7 ms·

Three-quarters of the land is drying out, 'redefining life on Earth'

146 points by rntn 2y ago

dark_star 2y ago
This doesn't address the ecosystem problems and costs imposed by climate change - but for crops and drinking water, it looks like fresh water created by solar powered desalinization is going to be very inexpensive in the future. [1][2] This is mainly due to the fact that solar power will be almost free in the near future.[3] 1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/a-vision-for-the-alleviation-of-water-scarcity-in-the-us-southwest-and-the-revitalization-of-the-salton-sea/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/a-vision-for-t... 2. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-water-than-rain-can-provide-refilling-rivers-with-desalination/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-w... 3. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batteries-for-generic-use-cases/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batt...
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  So, too cheap to meter?
  - zweifuss 2y ago
    Certainly not. But old solar cells that still have a certain lifespan can be obtained almost free of charge by anyone who wants them.
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      Labor of installation is anywhere from 5 to 25% of the cost, depending on location. Add in any missing parts (wiring, inverters) and permitting costs, and you may find yourself just as well off buying new panels for the added efficiency. You'll either need less labor and materials, or get more output from the same land space, depending on your needs. Reusing old cells makes sense in some applications, but for almost anything commercial or not a handyman special, I don't know that the numbers work out very well in their favor.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Too cheap to meter, as long as you have no SLA. Much like solar-generated heat is "too cheap to meter" in traditional greenhouses. Desalination is not sensitive to input power fluctuations, as long as you have a large enough reservoir to even out the spikes. The natural desalination cycle, with evaporation of ocean water, clouds, mountains, and rivers, already worrks like that, but probably a more localized setup with electric pumps and reverse-osmosis membranes could bring freshwater more directly where humans need it.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Reservoir, solar (floating on the reservoir + ground mount nearby), cheap batteries. Would allow for balancing desal generation with grid needs. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/03/12/floating-pv-for-desalination/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/03/12/floating-pv-for-desal... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98hZI5CfQXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98hZI5CfQXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXJJFBEX-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXJJFBEX-g https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/87698.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/87698.pdf
    - buckle8017 2y ago
      Unfortunately the massive reservoirs tend to be quite far away from the salt water. For desalinization plants to operate with the sun entirely new massive fresh water reservoirs would need to be constructed.
- travisporter 2y ago
  As a close follower of Casey, I have become disillusioned with the lack of progress in this space. Certainly solar is cheaper but his own company is very slow to scale up and ignores the logistical challenges of these huge endeavors. The salton sea lithium project should be a slam dunk but is very slow because building big things takes time. Also, not everything he says is gospel
  - amandell 2y ago
    Projects at that scale will never get built - it doesn't matter if it is solar desalination. High speed rail in CA is a perfect analog - way too many ways (regulatory + environmental) to kill projects of this size. The only way something happens at the salton sea is with state mandate to implement it.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
People don't understand the full impact and consequences of drought. When you draw down the water table, the ground compacts. You never get that water storage capacity back. There's no way to uncompact hundreds of feet worth of ground across thousands of square miles of earth. There are places in California where the ground has compacted several dozen feet. When you put poison onto the ground, it usually goes into the ground, and sure, the ground may act like a kind of HPLC column and some of that poison might take years to decades to reach the water table...but then what? When you melt chunks of the arctic and antarctic, you don't just cause sea water levels to rise. You also reduce salinity, and affect global-scale air and water currents like the jetstream - causing dramatic shifts in temperatures and water content of air. Indigenous peoples have been warning us for ~10 generations that selfishness will/is destroying the planet. Nobody in power has cared, instead mocking those who do as "snowflakes" and "anti growth" and "anti progress" and so on. All to make more money. You cannot eat money. Your friends cannot eat money. Your children cannot eat money. Their children cannot eat money.
- macinjosh 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hsavit1 2y ago
    your indifference to potential civilizational collapse is representative of the mass amnesia on this issue
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  [flagged]
- bubbleRefuge 2y ago
  All true but most people in the world are worried about putting food on the table and taking care of their kids. Fix social justice and you get on the road to fixing the costs of unfettered capitalism.
