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Why don’t we move the water from where it is to where it’s needed? If we can build a transcontinental highway system for cars and freight and oil pipelines we c

Why don’t we move the water from where it is to where it’s needed? If we can build a transcontinental highway system for cars and freight and oil pipelines we can obviously handle plain old water just fine. We don’t think big enough anymore and it’s crippling us.

Dma54rhs 2y ago
How sustainable can that be? desalination is probably the best choice since you wont fuck up other ecosystems by removing water from them.
- well_actulily 2y ago
  You still have the potential to fuck up marine and littoral ecosystems if you're discharging concentrated brine back into the ocean willy-nilly, though.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    Why is this downvoted, is this not possible?
  - danaris 2y ago
    My (admittedly very limited) understanding is that we can extract fairly valuable lithium from seawater. Wouldn't it be at least somewhat useful, rather than discharging the brine back into the ocean, to keep it in evaporation pools where we can then collect the lithium? Barring that, surely there are other ways we can handle the brine than just discharging it right back to the ocean, even if they make the desalination process somewhat more costly. Ultimately, water is infinitely more valuable than money.
piva00 2y ago
Pipelines require maintenance, they leak all the time. Removing water from somewhere has its own local impact, how do you avoid a game of whack-a-mole where moving massive amounts of water disrupts both populations as ecosystems from where the water has been removed? If it was a trivial solution it'd have already been done, it's always good to start with the principle "smarter people have thought about this" to try to understand a problem than thinking it's a trivial issue to be solved and no one else is as smart as you are.
- mananaysiempre 2y ago
  > If it was a trivial solution it'd have already been done I mean, the Romans did it, and it was a huge infrastructure project for a government unusually good at them. It’s fair to ask if the particular government in question just can’t do things on that scale.
  - piva00 2y ago
    The world is orders of magnitude more complex than when the Roman Empire was around. They didn't have to care about environmental destruction with their projects to the level we need to care, even at its peak the whole Roman Empire population spanning a few continents (Europe, Africa, and Asia) wasn't much more than population of just California. Yeah, the Romans did it, we don't live in Roman Empire times though.
bilbo0s 2y ago
We can. We don’t because who wants to pay for that? A long time ago you were talking about the Greatest Generation. OK. Fine. I can see them agreeing to pay for big projects. Generations nowadays though? Yeah, not so much. I suppose at a state level California has the money and could pay for canals to California. But why wouldn’t they put it into desalination plants instead if it really came to that? And suppose California just uses their bottomless checkbook to desalinate or move water. What about all the other states out west? Who will pay for water to Arizona for instance? This is another one that is a hard problem.
supplied_demand 2y ago
We built the highway system for national defense, there is no issue with thinking big when it comes to the military. Why don't we encourage people to move to where the water already is? There is plenty of room for people in Great Lakes/Rust Belt cities of Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo, Toledo, Erie, Gary, etc.
- EgregiousCube 2y ago
  I'm sure this isn't the intention of their regulation, but water rationing is a great way to encourage people to move to where the water already is.
- lizknope 2y ago
  I don't live in CA or any of the places you listed. People move to where good jobs are and I never think of the places you listed for good jobs. Retired people generally want to live where the temperatures are warmer and don't have to deal with tons of snow.
  - supplied_demand 2y ago
    What percentage of the workforce will work remotely by the time this pipeline is completed? Sure, people want to live where the temperature is warm all year, unfortunately those places don't have water. Water sits at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy. Winter is also moderating pretty quickly in the Midwest, barely any snow last winter.
lizknope 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars They already do this. The Owens Valley was turned into a desert to divert water to LA. There are aqueducts moving water from the Colorado River to LA and Phoenix which are both hundreds of miles away from the river. The 1974 film Chinatown was a fictionalized version of these events.
kristjansson 2y ago
If the water is uphill of where it's needed? Sure, and we've already done that. If the water is net uphill of where it's needed? Maybe, but requires enormous energy inputs, and infra to recapture on the downhill side, and has corresponding energy losses. If the water is net downhill of where it's needed? We almost certainly cannot, not without or building massive (hopefully nuclear/solar) energy infra. Moving water is far, far more difficult than any other type of infrastructure we build.

