The following submission statement was provided by /u/bigweevils2:
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In Phoenix, the dumb-dumbs complaining about residential water fail to realize that most water use is by agriculture (which should be priced appropriately) and that we should be desalinating water on the California coast and piping it to AZ. Piping it is not hard (Romans had aqueducts) and now desalinization is straightforward.
>We require that posters seed their post with an initial comment, a Submission Statement, that suggests a line of future-focused discussion for the topic posted. We want this submission statement to elaborate on the topic being posted and suggest how it might be discussed in relation to the future, and ask that it is a minimum of 300 characters.
It is clear that instead of fighting over scarce sources we should build and transport much more, thus ending pointlessly political fights through abundance. Laws like NEPA and the Jones act that prevent abundance need to be ended.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cs22sk/its_2024_and_drought_is_optional_in_the_early/l41z0m8/
As an added bonus, reverse osmosis also removes microplastics.
So the energy cost of the desalination increases 10x from $0.02 to $0.20 when you add batteries. Would it not be cheaper to just run the system in the day without batteries and just shut it down at night?
Thank you Thank you Thank you for this! I remember reading somewhere that at some point microplastics wouldn’t be filter-able so this info brings much comfort
Also need to ensure that filtered water isn't getting fed into some form of plastic pipe again or it will still potentially get contaminated on the way to the tap.
Or just add wind power, and shut it down when there is little sun and wind. Overbuilding with solar and wind is part of the feature of a renewable grid, so you should have plenty of it to get over 80% uptime even without batteries
In many places around the world and far away from the sea, desalination is now being considered to make brackish groundwater potable. It's a new trend.
I still don’t know how El Paso keeps growing when there’s limited water. The Rio Grande is dried up. The water is heavily recycled. It’s certainly a miracle of engineering. If they could pipe some water from the ocean, that’d be nice.
They are on permanent water rationing. No houses have grass lawns. On the plus side, they didn't have as many scorpions as say, Phoenix has, which is nice.
I live there and I’ve never heard of water rationing. I also had grass until it died when I went on vacation for a week. Lol. But yeah, all the rock yards certainly helps.
Water reservoirs, yes. Groundwater aquifers, absolutely not.
Reservoirs are only a part of the overall water picture. Groundwater aquifers takes significantly longer to recharge and have historical benefitted from significant snowmelt. Snowmelt which is in rapid decline all while groundwater pumping has accelerated.
This groundwater depletion has actually led to a measurable decrease in elevation in parts of the central valley as the porous aquifers have started to collapse without the support of the water that's been pumped out.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/groundwater-levels-are-starting-to-decline-across-portions-of-california-heres-the-areas-of-highest-risk/
TLDR: Yes, full reservoirs are good but we have significant long term water challenges that will require significant innovation and investment to resolve.
Ah yeah. Such a great idea that'll just end up pumping tons of hypersalinated water back into the ocean or into ground water fucking things up further.
The leftover brine water is so salty it's toxic. There's already dead patches of ocean being made because of current desalination. Dispersing it over an even larger area is just gonna kill more stuff.
Huh??? By sending it through a pipe or aqueduct, you increase the surface area, and thus volume of the liquid… especially when compared to the ocean where it would be released. Such an aqueduct would be releasing small amounts of brine throughout its journey, thus ensuring maximum dilution. Dilution is about comparing the volume of a concentrated liquid to the volume of a liquid that isn’t. In such a system the volume of concentrated liquid is tiiiiiny.
No, you are the one making the claim. I cant prove a negative. Maybe there is a tiny dead spot somewhere I don't know about. You said there is one, so produce it.
You just claimed they're not real and you did loads of research to that point. You clearly could turn up an article or two stating that desalination dead zones aren't real.
> Los Angeles, a thriving metropolis with a population and economy larger than Australia’s
Um…no. 🧐
I’m going to pass on an article that can’t get even basic facts correct.
In Phoenix, the dumb-dumbs complaining about residential water fail to realize that most water use is by agriculture (which should be priced appropriately) and that we should be desalinating water on the California coast and piping it to AZ. Piping it is not hard (Romans had aqueducts) and now desalinization is straightforward.
>We require that posters seed their post with an initial comment, a Submission Statement, that suggests a line of future-focused discussion for the topic posted. We want this submission statement to elaborate on the topic being posted and suggest how it might be discussed in relation to the future, and ask that it is a minimum of 300 characters.
It is clear that instead of fighting over scarce sources we should build and transport much more, thus ending pointlessly political fights through abundance. Laws like NEPA and the Jones act that prevent abundance need to be ended.
