California Farmers Are Planting Solar Panels as Water Supplies Dry Up (latimes.com) 240
An anonymous reader shares a report: Solar energy projects could replace some of the jobs and tax revenues that may be lost as constrained water supplies force California's agriculture industry to scale back. In the San Joaquin Valley alone, farmers may need to take more than half a million acres out of production to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which will ultimately put restrictions on pumping. Converting farmland to solar farms also could be critical to meeting California's climate change targets. That's according to a new report from the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit.
Working with the consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics, the conservancy tried to figure out how California could satisfy its appetite for clean energy without destroying ecologically sensitive lands across the American West. The report lays out possible answers to one of the big questions facing renewable energy: Which areas should be dedicated to solar panels and wind turbines, and which areas should be protected for the sake of wildlife, outdoor recreation, farming and grazing? One takeaway from the report, released this week: California will need hundreds or maybe thousands of square miles of solar power production in the coming decades -- and it would make sense to build one-third to one-half of that solar capacity on agricultural lands, mostly within the state.
Working with the consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics, the conservancy tried to figure out how California could satisfy its appetite for clean energy without destroying ecologically sensitive lands across the American West. The report lays out possible answers to one of the big questions facing renewable energy: Which areas should be dedicated to solar panels and wind turbines, and which areas should be protected for the sake of wildlife, outdoor recreation, farming and grazing? One takeaway from the report, released this week: California will need hundreds or maybe thousands of square miles of solar power production in the coming decades -- and it would make sense to build one-third to one-half of that solar capacity on agricultural lands, mostly within the state.
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Damn the fishes!! Kill'em all, we don't need no stinking fish, or water fowl, or any other small woodland creatures. Hell, damn that entire sliver of the planet, we don't need no stinkin' planet.
Imperial Valley (Score:2)
Most of California is Mediterranean in climate, hardly a desert.
There are huge sections of California that unambiguously are desert [wikipedia.org] and are used heavily for agriculture. The only reason things grow there at all is because of massive amounts of man made irrigation projects.
As-is, there is more and more water being diverted for "environmental" use (50% and rising), and that leaves less and less for growing food.
Maybe if they didn't try to make deserts wet it would be less of a problem.
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> Most of California is Mediterranean in climate, hardly a desert.
"Hot Summer Mediterranean" aka "A desert that takes winters off."
Summers there are hot and dry, making them unsuitable for many crops without significant irrigation. Sacramento Valley historically gets less than 19 inches per year of rainfall. The official definition of "Desert" is under 10 inches per year. Farmlands in the midwest typically get ~40 inches per year. Much of California meets what layman would consider a desert, even if it d
Re:Cali is a desert (Score:5, Interesting)
California's most agriculturally productive region, the Central Valley, is not mediterranean but "steppe" which is drier than mediterranean but not as dry as desert. And the Central Valley is only productive for the moment because we're draining the groundwater faster than nature can replenish it. Farmers are digging deeper and deeper wells to gain access to that water, and because nobody manages how much water they are allowed to take,at some point it will no longer be economically viable to grow crops in the Central Valley. It truly is a Tragedy of the Commons unfolding right before our eyes.
Not inherently limited (Score:3, Insightful)
The large population of humans and farms all compete for limited water
The water is only limited because California has chosen for decades not to expand stored water capacity, even as population ballooned.
The competition was created by mismanagement, and did not have to be.
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CA where people live isn't a desert. The monstrously sized chunk of land between mountains is, and that's what they water to turn it into farmland.
Home use is inconsequential, but they have limit disc requirements pointlessly "because it gets the population in the mind for further regulation", literally the reason. Literally admited by the sponsors.
Wouldn't it be better to desalinize water? (Score:3)
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There are some serious problems with water policy in California, and a lot of it is actually created through lobbying by the agricultural industry itself. For example, farmers are growing rice (!) in the San Joaquin valley which is mostly hot and arid. Rice growth requires huge pools of standing water which must inevitably evaporate. Ironicall
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The central valley of California is not desert. Technically it is semi-arid, meaning that it is very dry approximately half the year (the summer/autumn half).
