Water in California and the rest of the western USA - going, going, gone...

[etrain16]

Well you can still believe gooberment on healthcare eerrr or unemployment numbers eerrr or how good the economy is doing eerŕr or maybe they will finish that border fence or its your guns that jump up and cause crime all on their own. Ya you can believe them on global warming, they would never lie about that

I'd be more willing to consider believing them if they didn't have a vested political and financial interest in sticking with the current belief. Until they do away with those, I have little reason to believe them just because their bought and sold 'scientists' say so. Science can be just as dirty and manipulated as politics. It's been that way for hundreds of years, back when it was the big churches in Europe deciding for folks what was 'science' and what wasn't. Just a big power trip with scientists showing their results can be sold to the highest bidder.

Get government money out of science. That would be a good first start.

It's really an 'inconvenient truth' that scientists subsist on a lot of government backed grants, especially when their 'results' provide support for even more taxes and regulation.

 

[Just Jim]

Heck, gooberment is financing the entire college system of the backs of the students with a loan system that makes the students debt slaves. With that kind of financing you got to know any climate studies done will be tilted to prove global warming. If you wanted to prepare for something global warming would be near the lowest thing to prep for in my opinion.

 

[Charliehorse]

Well you can still believe gooberment on healthcare eerrr or unemployment numbers eerrr or how good the economy is doing eerŕr or maybe they will finish that border fence or its your guns that jump up and cause crime all on their own. Ya you can believe them on global warming, they would never lie about that

"If you like your water, you can keep your water..."

 

[Charliehorse]

Thank you for the Ad Hominem attack,

He seems to think we aren't paying attention to what's going on outdoors. I live out in the mts and on the E side of the Cascades. We pay full attention to aquifers and snow pack. It is not unusual to see zero rain (or dew) from June to Oct when the Pacific High sets in (with the exception of a possible thunderstorm late Jul/Aug). I am not in the Oregon webfoot zone.

But the part that cracked me up was this:

"Prepare or don't prepare - you've been warned."

I'm not sure if that's arrogance or playing the prophet on the downtown street corner.

 

[Oathkeeper1775]

If water is a big deal; why are we flushing toilets? Point at the end..

We recently had a new well drilled; effing expensive and I did most of the plumbing and electrical myself. Son in law saved my arse on helping me run wire, conduit, and pipe....gonna hook him up with lots of gifts...

The East side of the ridge our old well was on dried up; people kept punching new wells and ours quit. We were getting 1.4 gallons/min in the winter...New well on the West side of the ridge is kicking out 14 GPM and it's much cleaner.

Point: we lived on rain water for garden and toilets, and drinking water from family for @21 days as I recall. All-told, we were going through 15 gallons per day (2 people).

We could have gone down to 6 or 7 gallons/day if we used an out-house (pit) with lime...instead of flushing toilets. (7×21=147 gallons saved).

Point 2: Based on their geological education; the well drilling company gave me an approximate age of the water in the new well @220 feet, I cannot remember the exact number, but it was a long-long time ago....long before Sacagewea brought Lewis and Clark here.

Point 3: water exists under 90% of land, it's a matter of the expense of bringing it to the surface....based on my expenses: it cost @ $100.00 per vertical foot to get it to the surface, @$10.00 per horizontal foot to get it to the house.

If water is such a big deal, why are we flushing it?

 

[CoastRange57]

Point 3: water exists under 90% of land, it's a matter of the expense of bringing it to the surface....based on my expenses: it cost @ $100.00 per vertical foot to get it to the surface, @$10.00 per horizontal foot to get it to the house.

A more economical method would be to build impoundments on streams and other water outflow process's. Not only in wetter climates such as Western Oregon, but virtually everywhere in the West you could build retainment and impoundment features to hold runoff water that would supply the amounts of water required.

No doubt you will take out some habitats and alter some minor ecosystems, but with billions of gallons of water falling from the sky and moving thorough natural run off channels, your water supply problems are solved with some structures and systems.

But our politicians and eco puke liberals would rather hand wring and look at the flowing streams while everybody has to drink piss water.

 

[oknow]

"If you like your water, you can keep your water..." View attachment 260144

I like my water but would rather put it back into the earth back behind the tree

 

[Just Jim]

I like my water but would rather put it back into the earth back behind the tree

Ya I ain't much for holding my water either.

 

[BoonDocks36]

@ Charliehorse . . . . I wonder how many people know of PG&E's Flumes and Ditches through out Butte County, Hundreds of Miles of them, picking up from a Spring source, adding more springs to the system, finally flowing into the Magalia Resevore, which provides Both Electricity, and Clean drinking water for the "Uphill side" of Paradise, CA!!!!!