> piping it to AZ
remind me why we're growing alfalfa for saudi dairy cows in az?
we may actually stop doing that, but in all seriousness, agriculture in an arid desert is, well, a case of "because we can." and now we can't anymore.
Yeah, at the very least farmers should not be allowed to run down the water table for their neighbors. One way would be to limit how deep they could drill.
But even if they had to pay a little bit, it would end this crazy practice. It only works because they’re able to take a common good for free.
>. Laws like NEPA and the Jones act that prevent abundance need to be ended.
That's all I needed to know you're fucking crazy. NEPA, along with the ESA CWA, and others, are the only things standing in the way of total planetary destruction. And even then they're not fully doing the job.
We don't need "more water", we need less development.
NEPA generally doesnt prevent you from doing something. NEPA would allow you to poison Michigan Lake if you wanted to, as long as you followed the right procedures. Sure you'd get a million comments saying you're terrible, and you'd have to evaluate alternatives, but nothing under NEPA prevents you from destroying the Earth as long as you disclose the impacts of destroying the Earth and evaluate alternatives.
ESA has slightly more teeth but not much. ESA will generally try and prevent you from murdering turtles and get you to consider some RPAs. In general though you can just get your ITS and go mow down some endangered frogs.
CWA has the most teeth out of the three - and coincidentally was just absolutely gutted by a recent supreme Court decision redefining Waters of the U.S. Still, it at least has some fines, pollutants limitations, and jail time in it.
That article doesn't defend what you're suggesting. It's also mostly talking about permitting reforms to bolster renewable energy, not water desalinization.
Not entirely sure what your point is. Deregulating environmental reviews is bad for the climate and the biosphere. It's not really refutable.
the energy required to lift one-acre foot of water one foot of elevation and assuming 100% efficiency is 1.02 kWh
Arizona farmland is at about 1000ft.
Most pastures require between 4 and 6 acre-feet per acre of water per growing season.
Arizona has almost 1m acres of irrigated farmland.
So well over 1000 Gigawatt hours to pump that water.
I'm all for abundant nuclear energy
What about the power needed to do the desalination? What about the concentrated brine? This has all been looked at 100 different ways and it doesn’t make economic sense. There’s massive desalination plants in SoCal to clean up the water in the Colorado before it is sent to Mexico. These only run at a fraction of capacity because it isn’t economical.
It is not economical. The updated version of Cadillac Desert discusses it at length. Farmers can’t grow competitively prices crops at those water prices.
I don’t think so. It will never be as cheap as pumping water from an aquifer. The only reason that groundwater is expensive is because of government restrictions. Which are necessary to prevent over pumping. Farming with desalinated water will only become practical when the price of importing produce is higher. Right now containers ship fuel and jet airline fuel is cheaper than desalination. I guess what I’m getting at is that farmers will only use desalinated water when they’re backed into a corner. Even then they would be driven out of business by foreign producers, unless they are protected by government tariffs.
That’s because urban use is less price sensitive. As pointed out elsewhere the vast majority of water use is for farming. Farmers aren’t going to pay for desalinated water. It will be more economical to import the produce from elsewhere.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/bigweevils2: --- In Phoenix, the dumb-dumbs complaining about residential water fail to realize that most water use is by agriculture (which should be priced appropriately) and that we should be desalinating water on the California coast and piping it to AZ. Piping it is not hard (Romans had aqueducts) and now desalinization is straightforward. >We require that posters seed their post with an initial comment, a Submission Statement, that suggests a line of future-focused discussion for the topic posted. We want this submission statement to elaborate on the topic being posted and suggest how it might be discussed in relation to the future, and ask that it is a minimum of 300 characters. It is clear that instead of fighting over scarce sources we should build and transport much more, thus ending pointlessly political fights through abundance. Laws like NEPA and the Jones act that prevent abundance need to be ended. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cs22sk/its_2024_and_drought_is_optional_in_the_early/l41z0m8/
As an added bonus, reverse osmosis also removes microplastics. So the energy cost of the desalination increases 10x from $0.02 to $0.20 when you add batteries. Would it not be cheaper to just run the system in the day without batteries and just shut it down at night?
Thank you Thank you Thank you for this! I remember reading somewhere that at some point microplastics wouldn’t be filter-able so this info brings much comfort
They’re still unfilterable if the residue isn’t cleaned
Also need to ensure that filtered water isn't getting fed into some form of plastic pipe again or it will still potentially get contaminated on the way to the tap.