Planting Solar Panels? (Score:5, Funny)
There was a guy in the past that would go around installing these little tiny bead-like structures into the ground. The little beads were "pre-programmed" to sort molecules. Once inserted into the ground (sunlight would damage the bead, so it had to start the process in the dark). it would begin to gather molecules from the air and soil around it, and use them to manufacture add-ones to the bead. The first add-on that it would manufacture was a solar-panel. This solar panel would then allow the device to sort of shift gears, and begin manufacturing more and more of a structure on which to manufacture more and more solar panels. After so many solar panels were developed, the device would change gears again, and then it would begin manufacturing food.
I can't remember the guy's actual name, but he was most affectionately referred to as, "Johnny Apple Seed".
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The masons refer to it as 'The Great Architect of the Universe'. But to my way of thinking, that seems to imply some sort of action that's been done, and is now a simple process of unfolding. But I like to think of this thing as being ever-active, and involved with everything along the way. Continually advancing it's approach to ...whatever the hell it's doing. Maybe working towards a true universal love? It's touch-and-go.
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Hmm....so I presume G-d is the one periodically flinging space rocks at the Earth that could wipe out life entirely or at least reset the game? This is a really odd G-d you have.
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The concept that God is a being making decisions, seems to be so outdated, that it's not worth discussing, however, here we are. When I talk about "god", I'm talking about the entirety of the universe. The good, the bad, etc... This is the assumption that I make whenever someone mentions a concept of god - that they're talking about god in the same way that I am. And when talking about god in this way, something becomes obvious: There's no concept of wanting god to be something. It's only when people w
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The concept that God is a being making decisions, seems to be so outdated, that it's not worth discussing, however, here we are. When I talk about "god", I'm talking about the entirety of the universe. The good, the bad, etc...
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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When I talk about "god", I'm talking about the entirety of the universe.
Golly, it almost seems like you could use the word "universe" and there wouldn't even be any confusion.
That's why I don't believe you.
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I'm not an arborist or horticulturist of any sort, but I was under the impression that little more is possible with apple seeds (as opposed to using grafts)?
It's psuedorandom. You can get a sweet apple from a seed, but you usually don't.
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Crafting has not much to do with the seeds.
It is about putting a "weak" but well yielding branch on a "robust" thrunk.
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I've heard others repeat this a zillion times, so it is no surprise to hear you spew it, but when you grow an apple tree from seed you almost always will get a sweet apple that closely resembles the "Standard Delicious" variety. But you won't be able to put that label on it. You'll only be able to say it is an apple, you won't be able to call it any variety. Stores aren't likely to buy that. But if it is a garden tree, nobody notices anything but that it is an apple.
Sour apples from seed are exceptionally r
The Colorado river use to flow to the ocean (Score:2)
https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-water-the-colorado-river/ [ppic.org]
No, California does not use all of it. But with everyone relying on that river, the demand now outstrips the supply.
What I don't understand is, why doesn't California spend the billions it wastes on bullet trains for a permanent solution to it's water needs. Hell, while they are at it. Take care of their home
Because a permanat solution to their water needs (Score:2)
The homeless problem's actually pretty cheap to fix though. But people hate giving people handouts, and since most homeless are mentally ill it's going to be handouts or nothing. Then again with housing prices in the major cities what they are even that's changing [dailynews.com]
Grazing, farmland and solar panels (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Grazing, farmland and solar panels (Score:4, Informative)
You should tell my wife. She puts her basil in the sun, because plants don't grow well in the shade, and they just burn up.
Fact is that SOME plants don't grow well in the shade, and some will ONLY grow in the shade. A good rule of thumb is that wide leaves are a good indicator of a shade loving plant. The explanation is that the wide leaves capture more sunlight, but allow for more water evaporation. The thin leafed plants will starve for sunlight in the shade. The wide leafed plant will burn up in the sun.
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You should tell my wife. She puts her basil in the sun, because plants don't grow well in the shade, and they just burn up.
Fact is that SOME plants don't grow well in the shade, and some will ONLY grow in the shade. A good rule of thumb is that wide leaves are a good indicator of a shade loving plant. The explanation is that the wide leaves capture more sunlight, but allow for more water evaporation. The thin leafed plants will starve for sunlight in the shade. The wide leafed plant will burn up in the sun.
It sounds like the basil needs more water to be in the sun.
I have a basil in the window in full sun, but it also has standing water in the bottom of the pot at all times.