All those little trickles of water would have gone into Upper Butte Creek, instead, it flows into the Lower end of Butte Creek, Hah! Divert the Water, Produce Power, supply Drinking Water & it still goes to the Original destination!!!! our Family spent Summer Vacations on those Ditches and Flumes, built by the CCC, I would give anything to see photo's of the workers, who Gunnited all those ditches, After they were dug, all with the same gradual pitch to keep the water flowing, not to fast, but never to slow . . . the Flumes, often crossing 150 feet of open air, fifty, seventy-five, a Hundred feet above the ground below, to reconnect on the next Mountain/Hill side . . . a bit spooky to walk across as an 8 year old kid . . . but it was Grand Fun, and taught us to love our outdoors...

but, I don't know nothing about Cali's Water Supply . . . . Nope.

philip

 

[trainsktg]

I spent a few months working in northern Nevada this summer. Water levels are way, way down. The Truckee river is at something like 1/20th of normal flow. Here is a shot of Lahontan Reservoir east of Reno. Its at 2% capacity. This is a boat ramp; the water is 1/2 mile away.

Keith

 

[Sstrand]

Keith
Maybe the ramp will be closer to the water after the big earthquake hits?!?!?!?!?
Sheldon

 

[Truenorth]

I have to imagine if California really cared about water usage they wouldn't let single homes in Bel Aire use 11 million gallons of water a year. Draught or not, that's just ridiculous. Golf courses use less.

LA times article...

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1007-lopez-water-glutton-20151007-column.html

 

[The Heretic]

Their laws were pretty lax. They are tightening up on them, but it will be too little too late, and in the long term they are going to be doomed. At some point there will simply not be enough water to sustain the population they have while still growing food. At that point they will have to make tough choices that they should be making now, because by then it will be way too late. Politicians are not known for making tough unpopular choices - only leaders do that.

 

[chemist]

The arrogant ignorance and downright stubbornness displayed in the thread is so discouraging, I hate to wade in at all. But it's absolutely undeniable: the world is running out of potable water. Israel couldn't possibly make the world's most expensive drinking water without a desert-like solar environment and billions of dollars a year of OUR tax money. The rank idiocy of the California ag industry, growing cotton and rice in a desert, has dramatically exacerbated the problem. And besides all our tiny human woes, the climate is changing rapidly too, and now more rain falls over the oceans, less over land.

You cannot desal water without an enormous energy input, whether it's by RO or any other method. That's the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And we just don't have much fresh water to play with:

The large bubble is all the water, mostly seawater. the small bubble is all the freshwater, mostly ice. And that tiny, nearly invisible bubble? That's all the liquid fresh water in all the lakes and rivers and aquifers on Earth. So don't tell me there's no crisis.
https://www2.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/news/2012/global-water-volume-fresh-large_2.jpg

 

[Heywood]

Stopping States subsidising water to grow things in areas which would not naturally grow there would go a long way toward better water management.
Water has been too cheap. If it was treated like the precious comodity it is, it would be better taken care of.
Wouldn't need to tax it, just stop subsidising it.

 

[308]

View attachment 261212
The large bubble is all the water, mostly seawater. the small bubble is all the freshwater, mostly ice. And that tiny, nearly invisible bubble? That's all the liquid fresh water in all the lakes and rivers and aquifers on Earth. So don't tell me there's no crisis.
https://www2.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/news/2012/global-water-volume-fresh-large_2.jpg

That tiny, nearly invisible bubble....the one whose scale would not even add a drop to the Great Lakes shown directly above? I had no idea the Great Lakes had dried up. You sound much smarter than I, so I guess I'll just have to take your word for it.
Thanks.

 

[etrain16]

The arrogant ignorance and downright stubbornness displayed in the thread is so discouraging, I hate to wade in at all. But it's absolutely undeniable: the world is running out of potable water. Israel couldn't possibly make the world's most expensive drinking water without a desert-like solar environment and billions of dollars a year of OUR tax money. The rank idiocy of the California ag industry, growing cotton and rice in a desert, has dramatically exacerbated the problem. And besides all our tiny human woes, the climate is changing rapidly too, and now more rain falls over the oceans, less over land.

You cannot desal water without an enormous energy input, whether it's by RO or any other method. That's the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And we just don't have much fresh water to play with:
View attachment 261212
The large bubble is all the water, mostly seawater. the small bubble is all the freshwater, mostly ice. And that tiny, nearly invisible bubble? That's all the liquid fresh water in all the lakes and rivers and aquifers on Earth. So don't tell me there's no crisis.
https://www2.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/news/2012/global-water-volume-fresh-large_2.jpg

Do those 'bubbles' really tell the whole story? All I see is a graphic, followed by a statement that we're essentially doomed. But is that really the case?

I would assume by your moniker 'chemist' that you are a scientist? If so, I would assume you, of all people would be prepared to supply more than just a graph/chart with no other supporting evidence to make your point. I'm not a scientist, but I do know that before we draw a conclusion, we should make sure we have as much information as possible.

So my question is this, were you intending to imply in your response that we are running out of water on the planet? Because that's not the case - in fact, the amount of water on the planet, the amount that has always been on the planet, is relatively fixed. (Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/using-softer-approach-water-conservation) We do lose some water into space, but that "is replaced by the same geologic processes that formed the oceans originally" (source: http://witcombe.sbc.edu/water/physicsearth.html). So I don't think it would be fair to imply that the amount of overall water is in jeopardy, but I couldn't tell from your statement if that was the case or not.

Perhaps your point is that the amount of usable fresh water is decreasing? I've been doing some searching and can't seem to find a definitive answer to that. I'm sure with more time to look, I could probably find it. For now, it appears there are a wide variety of opinions on that matter.

Something else to consider: "a recent innovation using nanotechnology has the potential to decrease the cost of desalination by 75%" (source: <broken link removed> ) which could, of course, make it a viable option for many more people. One thing I am certain of, when we're up against a wall, someone seems to find the innovation to make things happen. Who would have believed the water filtration devices available today just 50 years ago. They're being distributed in the poorest countries at a fraction of the cost of water treatment plants. It's pretty amazing. Heck, you can even get your own personal 'solar still' which doesn't require any energy outside of the sun - source: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/drinkseawater.html

And while we're talking about the sun, let's not forget one of the big jobs the sun does for us - natural desalination. The largest surface areas of water on the planet are the oceans, which are the most saline, and therefore, non-potable, sources of water on the planet. But the sun, which hits those oceans constantly, evaporates and naturally desalinates, 434,000 cubic kilometers of water every year. That moisture in the atmosphere drops enough fresh water on land each year to replace everything that evaporates from land sources (lakes, rivers, etc.) plus extra. That's a lot of free, desalinated water, if we're smart enough to find a better way to make use of it.

How about doing a better job of collecting rainwater when it falls? Looking at the LA area, there is a large amount of usable water that falls in the form of rain each year, much of which is left to run off back into the ocean, unused. It's a known issue that some are trying to get the state to address. A recent article in Forbes took a look at it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/...-of-fresh-water-flow-straight-into-the-ocean/ In that article they point to Australia as an example of what can be done to help fix that problem. They installed, over the course of five years, millions of cisterns around the major cities, allowing rainwater to be collected and used at a later time. The result? Australia went from the 2nd largest per-capita water user (behind the US), to one of the most efficient. The article also points out that one of the biggest problems is moving water across the state. Local collection and storage would reduce the amount of energy needed to pump that water, including that for agricultural use. So why aren't these solutions happening? According to the article they are, at least in part, being blocked by lobbies for industries such as the desalination industry, because they want to make the big money.

I don't doubt there are problems. The climate is shifting (I'm not yet convinced this is all man's doing, since we have records of natural cycles of climate change long before man could make an impact), there is little doubt to that. We just need to shift the way we do things along with those changes. I think there could be some great solutions that don't have to start and end with panicked rationing of water to everyone. I just don't like it that so many out there like to use these 'crises' to help fund their research, their pet projects and their political aspirations.

If we haven't put all the good options to work yet to try and solve this, and stand up and declare we're all going to die, then that's not science, it's fear mongering. And until I get some better answers, don't be surprised if we don't all fall into line behind those that spread the fear.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Brutus57]

It's those damm Chinese adding more dirt to increase the size of the Spratly islands that is raising the sea level...soon to drown NY City. I mean any grade school kid can show you by putting marbles in a glass to raise the level of water...

Brutus Out

 

[308]

It's those damm Chinese adding more dirt to increase the size of the Spratly islands that is raising the sea level...soon to drown NY City. I mean any grade school kid can show you by putting marbles in a glass to raise the level of water...

Brutus Out

Any grade school kid knows if you keep adding dirt to an island, it will simply tip over.

 

[chemist]

Here you go, etrain:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=+total+world+water+supply&l=1