping systems on Hackernews..
selectodude 4y ago
Where is the water coming from? It’s not coming from the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River. Where are these enormous volumes of untapped water that we can pump over the Rocky Mountains?
- lh7777 4y ago
  How about the Columbia? Average discharge is 265,000 cfs, which has been pretty consistent over the past 100+ years.[1] That's approximately 200 million acre feet just flowing into the Pacific every year. For comparison, the Phoenix metro area uses 2.3 million acre feet of water per year (40% of which is used in agriculture).[2] So a bit over 1% of the Columbia's annual flow. Another comparison: the Colorado "in its natural state" averaged just 22,500 cfs, less than 10% of the Columbia.[3] I'm not saying that piping water from Oregon to the southwest is a good idea, but it's not as if we don't have water in the west. It's just a lot further north than most of the population centers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River#Discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River#Discharge [2] https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/how-much-water-are-we-using-year-phoenix-area https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/how-much-water-are-w... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River#Discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River#Discharge

For water. Its proven we can build many thousand miles of pipeline for 10s of billions. Which is vastly cheap enough and sufficient to solve this problem. Much cheaper than alternatives

mikeyouse 4y ago

I love how arm chair engineers have solved the water crises in the south by suggesting people "just build pipelines!". Just the lack of understanding of like 15 different aspects of the problem with that idea and the confidence to defend regardless is kind of amazing.

adam_arthur 4y ago
You're right, piping water from point A to B is perhaps one of humanity's most challenging problems. What's really sad is that so many people are brainless enough to believe that this is not possible to solve, and easily so, once incentives drive it forward. Your comment does remind me of many of the 0.1-0.5x engineers I've worked with though. We need hundreds of people to maintain a mobile client, it's not possible to do it with a handful!
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  I'm sure those "0.1x" engineers found you a treat to work with. One of the more impressive combinations of abject ignorance and misplaced confidence I've seen in a long time. Believe it or not, but there are indeed people who've designed large volume water piping systems on Hackernews..

selectodude 4y ago

Where is the water coming from? It’s not coming from the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River. Where are these enormous volumes of untapped water that we can pump over the Rocky Mountains?

lh7777 4y ago
How about the Columbia? Average discharge is 265,000 cfs, which has been pretty consistent over the past 100+ years.[1] That's approximately 200 million acre feet just flowing into the Pacific every year. For comparison, the Phoenix metro area uses 2.3 million acre feet of water per year (40% of which is used in agriculture).[2] So a bit over 1% of the Columbia's annual flow. Another comparison: the Colorado "in its natural state" averaged just 22,500 cfs, less than 10% of the Columbia.[3] I'm not saying that piping water from Oregon to the southwest is a good idea, but it's not as if we don't have water in the west. It's just a lot further north than most of the population centers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River#Discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River#Discharge [2] https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/how-much-water-are-we-using-year-phoenix-area https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/how-much-water-are-w... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River#Discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River#Discharge