Dma54rhs 2y ago

How sustainable can that be? desalination is probably the best choice since you wont fuck up other ecosystems by removing water from them.

well_actulily 2y ago
You still have the potential to fuck up marine and littoral ecosystems if you're discharging concentrated brine back into the ocean willy-nilly, though.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Why is this downvoted, is this not possible?
- danaris 2y ago
  My (admittedly very limited) understanding is that we can extract fairly valuable lithium from seawater. Wouldn't it be at least somewhat useful, rather than discharging the brine back into the ocean, to keep it in evaporation pools where we can then collect the lithium? Barring that, surely there are other ways we can handle the brine than just discharging it right back to the ocean, even if they make the desalination process somewhat more costly. Ultimately, water is infinitely more valuable than money.

piva00 2y ago

Pipelines require maintenance, they leak all the time. Removing water from somewhere has its own local impact, how do you avoid a game of whack-a-mole where moving massive amounts of water disrupts both populations as ecosystems from where the water has been removed? If it was a trivial solution it'd have already been done, it's always good to start with the principle "smarter people have thought about this" to try to understand a problem than thinking it's a trivial issue to be solved and no one else is as smart as you are.

mananaysiempre 2y ago
> If it was a trivial solution it'd have already been done I mean, the Romans did it, and it was a huge infrastructure project for a government unusually good at them. It’s fair to ask if the particular government in question just can’t do things on that scale.
- piva00 2y ago
  The world is orders of magnitude more complex than when the Roman Empire was around. They didn't have to care about environmental destruction with their projects to the level we need to care, even at its peak the whole Roman Empire population spanning a few continents (Europe, Africa, and Asia) wasn't much more than population of just California. Yeah, the Romans did it, we don't live in Roman Empire times though.

bilbo0s 2y ago

We can. We don’t because who wants to pay for that? A long time ago you were talking about the Greatest Generation. OK. Fine. I can see them agreeing to pay for big projects. Generations nowadays though? Yeah, not so much. I suppose at a state level California has the money and could pay for canals to California. But why wouldn’t they put it into desalination plants instead if it really came to that? And suppose California just uses their bottomless checkbook to desalinate or move water. What about all the other states out west? Who will pay for water to Arizona for instance? This is another one that is a hard problem.

supplied_demand 2y ago

We built the highway system for national defense, there is no issue with thinking big when it comes to the military. Why don't we encourage people to move to where the water already is? There is plenty of room for people in Great Lakes/Rust Belt cities of Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo, Toledo, Erie, Gary, etc.

EgregiousCube 2y ago
I'm sure this isn't the intention of their regulation, but water rationing is a great way to encourage people to move to where the water already is.
lizknope 2y ago
I don't live in CA or any of the places you listed. People move to where good jobs are and I never think of the places you listed for good jobs. Retired people generally want to live where the temperatures are warmer and don't have to deal with tons of snow.
- supplied_demand 2y ago
  What percentage of the workforce will work remotely by the time this pipeline is completed? Sure, people want to live where the temperature is warm all year, unfortunately those places don't have water. Water sits at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy. Winter is also moderating pretty quickly in the Midwest, barely any snow last winter.

lizknope 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars They already do this. The Owens Valley was turned into a desert to divert water to LA. There are aqueducts moving water from the Colorado River to LA and Phoenix which are both hundreds of miles away from the river. The 1974 film Chinatown was a fictionalized version of these events.

kristjansson 2y ago

If the water is uphill of where it's needed? Sure, and we've already done that. If the water is net uphill of where it's needed? Maybe, but requires enormous energy inputs, and infra to recapture on the downhill side, and has corresponding energy losses. If the water is net downhill of where it's needed? We almost certainly cannot, not without or building massive (hopefully nuclear/solar) energy infra. Moving water is far, far more difficult than any other type of infrastructure we build.