  - 2y ago
fhancx 2y ago
[flagged]
- conradev 2y ago
  Where did you get the notion that there are too many humans on earth? Is the number of insects okay?
  - throw310822 2y ago
    > Is the number of insects okay? I don't mind the number of insects as long as they don't drive cars or want home appliances and don't need hospitals and schools.
- someuser2345 2y ago
  > Humanitarian aid should be tied to contraceptive use, World Bank loans as well. That sounds an awful lot like eugenics, were poor people were paid money to have themselves sterilized. It's also backwards; the best way to get people to stop having kids is by raising their quality of life, at which point they will want to use contraception.
egberts1 2y ago
We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by sprawling urban areas either.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by sprawling urban areas either. I hear this a lot and trust it is a widespread occurrence. Here (gulf-coast FL), farms are commonly non-viable when sold to developers. Our tree-based crops seem especially prone to farm-busting economics, diseases and weather.
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  This is a negligible effect in comparison to those described in the article.
- thrance 2y ago
  It's a "big" topic here in France, a law recently passed that prohibits mayors from increasing the total artificial surface in their municipalities. I have seen many right-wing politicians wanting to get rid of it.
- hirsin 2y ago
  I was curious - land use stats in the US show agricultural use has dropped from 49% to 45% in the last 60 years, with the majority of the loss in the 90s and early 60s. Basically zero change in the last 20 years. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?locations=us https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?location... It looks like there's about 20x more ag land, by sq km, than urban land in the US (4M to about 200k). So even if urban areas doubled in size, purely at the expense of ag (and not forests), it would be about 5% loss overall. I have a feeling these numbers don't account for suburban land use, and that's actually an issue... Not urban use.
  - eliaspro 2y ago
    I wonder how this might look like, if all animal-based products were taken out of the equation and a purely plant-based food supply-chain was put in place instead. I'd guess overall agricultural landuse would drop to 1/4th or so due to the huge inefficiencies of animal-based products, but would have to dig for proper numbers at e.g. Our World in Data.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
Ancalagon 2y ago
Whats interesting to me is climate change has been shown to actually increase total annual rainfall on land[1], but I guess this means that its those areas where farming was once feasible and where people now live are becoming more arid? [1] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-precipitation https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
- scythe 2y ago
  The issue is that the increased temperatures increase evaporation at the same time that they increase precipitation, and in many places, the net effect on water availability is expected to be negative.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > but I guess this means that its those areas where farming was once feasible and where people now live are becoming more arid? Yep, it's an agricultural catch 22. Arid regions where people live are generally formed by mountains absorbing rainfall. When that water washes down, it carries nutrients and forms very agriculturally productive alluvial plains like in the Nile delta (although the reason for that desertification is Hadley cell circulation, not mountains, iirc). It's both why Egyptian civilization was so successful and why so many artifacts survived as long as they were stored away from the delta. The longer the region has been arid, the thicker the layer of usable nutrients and some areas like California are also on top of ancient oceans with thick layers of fossilized organisms providing calcium carbonate and phosphorus. These regions also tend to have favorable temperatures that support multiple growing seasons per year and without plentiful water, there are far fewer other plant species to compete with. In wetter regions, that water instead washes most of the nutrients into the ocean to the point where areas like the Amazon are so nutrient poor that organisms evolve unique adaptation like pitcher plants and the whole ecosystem depends on intercontinental dust that's carried all the way from the Sahara (the Bodélé Depression especially) [1]. Farming is still plenty feasible in wetter areas (Brazil and the PNW have plenty of agriculture for example and it's the whole basis for rice farming) but it's nowhere near as productive [1] https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazons-plants/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-sat...
stainablesteel 2y ago
[flagged]
- hobs 2y ago
  And the argument you present in opposition is basically ad hom + appeal to ... folk wisdom?
  - stainablesteel 2y ago
    the article doesn't exactly present data, if someone is talking about the global climate i expect to see sharp quantification and low errors along time series data what is there to critique exactly?
conartist6 2y ago
It's ok, humans don't need water.
- blooalien 2y ago
  > "It's ok, humans don't need water." Yep. Humans only need money.
ldehaan 2y ago
[dead]
ETH_start 2y ago
This article conveniently leaves out the massive greening the Earth has experienced. https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/ https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization...