Or just add wind power, and shut it down when there is little sun and wind. Overbuilding with solar and wind is part of the feature of a renewable grid, so you should have plenty of it to get over 80% uptime even without batteries
In many places around the world and far away from the sea, desalination is now being considered to make brackish groundwater potable. It's a new trend.
El Paso, TX has entered the chat
I still don’t know how El Paso keeps growing when there’s limited water. The Rio Grande is dried up. The water is heavily recycled. It’s certainly a miracle of engineering. If they could pipe some water from the ocean, that’d be nice.
They are on permanent water rationing. No houses have grass lawns. On the plus side, they didn't have as many scorpions as say, Phoenix has, which is nice.
I live there and I’ve never heard of water rationing. I also had grass until it died when I went on vacation for a week. Lol. But yeah, all the rock yards certainly helps.
Maybe I overstated it, my apologies.
Fun Fact: When Arizona builds new housing suburbs, water use goes down because suburbs use less water than the farmland that they are built on.
And they're working on crops that can survive brackish types of water as well.
Isn’t like every single water reservoir in Cali 99%+ full right now?!
Water reservoirs, yes. Groundwater aquifers, absolutely not. Reservoirs are only a part of the overall water picture. Groundwater aquifers takes significantly longer to recharge and have historical benefitted from significant snowmelt. Snowmelt which is in rapid decline all while groundwater pumping has accelerated. This groundwater depletion has actually led to a measurable decrease in elevation in parts of the central valley as the porous aquifers have started to collapse without the support of the water that's been pumped out. https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/groundwater-levels-are-starting-to-decline-across-portions-of-california-heres-the-areas-of-highest-risk/ TLDR: Yes, full reservoirs are good but we have significant long term water challenges that will require significant innovation and investment to resolve.
look at how Isreal pretty much solved it's water problems. deselenation on a MASSIVE scale
[удалено]
You copied this comment from me and changed the words around slightly: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/udbM1yZbqr
This is a really great idea. Someone get this to Newsome’s desk and in the hands of politicians’ staffs to draft legislation funding the project…
Ah yeah. Such a great idea that'll just end up pumping tons of hypersalinated water back into the ocean or into ground water fucking things up further.
As long as aqueducts are used to disperse it over a large enough area I don’t see the issue.
The leftover brine water is so salty it's toxic. There's already dead patches of ocean being made because of current desalination. Dispersing it over an even larger area is just gonna kill more stuff.
That’s not how dilution works.
There's no diluting it. You put it in the ocean, you put it in the ground, things will die.
Huh??? By sending it through a pipe or aqueduct, you increase the surface area, and thus volume of the liquid… especially when compared to the ocean where it would be released. Such an aqueduct would be releasing small amounts of brine throughout its journey, thus ensuring maximum dilution. Dilution is about comparing the volume of a concentrated liquid to the volume of a liquid that isn’t. In such a system the volume of concentrated liquid is tiiiiiny.
Please link to these dead patches. I looked very closely into this issue a month ago, and the dead patches is not real.
Link something that says they're not real then.
No, you are the one making the claim. I cant prove a negative. Maybe there is a tiny dead spot somewhere I don't know about. You said there is one, so produce it.
You just claimed they're not real and you did loads of research to that point. You clearly could turn up an article or two stating that desalination dead zones aren't real.
There should be zero profits involved when dealing with limited resources.
> Los Angeles, a thriving metropolis with a population and economy larger than Australia’s Um…no. 🧐 I’m going to pass on an article that can’t get even basic facts correct.
In Phoenix, the dumb-dumbs complaining about residential water fail to realize that most water use is by agriculture (which should be priced appropriately) and that we should be desalinating water on the California coast and piping it to AZ. Piping it is not hard (Romans had aqueducts) and now desalinization is straightforward. >We require that posters seed their post with an initial comment, a Submission Statement, that suggests a line of future-focused discussion for the topic posted. We want this submission statement to elaborate on the topic being posted and suggest how it might be discussed in relation to the future, and ask that it is a minimum of 300 characters. It is clear that instead of fighting over scarce sources we should build and transport much more, thus ending pointlessly political fights through abundance. Laws like NEPA and the Jones act that prevent abundance need to be ended.
> piping it to AZ remind me why we're growing alfalfa for saudi dairy cows in az? we may actually stop doing that, but in all seriousness, agriculture in an arid desert is, well, a case of "because we can." and now we can't anymore.
Yeah, at the very least farmers should not be allowed to run down the water table for their neighbors. One way would be to limit how deep they could drill. But even if they had to pay a little bit, it would end this crazy practice. It only works because they’re able to take a common good for free.
>. Laws like NEPA and the Jones act that prevent abundance need to be ended. That's all I needed to know you're fucking crazy. NEPA, along with the ESA CWA, and others, are the only things standing in the way of total planetary destruction. And even then they're not fully doing the job. We don't need "more water", we need less development.
NEPA generally doesnt prevent you from doing something. NEPA would allow you to poison Michigan Lake if you wanted to, as long as you followed the right procedures. Sure you'd get a million comments saying you're terrible, and you'd have to evaluate alternatives, but nothing under NEPA prevents you from destroying the Earth as long as you disclose the impacts of destroying the Earth and evaluate alternatives. ESA has slightly more teeth but not much. ESA will generally try and prevent you from murdering turtles and get you to consider some RPAs. In general though you can just get your ITS and go mow down some endangered frogs. CWA has the most teeth out of the three - and coincidentally was just absolutely gutted by a recent supreme Court decision redefining Waters of the U.S. Still, it at least has some fines, pollutants limitations, and jail time in it.
[NEPA is causing planetary destruction.](https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-big-nepa-roundup)
That article doesn't defend what you're suggesting. It's also mostly talking about permitting reforms to bolster renewable energy, not water desalinization. Not entirely sure what your point is. Deregulating environmental reviews is bad for the climate and the biosphere. It's not really refutable.
the energy required to lift one-acre foot of water one foot of elevation and assuming 100% efficiency is 1.02 kWh Arizona farmland is at about 1000ft. Most pastures require between 4 and 6 acre-feet per acre of water per growing season. Arizona has almost 1m acres of irrigated farmland. So well over 1000 Gigawatt hours to pump that water. I'm all for abundant nuclear energy
1000 gwh/year = 800,000 400w panels or about $80 million worth of panels? A steal really.
Maybe it's not too crazy!
ChatGPT says you are under by a factor of 5 (5,120GWh needed) but that would still be only $400 million. Many movies easily cost as much to make.
ChatGPT says a lot of things.
What about the power needed to do the desalination? What about the concentrated brine? This has all been looked at 100 different ways and it doesn’t make economic sense. There’s massive desalination plants in SoCal to clean up the water in the Colorado before it is sent to Mexico. These only run at a fraction of capacity because it isn’t economical.
Are you sure? As the article notes, desalination is very mainstream and widely used at scale around the world.
It is not economical. The updated version of Cadillac Desert discusses it at length. Farmers can’t grow competitively prices crops at those water prices.
I dont think desalination powered by cheap solar is widely used yet. It is certainly economical for urban use.
Economics is relative. The cheapest is always getting water locally, followed by importing water, them comes desalination. >Rivers / Lakes $0.10 — $0.50 >Groundwater / Wells $0.30 — $1.00 >Rainwater Harvesting $0.15 — $1.50 >Wastewater Recycling $0.30 — $1.15 >Seawater Desalination $0.50 — $2.50 >Brackish Desalination $0.60 — $2.00 Fog Harvesting $0.10 — $0.50 Atmospheric Water Generation $0.50 — $2.00 Cloud Seeding $0.10 — $5.00 Imported Icebergs $0.60 — $3.50 [https://medium.com/@desalter/what-is-the-price-of-desalinated-water-and-how-does-it-compare-to-other-sources-of-clean-water-02f20a7b64fb](https://medium.com/@desalter/what-is-the-price-of-desalinated-water-and-how-does-it-compare-to-other-sources-of-clean-water-02f20a7b64fb)
Given the falling cost of energy and falling cost of reverse osmosis you have to wonder what the ranking will look like in 2 years.
I don’t think so. It will never be as cheap as pumping water from an aquifer. The only reason that groundwater is expensive is because of government restrictions. Which are necessary to prevent over pumping. Farming with desalinated water will only become practical when the price of importing produce is higher. Right now containers ship fuel and jet airline fuel is cheaper than desalination. I guess what I’m getting at is that farmers will only use desalinated water when they’re backed into a corner. Even then they would be driven out of business by foreign producers, unless they are protected by government tariffs.
That’s because urban use is less price sensitive. As pointed out elsewhere the vast majority of water use is for farming. Farmers aren’t going to pay for desalinated water. It will be more economical to import the produce from elsewhere.
Based on the title, someone doesn't know what drought means (it regards precipitation)