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Her basil is on the back. Try moving yours outside and I bet it burns up. I'm in NC, btw. Latitude will make a big difference.
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Yeah, good point, I'm north of 44.
But that said, they grow it in full sun in Thailand. But that's planted in the ground.
If you take shredded paper, like from junk mail, and mulch the plants with it it will keep the roots cool and might make all the difference.
Re:Grazing, farmland and solar panels (Score:5, Informative)
Some of amount of shade is beneficial for most plants. How to best combine solar photovoltaics and agriculture is an area of current study.
There was a Science News article about this the other day, https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
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They've already optimized the spacing/height of solar panels, it is possible to grow mild weather plants like lettuce and grapes in the desert if the panels are high enough and spaced properly. You end up with 33% space utilization for solar and maintain ~99% space utilization for crops. Due to the extra shading water loss is greatly reduced. It's difficult to min/max but there are already real world studies in the ground proving this out.
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plants don't grow well in shade.
You should put it on your bucket list to visit a forest some day.
There are way more plants in shaded areas than in full sun.
Re:Grazing, farmland and solar panels (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you seen cattle up close? They are a half ton of stupid. They will eat anything and everything. Out in a pasture eating the grass, leaves, and the occasional rock or egg, is good for them, or at least not bad. They eat wires and screws too. They will chew through wires until it electrocutes them, because they are a half ton of stupid. They will lick steel posts until it gives them iron poisoning, because they are a half ton of stupid. They will lean on fences and poles until they fall over. Any structure that they can get to needs to be able to hold up to an entire herd leaning on it, because if one cow leans over then the whole herd will.
Now, tell me how you are going to build these solar collector posts so that the cattle don't push them over, chew them to bits, and grind them into dust with their hooves.
Oh, and then shit all over them. Because cattle shit on things... a lot.
Here's how that would be done, every post would have to be reinforced concrete suck deep in the dirt. The cattle will still try to lick, chew, and lean on the concrete so all the corners need to be sufficiently rounded so they don't ruin their teeth or impale themselves by getting pushed into them by another half ton of stupid. All the wires would have to be buried in conduit or run well over head. Then when anyone needs to go out there to do repairs you'd need a couple guys with cattle prods to just keep some half ton of stupid from busting up the truck. It might be a good idea to keep a shotgun in the truck in case one half ton of stupid thinks the truck or a worker is some kind of predator and decides to start a fight in spite of the cattle prods.
This would get expensive real quick, in lost cattle, in lost solar panels, or in the barriers in separating the two.
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Don't use a steel post, you need ductile iron. That's the type of cast iron that modern underground water pipes use.
That's going to be way cheaper than reinforced concrete, and last longer. The reason is that regular reinforced concrete isn't strong enough to stand up to cattle, for the reasons you describe. It would have to be per-stressed and would be competing for factory production with the engineering blocks used to make bridges, so that's the cost level you'd be looking at. That's way more expensive t
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Cattle rub their bodies against things like posts. This can be very destructive unless stout posts are used and have a deep foundation. The support requirements for the panels would thus be much more severe if cattle are to graze underneath them. Also, you can't grow grass (or any other grazeable crop) under solar panels. So they are, indeed mutually exclusive.
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Also, you can't grow grass (or any other grazeable crop) under solar panels. So they are, indeed mutually exclusive.
That's only true if there is very very little spacing. Grass doesn't need full sun. Also, there are lots of non-grass forage plants.
But yeah, goats might be a better companion animal for a solar farm.
Re:Grazing, farmland and solar panels (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, your post certainly attracted its fair share of naysayers...
Perhaps a link [sciencedaily.com] supporting your assertion will help.
TLDR: "The environment under the panels is much cooler in the summer and stays warmer in the winters. This not only lessens rates of evaporation of irrigation waters in the summer, but it also means that plants don't get as stressed out. Crops that grow under lower drought stress require less water, and because they don't wilt as easily midday due to heat, they are able to photosynthesize longer and grow more efficiently... In addition the solar panels themselves also benefit from the co-location. In places where it is above 75 degrees Fahrenheit when sunny, solar panels begin under-performing because they become too hot. The evaporation of water from the crops creates localized cooling, which reduces heat stress on the panels overhead and boosts their performance."