146 points by rntn 2y ago

This doesn't address the ecosystem problems and costs imposed by climate change - but for crops and drinking water, it looks like fresh water created by solar powered desalinization is going to be very inexpensive in the future. [1][2] This is mainly due to the fact that solar power will be almost free in the near future.[3] 1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/a-vision-for-the-alleviation-of-water-scarcity-in-the-us-southwest-and-the-revitalization-of-the-salton-sea/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/a-vision-for-t... 2. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-water-than-rain-can-provide-refilling-rivers-with-desalination/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-w... 3. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batteries-for-generic-use-cases/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batt...

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
So, too cheap to meter?
- zweifuss 2y ago
  Certainly not. But old solar cells that still have a certain lifespan can be obtained almost free of charge by anyone who wants them.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    Labor of installation is anywhere from 5 to 25% of the cost, depending on location. Add in any missing parts (wiring, inverters) and permitting costs, and you may find yourself just as well off buying new panels for the added efficiency. You'll either need less labor and materials, or get more output from the same land space, depending on your needs. Reusing old cells makes sense in some applications, but for almost anything commercial or not a handyman special, I don't know that the numbers work out very well in their favor.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Too cheap to meter, as long as you have no SLA. Much like solar-generated heat is "too cheap to meter" in traditional greenhouses. Desalination is not sensitive to input power fluctuations, as long as you have a large enough reservoir to even out the spikes. The natural desalination cycle, with evaporation of ocean water, clouds, mountains, and rivers, already worrks like that, but probably a more localized setup with electric pumps and reverse-osmosis membranes could bring freshwater more directly where humans need it.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Reservoir, solar (floating on the reservoir + ground mount nearby), cheap batteries. Would allow for balancing desal generation with grid needs. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/03/12/floating-pv-for-desalination/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/03/12/floating-pv-for-desal... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98hZI5CfQXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98hZI5CfQXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXJJFBEX-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXJJFBEX-g https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/87698.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/87698.pdf
  - buckle8017 2y ago
    Unfortunately the massive reservoirs tend to be quite far away from the salt water. For desalinization plants to operate with the sun entirely new massive fresh water reservoirs would need to be constructed.
travisporter 2y ago
As a close follower of Casey, I have become disillusioned with the lack of progress in this space. Certainly solar is cheaper but his own company is very slow to scale up and ignores the logistical challenges of these huge endeavors. The salton sea lithium project should be a slam dunk but is very slow because building big things takes time. Also, not everything he says is gospel
- amandell 2y ago
  Projects at that scale will never get built - it doesn't matter if it is solar desalination. High speed rail in CA is a perfect analog - way too many ways (regulatory + environmental) to kill projects of this size. The only way something happens at the salton sea is with state mandate to implement it.

KennyBlanken 2y ago

People don't understand the full impact and consequences of drought. When you draw down the water table, the ground compacts. You never get that water storage capacity back. There's no way to uncompact hundreds of feet worth of ground across thousands of square miles of earth. There are places in California where the ground has compacted several dozen feet. When you put poison onto the ground, it usually goes into the ground, and sure, the ground may act like a kind of HPLC column and some of that poison might take years to decades to reach the water table...but then what? When you melt chunks of the arctic and antarctic, you don't just cause sea water levels to rise. You also reduce salinity, and affect global-scale air and water currents like the jetstream - causing dramatic shifts in temperatures and water content of air. Indigenous peoples have been warning us for ~10 generations that selfishness will/is destroying the planet. Nobody in power has cared, instead mocking those who do as "snowflakes" and "anti growth" and "anti progress" and so on. All to make more money. You cannot eat money. Your friends cannot eat money. Your children cannot eat money. Their children cannot eat money.

