UN Report Warns of Global Water Crisis Amid Climate Change (apnews.com) 138
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: Much of the world is unprepared for the floods, hurricanes and droughts expected to worsen with climate change and urgently needs better warning systems to avert water-related disasters, according to a report by the United Nations' weather agency. Global water management is "fragmented and inadequate," the report published Tuesday found, with nearly 60% of 101 countries surveyed needing improved forecasting systems that can help prevent devastation from severe weather. As populations grow, the number of people with inadequate access to water is also expected to rise to more than 5 billion by 2050, up from 3.6 billion in 2018, the report said.
Among the actions recommended by the report were better warning systems for flood- and drought-prone areas that can identify, for example, when a river is expected to swell. Better financing and coordination among countries on water management is also needed, according to the report by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, development agencies and other groups. The report found that since 2000, flood-related disasters globally rose 134% compared with the previous two decades. Most flood-related deaths and economic losses were in Asia, where extreme rainfall caused massive flooding in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal and Pakistan in the past year. The frequency of drought-related disasters rose 29% over the same period. African countries recorded the most-drought related deaths. The steepest economic losses from drought were in North America, Asia and the Caribbean, the report said. Globally, the report found 25% of all cities are already experiencing regular water shortages. Over the past two decades, it said the planet's combined supplies of surface water, ground water and water found in soil, snow and ice have declined by 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) per year. Despite some progress in recent years, the report found 107 countries would not meet goals to sustainably manage water supplies and access by 2030 at current rates.
Among the actions recommended by the report were better warning systems for flood- and drought-prone areas that can identify, for example, when a river is expected to swell. Better financing and coordination among countries on water management is also needed, according to the report by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, development agencies and other groups. The report found that since 2000, flood-related disasters globally rose 134% compared with the previous two decades. Most flood-related deaths and economic losses were in Asia, where extreme rainfall caused massive flooding in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal and Pakistan in the past year. The frequency of drought-related disasters rose 29% over the same period. African countries recorded the most-drought related deaths. The steepest economic losses from drought were in North America, Asia and the Caribbean, the report said. Globally, the report found 25% of all cities are already experiencing regular water shortages. Over the past two decades, it said the planet's combined supplies of surface water, ground water and water found in soil, snow and ice have declined by 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) per year. Despite some progress in recent years, the report found 107 countries would not meet goals to sustainably manage water supplies and access by 2030 at current rates.
Obvious solution (Score:3)
The best X-man for climate change.. (Score:2)
As usual (Score:3)
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But, carry on... Blah blah solar panels, blah blah electric cars, blah blah desalinization...
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Most countries are already at or below fertility rate. This includes India, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Iran. Almost all the countries with fertility rate significantly above replacement are in Africa, and even there rates are falling quickly (for example Ethiopia has gone from 7 to 4.5 in the last 25 years).
So no, expansion of population is not the issue.
Hormones are the Problem (Score:2)
Making an economy work without additional population isn't that complicated. But that's not the problem.
We can rationally look at population, from a bird's-eye-view, and say that we need to slow growth or reduce population.
This is easy to say, and it's obvious.
But on an individual level we have hormones which have evolved over millions of years to basically override rationality and cause us to procreate. It's a rational choice versus biological imperative.
And, the technologies that have allowed us to crea
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Was Michael Burry right again? (Score:2)
OMG WERE ALL GOING TO DIE (Score:2)
It always seems to come down to the same thing. Give us all your money. Say goodbye to your way of life. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Trust us.
I live in an arid part of the world (the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada). As a result we use ground and river water sparingly. The Authorities decided long ago not to implement any dams or other water management on the Fraser River or its watershed (in my case, the Thompson). If water gets crazier we may have to revisit this decision.
...
Re:Global... water management against floods? (Score:5, Funny)
the propaganda keeps talking about "global solutions".
When all you have is a pin, every globe is a balloon
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When a pin you have, bank account access you get. - Yoda
So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That sounds almost like we should help out poor nations with some logistics, medical care, and law enforcement so they don't collapse into tribal warfare, with brutal thugs that will cut off hands for stealing, keep girls from going to school, beat young women that leave their homes, hold people as slaves, and support their economy by selling addictive rereational drugs, selling weapons, selling slaves, and holding foreigners for ransom.
Like, how much could this cost a big wealthy nation to keep some sembla
Re: So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:4, Informative)
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US involvement in Central America via Teddy Roosevelts 'White Fleet' and support of the United Fruit Company long before WW2 and the Cold War that followed
Rich nations usually rely on less wealthy countries for resources, i.e. The Irish Potato Famine, during which produce was exported from Ireland to England while the Irish starved to death, all during the 19th century
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Re:So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are thinking far too small. This isn't about a few rouge states, this is about mass migration on a scale you can't even imagine as large parts of the world become effectively uninhabitable due to lack of water, rising sea levels and extreme heat.
You are starting to see domestic climate refugees in developed nations like the US, where people living in California have had their homes destroyed and been forced to move due to forest fires.
We need to limit climate change and come up with a plan to keep water available to everyone, otherwise people will start migrating en-masse and there will be a domino effect as they do. There will also be more wars over resources if we don't work together and treat the whole planet like one big system, instead of lots of little independent administrative areas.
Re:So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much this. The scale is unimaginable.
About two billion people are currently living in areas that are forecasted to be physically uninhabitable (35C + 100% humidity combo) for more than 100 days/year by 2050. That is at +4C, which we are on track. These areas are india, indonesia, central america. You get the picture: around the equator.
Already now water shortages are popping up. From the US west coast through brazil and africa, some parts of europe are also beginning to be stressed. Now, with good infrastructure, water shortages might not cause much migration: the collapse happens too fast, and people don't have the time to leave alive.
Irrigation failure will drive us out first though.
What is expected to happen shortly is another Arab-spring like event: food is expensive in the Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan area, and isn't expected to come down. And no, the Arab spring wasn't some political awakening of populations, but simply a case of food being too expensive due to bad yields in Russia. Like the French revolution in 1789.
Lebanon is currently the place to watch. The state has essentially failed, taps are running dry, water is delivered based on the connections and money you have. Fuel and food is the same story.
Re: So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:2)
Climate change is long term the dominant factor, it will take a while to have the same impact on available water as population growth though.
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Iran wants Lebanon to collapse because that will probably mean a war with Israel. At the very least they probably expect their proxies to end up running the show if it does collapse again.
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As always, its complicated. What we can do is point fingers at events, and connect implications dots. I love going from what I consider the lowest common denominators, food and energy, upwards. In the middle it then gets messy with politics and corruption, then foreign interference, and in the end you end up with a clusterfuck of points that point to pretty much nothing in particular, but a whole swath of events that together create a perfect storm.
For a state/civilization to fail, it rarely takes one crisi
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About two billion people are currently living in areas that are forecasted to be physically uninhabitable (35C + 100% humidity combo) for more than 100 days/year by 2050.
Those areas will be perfectly inhabitable with air conditioning, which will be affordable by almost everyone 30 years from now (the countries in question have economies growing at 3-10% per year, the poorer ones are generally closer to 10%).
Re: So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:2)
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Air conditioning implies more energy use. Power grids around the world are already getting stretched thin during heat waves when everyone turns the heat down.
Solar panel efficiency decreases with rising temperature. Hell even transmission line efficiency decreases with increasing heat...
Nuclear power plants might have to go offline if cooling water is too hot (happened in France).
And you're missing the most important: agriculture. If you can't survive outside, you will definitely not go in the field plant p
Trouble is that's 29 years from now (Score:2)
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About two billion people are currently living in areas that are forecasted to be physically uninhabitable (35C + 100% humidity combo) for more than 100 days/year by 2050.
Already now water shortages are popping up. From the US west coast through brazil and africa, some parts of europe are also beginning to be stressed.
Those are not the same places. Indeed, nowhere where humidity is 100% at that temperature will ever lack for water. Quite the opposite. It takes only a very small temperature differential to condense potable fresh water out of air that warm and saturated. It doesn't take much energy to start doing that, and the more energy that's available, the easier it is to suck quite a lot of water out of the air, and the air is subsequently quite comfortable.
Your first point is totally independent and irrelevant to
Re: So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:2)
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Yes, the two points are independent. But relevant to each other: extreme conditions will become more common.
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> I know you're parroting far left-wing data sources, but I'm not buying that huge swaths of the equator will be like that all the time in 30 years.
Who said all the time? I said on average 100 days/year in the 4C+ scenario. That is enough to make people leave. Hell a few days every year would make me consider leaving. The reality will most likely be somewhere else.
Whatever the political inclination, this is what I'm parroting.
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
Re: So who's going to pay for all that? (Score:3)
Oh you Americans, always making everything political, red or blue...
Oh, you meant "rogue"...? Never mind, carry on.
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Oops. I'm not American though.
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You are thinking far too small. This isn't about a few rouge states,
Personally I prefer burgundy states, but even exotic tri-color red/white/blue states can be acceptable in extreme circumstances.
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I agree that it pays wealthy countries to provide humanitarian aid to poor and struggling countries. That is on top of any moral obligation one may feel. But this aid does have to be structured with sensitivity to local needs, and not just imposed because you think it is what the people need, without asking.
Fighting an unwinnable war against local guerrillas, while causing many civilian casualties, does not count as humanitarian aid.
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Hmm...I expect that if you ask the local governments of these places, you'll get answers that range from "just leave the stuff with us, we'll see it gets distributed to the "right people" to "we'd be delighted with the aid, but don't give it to ***shudders*** Those People...."
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$2.3 trillion [Re:So who's going to pay...] (Score:3)
That sounds almost like we should help out poor nations with some logistics, medical care, and law enforcement so they don't collapse into tribal warfare, with brutal thugs that will cut off hands for stealing, keep girls from going to school, beat young women that leave their homes, hold people as slaves, and support their economy by selling addictive rereational drugs, selling weapons, selling slaves, and holding foreigners for ransom. Like, how much could this cost a big wealthy nation to keep some semblance of a democratic government?
Estimating from the war in Afghanistan, 2.3 trillon dollars [usatoday.com] over 21 years was not enough. So, more than that.
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That sounds almost like we should help out poor nations with some logistics, medical care, and law enforcement so they don't collapse into tribal warfare, with brutal thugs that will cut off hands for stealing, keep girls from going to school, beat young women that leave their homes, hold people as slaves, and support their economy by selling addictive rereational drugs, selling weapons, selling slaves, and holding foreigners for ransom.
Wait, didn't we just try a proof of concept on that for a decade or so?
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Wait, didn't we just try a proof of concept on that for a decade or so?
Yes, and if you bothered to read my entire post then you'd have seen a very important detail in my theory. That is you have to do this for 100 years. Maybe you can get it done in 20 years if everything is just right, but rarely will things go just right.
To get freedom to "stick" in a nation that never knew it before would take a lifetime. The tribal leaders that would sustain generational wars with other tribes need to be kept in check until they die off, and disciples of this tribal leader that might ta
We need to be the world's EMT (Score:2)
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I don't know which video you want me to see and I'm not interested enough to search for it. Provide a link and maybe I'll watch.
Wall (...we don't learn from no education) (Score:3)
How many thousands of years of history do you need to drive the point home?
...The PLANS should focus on how to keep the refugees OUT. Guns and walls are the only non self destructive answer.
You were talking about learning from history? Chinese history shows that walls are not effective.
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Do you seriously believe that multiple Chinese dynasties expended incredible resources on building, manning and maintaining a wall that didn’t work? For over a thousand years?
If you don’t think walls work, look around you right now. Are you outside, or are there walls around you delineating between inside and outside? If walls don’t work, can
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Except for all the times it did work, right?
I think you have it backwards. History shows that walls don't work, and I showed a case. You assert that they do... but don't show even one example.
... If you don’t think walls work, look around you right now. Are you outside, or are there walls around you delineating between inside and outside? If walls don’t work, can you explain what they are doing there? Does your home have them, or do you live under a roof supported by pillars?
We were talking about thousand-mile long walls intended to prevent refugees from crossing borders, not house walls.
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afaik the American 'southern wall' is demonstrably ineffective
I will go on to say that Americans should be MOST concerned about an effective Canadian wall since they have the largest resources of potable water in North America
hmmmm
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What they're talking about is that globally we should help people locally prepare for mitigate the damage from floods so that we don't have mass numbers of refugees destabilizing the world economy. Those refugees will be used by dictators and demagogues to encourage people to end democracies when they panic. If you don't want to spend your Twilight years living in a brutal dictatorship you should want to do something about stabilizing the world as a whole
I am not going to live to see a long term resolution, but I believe that the USA will be very impacted. Canada, further north, where the temperatures and hurricanes and flooding will not be anywhere as severe as will be the mid to southern USA, is going to see the USA trying to overrun the country by immigration to Canada or by just taking over. Lets hope that Canada can resist what I see as future demands on Canada due to extreme USA mid-country weather.
Re: Global... water management against floods? (Score:2)
What they mean is that western countries have to go there and solve it. Locally it won't get solved.
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Yes, that was the point. Neocolonialism and white-saviour complex make for a combination for some of the worst "problem solving programs" to date.
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Wish I had mod points, because this presents a reasonable argument and shouldn't have been modded down. (I can see the point in the down mod: the second paragraph is a cut and paste rant about globalism. But the first paragraph makes rational points.)
Looking at the other side, though, while individual floods may be local in effect, the global hydrological cycle is global. Rain, and drought, do not pay attention to national borders. When the point is that we need "better warning systems for flood- and droug
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It definitionally isn't, and if you read any global action as relevant to globalism, you simply do not know what globalism is.
For example, reductions of CO2 emissions from power generation has nothing to do with globalism and in many ways runs counter to fundamental ideas behind globalism, but it has to be done globally to succeed. Because a single large emitter that doesn't follow commonly agreed rules is sufficient to make other efforts meaningless.
At the same time, many locally taken actions are a part o
Re: Global... water management against floods? (Score:2)
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Yes. Do you realise that this by definition makes it local rather than global?
Re: Global... water management against floods? (Score:2)
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And this is a good example of the supporter of global final solutions. Sophistry "but if I add more granularity, I still can't say that article is correct, but I can pretend you are wrong in your making a point that's its wrong". Weazel words "local things can have global effect. I'm not going to claim that, because that would be me obviously lying, but I'm going to pretend that I made that claim without making it, by using qualifier "can"".
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And this is a good example of the supporter of global final solutions.
WTH?
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Gotta say, the version three of the Chinese trolls on slashdot is somewhat better than the previous quote spamming version. It's still pretty shit, because it literally ignores the text of the story in the OP, and it's pattern recognitions are still very chabuduo.
>Among the actions recommended by the report were better warning systems for flood- and drought-prone areas that can identify, for example, when a river is expected to swell.
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Yes, there is a lot that is being done with respect to better warning systems. One of my ex-colleagues worked on them, for example. They are a good thing. However, the repercussions of water management can spread wider than just local areas. The short-term, long-distance effects of water management tend to be a weak effect, but the long-term ones for critical regions could be significant globally where it does things like significantly alter ecosystems.
Of course for all those affected, the local dimension i
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Yes. They're on the same riverine system. One is upstream and other is downstream. Did you have any more stupid questions to output for the Chinese troll factory irrelevant factoid spam you're producing?
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>But they're not local.
Let's see if this works for everything.
"But Sun revolves around the Earth".
Holy shit, this works for everything.
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Of course it does. Atmosphere after all is global.
Which is of course irrelevant to the subject being discussed, but nice red herring. I'm growing to appreciate the new and improved chinabot logic more and more.
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So you are saying, we can just magically make carbon-free energy. Got it.
Re:Obviously we need more windmills and solar pane (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure glad we got really smart people at the UN to figure this stuff out.
This is one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't kind of positions. People will point out that science/government/agency/whoever hasn't said the blindingly obvious so it is totally acceptable to continue to allow these people to make profit, and then when aforementioned group does finally say the blindingly obvious it's pretty much this response.
Oh, right, they don't make CO2 so we don't get these crazy weather events
Yeah, that's kind of the gist here. I don't know if Greta has a copyright to the idea, I'm pretty sure that people were discussing these kinds of ideas for CO2 reduction long before she became popular. But much like then, people just write off whoever is the poster child. So pretty assuring to see you doing the same here.
Silly me, I thought things like dams to hold water from when we have too much for later when we have too little would help
Yeah Dams cost money. Not many people offering up that cash. Solar panels are cheaper. At some point the economics play a role in this. Do you want real solutions or fake ones? Because the real ones are going to be the ones that cost the least amount of money and there is a profit motive for regular upkeep. Dams can net you some cash, but the low cost of panels means you can net a lot bigger profit.
Or like building seawalls, canals, and other big things made of concrete and steel that keep water from getting into places where we don't want water
Again, all of that cost dizzying amounts of money. Great ideas for sure but that whole cost thing usually is what kills 99.999% of good idea projects.
Maybe, and just go with me here, we could take this water and like squeeze the salt out or something, then put the water in big things made of concrete and steel made to hold water. Then we can like drink it and stuff.
Geez. That's not just expensive, that's ridiculously expensive. Like to make anything like that at scale today would be the single most expensive project undertaken by the United States, maybe only second to the entire Interstate Highway System. And unlike the Interstate, we'd need that to come online pretty soon, not over the next half century. Like trying to do this at the scale the US would need it at, is just so expensive that you can literally just chuck it in the bin of solutions that say we should extract water from pink unicorns. And even then, that's not even remotely feasible for the vast majority of nations on this planet.
like maybe those smart people at the United Nations can figure this out. Those people are really smart
Well clearly you haven't figured it out either. All you're doing in purposing a solution that maybe two or three countries on this planet may be able to remotely implement if they try really, really, really, hard and everyone in their government can actually agree to something as complex as what you are purposing. You've clearly forgotten that the UN has to look at plans that can be widely adopted by a vast number of countries and can realistically be implemented and sustained. We don't even take care of bridges or the dams that we have currently and you're purposing a flood wall for holding back something like the Gulf of Mexico. I mean what freaking reality do you live in?
While we do that though we should build some machines that can take some of this salty water that's all over the place, make it not so salty, then put it big like tubs that hold not salty water
We already do some of this. It's wildly unprofitable and heavily subsidized.
This is going to take a lot of money so maybe we don't build those windmills and solar panels, because those cost a lot of money too
You could easily build thousands of pane
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I mean what freaking reality do you live in?
I live in a world where floods are held back by flood walls, not solar panels. I live in a world where desalination plants provide drinking water but windmills do not. Solar panels may cost less than desalination but they don't solve the problem. That's a placebo, a sugar pill, being given to patients with fatal illnesses hoping the disease goes away.
There is no cheap and easy solution to this. We need nuclear power. We need desalination. We need synthetic fuels.
If you want to bring up return on inves
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Re:Obviously we need more windmills and solar pane (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is not an insurmountable problem, although the only place you can conveniently solve it is in the desert. Luckily there are places around the world with desert near ocean. You pump the brine into a big flat and collect salt from it periodically. The salt has industrial uses, so that turns it into a benefit.
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The Saudis get too much salt even to make an industry out of (as the ocean has a lot of fucking salt), and so it gets injected back into the gulf as super concentrated brine. That in turn kills off all the fish and other aquatic sea life, and so now their fisheries are dead. It's why China are fighting tooth and nail over the South China Sea.
China is fighting over the South China Sea because the Saudis inject brine into the Persian Gulf? I think you need to lay off the drugs a bit, sir.
Re:Obviously we need more windmills and solar pane (Score:5, Insightful)
Desalination is a dumb solution.
In California, it costs about $1 per cubic meter to desalinate, mainly to buy fossil fuel. The government gives subsidized water to farmers for 6 cents per cubic meter.
Instead of wasting money and fuel on desalination, we should stop growing subsidized rice in the desert.
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we should stop growing subsidized rice in the desert.
Is that actually being done in the USA? Considering how rice normally grows in paddy fields (shallow ponds), that sounds like the stupidest idea ever, because most of the water just evaporates. At least you don't grow corn like that. There are states that have the right kind of warm soggy climate for growing rice. I think that is the southeast region of the USA, such as Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi. Forgive my lack of US geography, I am from the UK
Re:Obviously we need more windmills and solar pane (Score:5, Insightful)
California produces 20% of the USA's rice and 80% of the WORLD'S almonds (100% of the USA's commercial almond crop) and both are unsustainable here.
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I know about the almonds. I have the economics for almond milk versus cow's milk, and dairy farming is already pretty water intensive.
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I don't know why they haven't banned almond milk. It's a really stupid waste of water.
You don't need to ban almond milk. You need to stop subsidising growing almonds, which I presume is why almonds are cheap enough to make into milk. Market forces would then price almond milk as an exotic luxury, which I think is the economic reality.
I should say here that I am largely vegetarian. I do not eat meat or poultry, but I eat eggs and cheese, and drink milk. I have never consumed milk substitutes such as almond milk. As far as I am concerned, nuts are a luxury. I might do a nut-based recipe for Ch
Re:Obviously we need more windmills and solar pane (Score:4, Informative)
that sounds like the stupidest idea ever
California grows two million tonnes of rice annually. Yes, it is stupid. It is only sustainable with huge subsidies.
California rice famers even have their own lobbyist organization: California Rice Commission [calrice.org]
Re:Obviously we need more windmills and solar pane (Score:4, Interesting)
https://rice.ucanr.edu/About_C... [ucanr.edu]
The amount isn't huge. Fruit and nuts, on the other hand, are a huge crop there, fed by water from the Colorado river water which is basically given out for free to farmers. Plus non-renewable aquifer pumping. It's completely unsustainable. The aquifers are naturally replenished on the century time-scale, and the Colorado river is getting dangerously low. I seriously doubt that desalinated water can sustain that, so I'm expecting that the California agriculture industry will collapse sometime in my lifetime.
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. Fruit and nuts, on the other hand, are a huge crop there, fed by water from the Colorado river water which is basically given out for free to farmers. Plus non-renewable aquifer pumping. It's completely unsustainable.
Most of the irrigation water in California comes from the Sierras. Get your facts right.
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the Colorado river is getting dangerously low.
How much of this is due to climate change, e.g. lack of rainfall, and how much is due to slurping too much irrigation water?
I read that various mistakes were made with agricultural exploitation of land in the USA, where the land looked green and fruitful, but that was just a temporary blip, in an otherwise arid land. I believe that led to the Dust Bowl.
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I read that various mistakes were made with agricultural exploitation of land in the USA, where the land looked green and fruitful, but that was just a temporary blip, in an otherwise arid land. I believe that led to the Dust Bowl.
The land that became the dust bowl was rich, lush and fertile as the result of millennia of bison walking across it and turning grasses into poop. Some of that land was already plains, some of it was former forest cleared by natives to make more room for bison. What caused the dust bowl was a lack of crop rotation and excessive tilth, plus removal of the remaining trees; the combination turned the soil into dirt (do your own homework on the difference, I'm tired of explaining it all the time) and made it bl
Re:Water shortage doesn't exist, distribution is p (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a hamburger today and blew months of my water budget on growing the wheat and raising the cattle necessary to make it.
Re:Water shortage doesn't exist, distribution is p (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not having enough water for people to drink. It is having enough water to irrigate crops.
Your "network of pipelines" is idiotic. If there isn't enough water to grow wheat in an area, you don't send them water, you send them wheat.
Transporting food is a thousand times more efficient than transporting the water to grow the food.
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I didn't say not to transport food or anything else.
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To grow a kilogram of wheat requires a thousand kilograms of water.
Transporting water is easier than transporting wheat, but it isn't a thousand times easier.
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I feel like one of us is misunderstanding something extremely basic to have a disagreement on this, but I'm pretty sure it's not me.
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The problem is not having enough water for people to drink. It is having enough water to irrigate crops.
That sounds like a case of growing the wrong kind of crops for the local geography. Crop irrigation of some kind has been implemented for millennia, using canals, water from wells, and so on. I presume that the longevity of such schemes means they are sustainable, with regard to the local water resources. Perhaps the problem arises when there is an attempt to expand agricultural output, which then demands more aggressive extraction of water than the local resources can support.
It is worth mentioning agricul
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If we had a national water grid in place, and tapped the Mississippi after the confluence of the Ohio, Missouri and Tennessee, we occasionally (like once every three to five years) turn on that spigot and refill lake Meade during high water times.
The massive volume of the Mississippi (greater than 600,000 cubic meters per second in normal times, much more in floods) as compared to the Colorado ( an average of a
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And the problem in the Central Valley isn't "climate change", it's that they've pumped all of the underground aquifers dry over the last 100 years. There never was enough water there to grow what they grow sustainably, but now plan B is running out.
This is one of the biggest issues with "climate change" - it gets blamed for a lot of stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with actual climate change.
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Yes, it is climate change because the snowpacks in the mountains which turn into the rivers used to irrigate fields has been significantly declining for decades. This also impacts those aquifers because they don't get recharged from water run off.
Howev
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The massive volume of the Mississippi (greater than 600,000 cubic meters per second
The flow of the Mississippi River is 16,000 cubic meters per second, not 600,000.
Colorado River water is given away to farmers for 6 cents per cubic meter = one tonne.
It is completely absurd to believe you are going to move water from the Mississippi River across a continent, traversing multiple mountain ranges, for 6 cents per tonne.
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No he is saying the people their out to specialize and produce something of value they produce with their local resources to trade for wheat.
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Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and all the fish will be gone.
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Grow it near water and transport the food. Distribution logistics is the problem that needs fixing, we aren't going to run out of water. People don't need to grow their own food. Do you grow all your own food?
Re: grabazz (Score:2)
not in TX! (Score:2)
not in TX!
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Cultures have to catch up with the circumstances as well. People don’t stop having large families right away once they all make it to adulthood. It takes another generation or two, and foreigners trying to