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They can also be placed on the roofs of agricultural barns and storage sheds. This means you pay less to the government for power, and sell it to them at a markup.
Intelligent deployment of solar panels can increase farm yields and reduce costs, and help during times of crop failure.
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Having sheep grazing on a solar farm is quite common. Otherwise you would need to mow.
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Not an either or, but both (Score:2)
It's actually fairly easy to have active farms with solar panels providing shade above water, which evaporates less quickly and is absorbed more into the soil if not in direct sunlight. Locating panels over irrigation canals is a way of increasing available water, and when intelligently deployed, can increase farm revenue dramatically.
It's just like how you can double your irrigation water available by spraying in circles at dusk and dawn, and not at peak sun.
You can also deploy solar panels as field separ
Solar Sheep Farm? (Score:2)
Or any suitable animal that will not eat the wrong stuff. Goats are out as they'd really enjoy the panels and cables...
Solar farm (shade is good for the animals too):
https://youtu.be/hHMYlTAEMUA [youtu.be]
Goats on a roof:
https://youtu.be/AyE4XWe_Lrs?t... [youtu.be]
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to be trolling, right? Most of this land already is a desert.
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Making the deserts bloom (Score:3)
Some of California is naturally "pretty fertile land". Much of it, however, has the soil and the sunlight to be fertile, but the water availability is not dependable. They make this fertile by irrigating it. And they get much of the water to irrigate it by pumping it out of aquifers faster than it can be replaced.
I have driven all over California. SOME is a desert, but most is pretty fertile land
Bullshit. There are fertile parts of California, but a heck of a lot of it is arid.
Here's a site with satellite views. It's the drought years that use up the water in the aquifers. https://p [petapixel.com]
Re: What a waste (Score:5, Informative)
Water that evaporates from fields or from plant transpiration turns the low-humidity air into slightly-higher (but still low) humidity air, and the water disperses into the global atmospheric circulation.
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Critical to a nation maybe, but not to a state. There's nothing insecure about California importing food from other states. Those states cannot, legally or politically, stop their farmers from selling surplus food to CA, and frankly have no reason to.
Growing in the desert (Score:5, Informative)
SOME is a desert, but most is pretty fertile land, just somewhat dry in areas
A place can have fertile land AND also be a desert. California has a lot of land that fits that description and the ONLY reason it is capable of large scale agriculture is due to some pretty epic irrigation projects. California's Imperial Valley [wikipedia.org] is a good example.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Informative)
What a shame that California is turning fertile farmlands into deserts.
All this could have easily been avoided if they put in more reservoirs over time, but instead they have refused to build out water infrastructure to any degree, and now are forced to make stupid choices as to who can get water.
This is a literal crime against humanity with people going hungry around the world...
This has nothing to do with reservoirs, California's problem is aquifer depletion due to over a century of completely irresponsible water use, hence the trend toward sustainable ground water management. Additionally a lot of the land they are talking about is sub-standard farming land anyway. You would know this if you had read the article. There are places in the American West where ground water subsidence is measured in several meters. One example being the San Joaquin Valley where land has subsided by about 9-10 meters since 1900 due to ground water depletion. If setting up solar farms is an adequate substitute for the loss of crop revenues then good for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
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Not to mention growing some of the most water thirsty crops such as almonds in an arid environment.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention growing some of the most water thirsty crops such as almonds in an arid environment.
Almonds are a problem, but the biggest irrigated crop and biggest consumer of water is alfalfa grown for beef and dairy.
California is the top dairy state, with more dairy cows than Wisconsin.
California is #4 in beef, behind Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas, but ahead of Oklahoma and Missouri.
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Almonds are a problem, but the biggest irrigated crop and biggest consumer of water is alfalfa grown for beef and dairy.
True, but most of the alfalfa is simply exported to Asia to feed cattle there. And the total value of the alfalfa crop is a mere 0.05% of the California GDP despite using 17% of the state's water. The value of the crop is so low that for much of it the cost to the state in delivering water is more than the crop is worth. So the share of alfalfa that is exported (not providing revenue to cattle operations, or food to Americans) is simply California's water exported at a loss.
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You say "good for them" for no longer growing food...
It seems very harsh since you are replying to a post that talked about people starving in this world.
Fewer crops grown, less food, putting crop workers out of work, higher food prices, doesn't sound so good from that view.
But what I really wanted to do is ask you why you say building reservoirs is useless when they knew for ages that the aquifer was depleting?
I live in the damp North-West, I am not a farmer, and do not have any idea why they chose not to
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Problems like water management are where our state government should be focusing their energy but they are too busy worried about plastic straw bands and transgender bathroom regulations to have time for such things.
Plastic waste is a real and serious problem. As for going to the same bathroom as a transgender person, It's ultra-conservatives and bible thumpers who are raising a stink about that issue, personally I have no issues with it.
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Care to explain what you are suggesting?
I'm (perhaps falsely) under the impression that the problem is ditched out wetlands that no longer keep the water and let it seep in to the groundwater, but diverts it to what was desert where evaporation and farming keeps it from reaching groundwater.
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Yeah, you're wrong.
The problem is that the water is being pumped out of an underground aquifer where it took thousands/millions of years to build up to the levels it was at when they started farming above it.
They've already removed most of the water, and even as their land was sinking because they pumped out so much, they kept pumping it out.
I mean you're right that if they hadn't also removed wetlands in other areas, there would be a higher rate of replenishment, but it would still be close to geologic tim
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A good chunk of California is a dessert.
The water from these reservoirs need to come from somewhere, then having irrigation channels built to get to all the spots makes it difficult.
Also the states water supply needs to be shared with Farming, Residential and Commercial and Industrial use.
I am from the east cost, were water supply isn't as big of a deal. But in California, water is a much more rare resource.
Most deserts would be really good farms IF You can get water there... However the problem with dese
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Chocolate cake? Cheesecake? Brownies? Ice cream?
Or did you mean "desert"? That extra "s" is important....
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Usually brownies, but newbies should be careful to only eat a couple bites and wait and hour to see how you feel.
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A good chunk of California is a dessert.
I'm up for a road trip, and diet be damned!
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What a shame that California is turning fertile farmlands into deserts.>/quote>
Not sure why you're modded troll, but you do jhave this backwards.
The main demand for freshwater in CA is irrigation for agriculture in the desert. Without that need, CA has plenty of water.
It's worth pointing out that this is a perfect use case for desalination plants. A big part of water use is already pumped halfway across the state, so the main cost associated with desalination is already paid.
So why doesn't CA just build desalinization plants? NIMBY? Greens?
[Useful facts about water use:
* More than half of water use in the US is in power generation (but not in CA, where cooling with saltwater is required).
* More than half the remaining use is agricultural integration,
* More than half of what's left after that is home/business irrigation.
* The sliver that's left is water used in the home: reducing usage in the home is a "feel-good" move, to little effect.]
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So a big "red flag" on if your comment is just wrong, or entirely pulled out of your ass, is that you're considering the difficultly of moving water as a lateral distance, rather than a vertical distance. That means you not only didn't do any back-of-the-envelope calculations, you didn't even have a useful conception of the problems involved before you started brain-swamping a solution.
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In the 1950s, Texas nearly had that fate, especially the central Texas area, so the state decided to be smart and create a series of lakes. The lakes now provide water to a number of cities, as well as hydroelectric power.
Had California did that, they would not be in this pickle. However, the California government really only gives a shit about what happens at the coastal cities. Anything east of the coast is completely ignored unless someone files a Federal lawsuit.
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They also switched to raising cows in Texas, and buying the feed from other states. States with more water.
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Read "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner. The United States Bureau of Reclamation has been building dams for almost 90 years now, there are almost no places left in the West to build dams. The San Joaquin Valley gets around 6 to 8 inches of rain a year. Compare that to Illinois which gets between 35 and 48 inches of rain a year. Farmers in the Central Valley have been pumping water out of the aquifers at an enormous rate since the 1960's. The simple truth is that agricultural in the Central Valley as it has
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> This is a literal crime against humanity with people going hungry around the world...
Holy Christ are you serious? You honestly think that the problem with world hunger is that California isn't growing more food? What about all the crops rotting in the flyover states from the Bigly Easy To Win Trade War with China?
The problem with hunger and starvation isn't that there isn't enough food. It's that the needy people aren't getting the food due to a whole raft of problems related to economics, transport
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Re:What a waste (Score:5, Informative)
1) Europe is having a lot of trouble with their nuclear power as surface water temperatures get too high to reject the plant's waste heat. They had to shut down or throttle a lot of nuclear power a few times this summer. Nuclear is not necessarily reliable.
2) Desalination has its limits.It's already extremely expensive, and using the most expensive form of energy (Nuclear) just makes it worse: Low-end estimates put desalination cost at $1,900 per acre-foot or more (src, PDF [pacinst.org]). This is a little more than what water costs inside the major cities, but farmlands outside the cities pay as little as $40 per acre-foot. (src [berkeley.edu])
It can devastate local marine ecosystems if overdone; Wastewater from the process is high salinity and low oxygen, both of which can kill marine life.
Desalination is not a panacea; it's a last resort. We can do, and need to do, a lot of other things before we get to desalination.
=Smidge=
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1) Europe is having a lot of trouble with their nuclear power as surface water temperatures get too high to reject the plant's waste heat. They had to shut down or throttle a lot of nuclear power a few times this summer. Nuclear is not necessarily reliable.
No desire to debate, just want to point out that nothing is absolutely reliable. The European nukes were designed / built with compromises, as pretty much everything is, and yes, they had to throttle back when the temps got too high. That's largely due to discharge water temp. limits that have been imposed. I speculate the limits were imposed after the plants had been built. They could probably add cooling towers and/or cooling ponds, but just don't bother because they don't absolutely have to. And the
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1. Not applicable. See, California has the Pacific Ocean (it's a bit bigger than the rivers in Europe) and the temperature is much more stable. So that's not an issue, really, for California.
2. The cost for desalinated water in Israel is about $0.55 per cubic meter. Here where I live in California, irrigation water is [israel21c.org] $6.30 per HCF [ca.gov], which is about $2.22 per cubic meter - about four TIMES the price of desalination. I'd say that is really pretty cheap, overall.
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Yah, building nuke plants in one of the most geologically active areas of the planet is such a bright idea. Have you told anyone else of this? I suppose you have a sign on your front lawn: Nuclear waste welcome, just dig here.
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Heck, just build a few nuclear plants and run some desalination.
We have two options:
1. Spend hundreds of billions of dollars on nukes, desalination plants, and billions more on pumps and power to move the water uphill and inland.
2. Stop growing subsidized rice and alfalfa in the desert.
This is a really tough decision.
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Fukushima had 100 times less radiation than a more recent radiation leak which still isn’t threatening to humans.
If nuclear is as bad as Fukushima is described, nobody would be able to live near NYC (Three Miles Island), Chernobyl would be a wasteland rather than a nature reservation and you would die going to Japan, Las Vegas, the Bahamas and many other places around the world where there have been major or minor accidents, nuclear testing and nuclear bombing has been done.
FYI: we use uranium, the mo
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Fukushima had 100 times less radiation than a more recent radiation leak which still isnâ(TM)t threatening to humans. ... Not how strong or how big the amount is.
The question is: how does the radiation reach/affect you
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Fukushima had 100 times less radiation than a more recent radiation leak which still isn’t threatening to humans.
Ah come on, this is just nonsense. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. If you look up the actual numbers Fukushima released 1000x more radiation into the air than this recent release from Russia (hundreds of PBq vs hundreds of TBq).
Re: What a waste (Score:5, Informative)
I did. First link: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
On their list nuclear has half the death rate of the next best option (hydro, and that's ignoring the Banqio failure of 1975)
Next link was https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
They have more info on global averages vs us averages, but their global average for nuclear is about half their global average for wind, and still the lowest of the global averages.
If you have some other page you'd like to reference, feel free, but the instructions you gave don't seem to support your assertion.
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In California's case, they would rather waste billions on a Bullet train that goes no where. And ignore real problems that are solvable for far less the cost.
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Don't forget, half our water goes for environmental use right now [ppic.org], mainly to maintain scenic rivers and such. Here in Ventura, we watched the Santa Clara river run strong and full for 4 months, nothing being stored. It's now back to its completely dry state - and hundreds of millions of gallons of water that could have been used for agriculture here was just flushed out to sea...
Environmental use, according to your linked article has a rather special meaning; I could post the definition, but won't as that would be misleading.
There are only three types of water in California: #1 agricultural, that is used to grow crops, #2 urban, the water that runs in taps and #3 environmental.
Environmental water includes all the water in the lakes, streams and wetland that isn't used for #1 or #2. The total is 100% of all water in California.
California has 6 (Score:3)
It most likely never will. The problem is that they're expensive to run. Investors are unlikely to run them because those same investors have bought water rights. Running the desalination plants would devalue the water rights they've bought.
You can run desalination with solar just fine. That's not the trouble. The trouble is that water is the
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Nuclear Energy was a great Idea during the time, we regularity agencies under less political pressure for every short term "Breaking News" issue of the day. Nuclear has become too political for the technology to be properly managed and maintained. Normally when an agency gets a lot of talk from an elected official, and have an other official wanted to be elected giving a harsh descent of it. That agency is now in a doom cycle, where they cannot do their job without some official sticking their fingers in
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Solar is losing out to wind power as a renewable power source.
It's the complete opposite; the economy of solar power is improving around 50% faster than the economy of wind power, as far as learning rate is concerned.
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Annual increase in installed solar power is around 30% (it fluctuated between 25% and 34% in the last five years [wikipedia.org]). Annual increase in installed wind power is around 13% (it fluctuated between 9% and 17% in the last five years [wikipedia.org]). So if there's anything "lagging", it's wind.
There's also nothing nonsensical about learning rates; they're perfectly applicable to large expanding industries like wind and solar power industry. It is you that shall be ignored.
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My state is focused on wind power because it's more cost effective than solar 36% of power produced in the state is wind. I happen to know this because the local college has a wind energy program. it's the midwest.
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lolz, California land is desert, wasting immense amounts of water to make it "productive agricultural land". Let's grow crops in better places
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Gee...you mean to tell us that the Invisible Hand of the Market isn't making this so? How come? Some sort of left-wing conspiracy you figure?
Agriculture needs water (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking productive Ag land out of production and putting solar panels on it is INSANE.
Land that you cannot get water to is by definition NOT productive for agriculture. California's Imperial Valley literally is a desert. The only reason anything grows there is because we've done some monstrously large irrigation projects. If that water is no longer economically available then it is no longer arable land and putting a solar farm in it's place can make sense.
The panels should be on top of roofs and over parking lots.
This I agree with. Every large industrial building should have it's roof covered with solar panels. It's just wasted space otherwise serving no productive value other than keeping the occupants dry. Important to be sure but inefficient use of underutilized resources.
Instead, we should be using nuclear power and desalinating water with the waste heat, and piping it inland around 100 miles or so.
Desalination only makes sense economically if there are no other available options. And using nuclear power to turn a desert into an oasis would be monstrously expensive. Who do you think is going to pay for that? Nuclear power isn't free and isn't even particularly cheap. Large irrigation projects (uphill no less) don't come cheap either. Explain to me how you plant to make it economically viable and then it can be a discussion. As it stands land irrigated in such a manner would be economically noncompetitive.
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Said by someone who hasn't done the faintest of fuzzy projections on how much water agriculture uses as opposes to washing solar panels. Oh, maybe you have done these studies. Could you please point to them in refereed journals? And no sneaky promoting some alt-right rags as refereed journals, we'll want some real science and engineering reported.
Not nearly as much (Score:2)
More specially most larger solar installations a significant amount of water simple because the panel need to be washed regular due to dust build up.
Maybe but they use FAR less water than agriculture does. The problem isn't that they cannot get some water. The problem is that they cannot get enough water to grow plants on an industrial scale.
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Can we get some nuclear power now?
California can't take much more solar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If you promise to stop your offtopic yapping about nuclear I will tell you exactly where in the New Green Deal (which you have not read) it allows for nuclear.
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it allows for nuclear.
Not good enough. Nuclear power is still left out of the Democrat Party platform and no current Democrat running for POTUS supports nuclear power..
The Green New Deal can "allow" for nuclear power but we have AOC and other advocates for this "deal" saying that nuclear power will unambiguously be excluded or they are silent on it.
We need nuclear power or the lights go out. If the Democrats can't support nuclear power then they shouldn't get support from the voters.
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Then perhaps would you consider the fact that the Green New Deal does not propose or even mention solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, batteries and quit lying and saying that it does?
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The same New Green Deal that they dismissed as a conspiracy theorist forgery?
You made my day, I'd mod you funny if I could.