macinjosh 2y ago
[flagged]
- hsavit1 2y ago
  your indifference to potential civilizational collapse is representative of the mass amnesia on this issue
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
[flagged]
bubbleRefuge 2y ago
All true but most people in the world are worried about putting food on the table and taking care of their kids. Fix social justice and you get on the road to fixing the costs of unfettered capitalism.
- 2y ago

fhancx 2y ago

[flagged]

conradev 2y ago
Where did you get the notion that there are too many humans on earth? Is the number of insects okay?
- throw310822 2y ago
  > Is the number of insects okay? I don't mind the number of insects as long as they don't drive cars or want home appliances and don't need hospitals and schools.
someuser2345 2y ago
> Humanitarian aid should be tied to contraceptive use, World Bank loans as well. That sounds an awful lot like eugenics, were poor people were paid money to have themselves sterilized. It's also backwards; the best way to get people to stop having kids is by raising their quality of life, at which point they will want to use contraception.

egberts1 2y ago

We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by sprawling urban areas either.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by sprawling urban areas either. I hear this a lot and trust it is a widespread occurrence. Here (gulf-coast FL), farms are commonly non-viable when sold to developers. Our tree-based crops seem especially prone to farm-busting economics, diseases and weather.
madaxe_again 2y ago
This is a negligible effect in comparison to those described in the article.
thrance 2y ago
It's a "big" topic here in France, a law recently passed that prohibits mayors from increasing the total artificial surface in their municipalities. I have seen many right-wing politicians wanting to get rid of it.
hirsin 2y ago
I was curious - land use stats in the US show agricultural use has dropped from 49% to 45% in the last 60 years, with the majority of the loss in the 90s and early 60s. Basically zero change in the last 20 years. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?locations=us https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?location... It looks like there's about 20x more ag land, by sq km, than urban land in the US (4M to about 200k). So even if urban areas doubled in size, purely at the expense of ag (and not forests), it would be about 5% loss overall. I have a feeling these numbers don't account for suburban land use, and that's actually an issue... Not urban use.
- eliaspro 2y ago
  I wonder how this might look like, if all animal-based products were taken out of the equation and a purely plant-based food supply-chain was put in place instead. I'd guess overall agricultural landuse would drop to 1/4th or so due to the huge inefficiencies of animal-based products, but would have to dig for proper numbers at e.g. Our World in Data.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

Ancalagon 2y ago

Whats interesting to me is climate change has been shown to actually increase total annual rainfall on land[1], but I guess this means that its those areas where farming was once feasible and where people now live are becoming more arid? [1] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-precipitation https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

scythe 2y ago
The issue is that the increased temperatures increase evaporation at the same time that they increase precipitation, and in many places, the net effect on water availability is expected to be negative.
throwup238 2y ago
> but I guess this means that its those areas where farming was once feasible and where people now live are becoming more arid? Yep, it's an agricultural catch 22. Arid regions where people live are generally formed by mountains absorbing rainfall. When that water washes down, it carries nutrients and forms very agriculturally productive alluvial plains like in the Nile delta (although the reason for that desertification is Hadley cell circulation, not mountains, iirc). It's both why Egyptian civilization was so successful and why so many artifacts survived as long as they were stored away from the delta. The longer the region has been arid, the thicker the layer of usable nutrients and some areas like California are also on top of ancient oceans with thick layers of fossilized organisms providing calcium carbonate and phosphorus. These regions also tend to have favorable temperatures that support multiple growing seasons per year and without plentiful water, there are far fewer other plant species to compete with. In wetter regions, that water instead washes most of the nutrients into the ocean to the point where areas like the Amazon are so nutrient poor that organisms evolve unique adaptation like pitcher plants and the whole ecosystem depends on intercontinental dust that's carried all the way from the Sahara (the Bodélé Depression especially) [1]. Farming is still plenty feasible in wetter areas (Brazil and the PNW have plenty of agriculture for example and it's the whole basis for rice farming) but it's nowhere near as productive [1] https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazons-plants/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-sat...

stainablesteel 2y ago

[flagged]

hobs 2y ago
And the argument you present in opposition is basically ad hom + appeal to ... folk wisdom?
- stainablesteel 2y ago
  the article doesn't exactly present data, if someone is talking about the global climate i expect to see sharp quantification and low errors along time series data what is there to critique exactly?

conartist6 2y ago

It's ok, humans don't need water.

blooalien 2y ago
> "It's ok, humans don't need water." Yep. Humans only need money.

ldehaan 2y ago

[dead]

ETH_start 2y ago

This article conveniently leaves out the massive greening the Earth has experienced. https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/ https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization...