Total US freshwater use (2005 numbers, but should be close enough), excluding thermoelectric generation: 205,910 million gallons per day.
(source: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-fresh.html)
Converting from bizarro units to something intelligible, that's:
Electricity, 1 year, 2011: 4.048e12 kWh
Water, 1 year, 2005: 2.845e11 m^3
It looks like the cost of desalinating 1 cubic meter of water varies a lot by method. I'll run with 13.5 kWh electric equivalent here (representing the upper end of efficiency for multi-stage flash distillation, which should be an easily scalable desalination method, and assuming cogeneration with electrical power) giving us a total energy cost of 3.841e12 kWh. This can probably be improved substantially using reverse osmosis or other fancier techniques.
So, the total cost of (hypothetically) producing all the US' freshwater via ocean water desalination comes in at just under 95% of our electricity generation capacity. In other words we'd have to nearly double that capacity, producing an additional 3.8 terawatt-hours of equivalent electrical power. Looking at some other data, it seems we've added about 1 terawatt-hour since 1991 (22 years before the numbers I used here). The rate at which we have added capacity in recent years seems to vary a lot, though (probably with demand), so I think we could potentially add capacity at a much higher rate than we have.
Of course, we're not going to suddenly replace 100% of the fresh water used in the US with desalinated ocean water, either. I'd guess that adding a percent or two per year is probably doable if we made a concerted effort (i.e. if water started getting expensive and Americans decided they're not so afraid of fission after all). So, I don't think we'll see water wars or a reversion to an agrarian society in the US. Water will get more expensive, we'll stop wasting quite so much, and we'll produce more if we have to. The real impact will be to societies that are already mainly agrarian (i.e. poor countries) who don't have terawatt-hours to throw around.
Basically. The really expensive part would be creating infrastructure to pump it inland. That's a big fucking project.
I thought that sheep and goats were actually terrible choices for grazing because they will eat grassland damn near down to the bedrock.
I may have gotten this impression from the opening scene of a John Wayne movie.
As V1m just posted, sheep are fine.
Do you know where the "look" of modern American mown lawns come from? That's how English manor houses looked when they had extensive land and kept a bunch of sheep around to eat it up so they could sell the wool. So the whole "lawn" thing is normal folk wanting their little bit of land to look like the rich folks land but because of scale taking a money maker and turning it into a labor sink.
Total US freshwater use (2005 numbers, but should be close enough), excluding thermoelectric generation: 205,910 million gallons per day.
(source: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-fresh.html)
Converting from bizarro units to something intelligible, that's:
Electricity, 1 year, 2011: 4.048e12 kWh
Water, 1 year, 2005: 2.845e11 m^3
It looks like the cost of desalinating 1 cubic meter of water varies a lot by method. I'll run with 13.5 kWh electric equivalent here (representing the upper end of efficiency for multi-stage flash distillation, which should be an easily scalable desalination method, and assuming cogeneration with electrical power) giving us a total energy cost of 3.841e12 kWh. This can probably be improved substantially using reverse osmosis or other fancier techniques.
So, the total cost of (hypothetically) producing all the US' freshwater via ocean water desalination comes in at just under 95% of our electricity generation capacity. In other words we'd have to nearly double that capacity, producing an additional 3.8 terawatt-hours of equivalent electrical power. Looking at some other data, it seems we've added about 1 terawatt-hour since 1991 (22 years before the numbers I used here). The rate at which we have added capacity in recent years seems to vary a lot, though (probably with demand), so I think we could potentially add capacity at a much higher rate than we have.
Of course, we're not going to suddenly replace 100% of the fresh water used in the US with desalinated ocean water, either. I'd guess that adding a percent or two per year is probably doable if we made a concerted effort (i.e. if water started getting expensive and Americans decided they're not so afraid of fission after all). So, I don't think we'll see water wars or a reversion to an agrarian society in the US. Water will get more expensive, we'll stop wasting quite so much, and we'll produce more if we have to. The real impact will be to societies that are already mainly agrarian (i.e. poor countries) who don't have terawatt-hours to throw around.
Thanks for the analysis. I appreciate the comparitively rigorous approach you used, much better than "it seems really dry around here guys".
I know this is kind of a weird/broad generalized question but... Won't climate change's biggest effect be to change the occupation of almost everyone? I'm unclear as to what a lot of the effects of climate change will be, though I've read we should really be concerned about the ocean as a significant amount of our oxygen is produced by organism in the sea that will not survive drastic changes (if someone who understands this issue better could comment on it I'd love to hear more about it). What I'm getting at though is that if water or food become much more scarce and harder to produce, aren't we likely to more or less go back to the kind of societies that were the norm through out most of human history, where the primary occupation of most people is farmer of some variety?
There is also the issue of ocean acidification. Basically as the CO2 in the atmosphere increases and the oceans get warmer they'll absorb more CO2 and become more acidic. This is bad for several forms of life in the ocean, including shellfish.
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Talking about sheep in a global warming thread?
Hue hue hue
But
I find it important to talk about the worst case, but I also think it is important to talk about the near term effects in a realistic way. Climate change will result in more wars over scarcer resources. Crop yields will go down, so our standard of living will be less than it is now. Climate refugees will be a huge problem, though not as huge for countries like the US because we've the money to deal with them and the political will to ignore the ones we don't care about (Katrina, Montana snow disaster last fall, etc etc).
Are you well off? You're probably going to be fine. Middle Class? Well, that barely exists now anyway and it'll get harder and harder to keep it going. Poor? Good luck.
The social aspects of this are, I think, the most important and least talked about. I think maybe people would be more apt to participate in collective action if they realized that coastal poors will soon be stalking through their neighborhoods and the local Food and Stuff will have less food and they won't be able to afford as much stuff.
That is more real to people than a melting glacier or a vanishing island nobody cares about (not that these things aren't important, but people barely care about the stuff that happens in front of them, much less to people they've never met).
big changes come from goverments, small things can be made by us. Like use less cars, less plastic etc, etc.
i like to live as green as possible, its a really small thing for an earth but you have to start somewhere i guess.
Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.
If it comes down to the more bleak side of things, I'll be forced to fire up the forge and continue the family tradition of blacksmithing. Which is all fine and dandy to me, but decidedly not green. I'll be part of the industrial complex that starts it all over again!
Yeah, I was thinking that we'll probably see huge advancements and investments in both nuclear power and desalinization. The US is incredibly wealthy and the technology is already there. Since the affects of global warming are going to be a pain in the ass and people don't like their standards of living lessen, their will be pressure put upon the US government to take action and minimize the impact, once people start feeling the pain. We aren't going to be seeing Mad Max levels of social unrest in the states. At worst we might get a handful of riots and if we do, that's likely to be more a case of influential dumbass wealthy people causing unnecessary delays in action because they choose to be self-centered bastards. I do think ultimately, that the government will take action because public opinion will force it to do so and that eventually the dumbass rich people like the Koch brothers, will realize that they had better get the fuck out of the way.
I think nuclear power is probably one of the better alternatives. We have plenty of fissile material, it doesn't generate CO2 and it doesn't have the drawbacks of many of the other alternative energy sources. I'm sure we'll see plenty done solar and wind, I'm just not sure we'll ever get them up to a point where we don't need some other energy source to cover for gaps in energy production with those two sources. I'll admit I'm not up to snuff on geothermal, but I believe the issue with that is that there are limited areas to get it currently. Probably will see more with hydroelectric sources as well; especially, if we end up investing in desalinization plants, whose purpose is to pump water in land, where there might be a few cases of "we're pumping water to an area, where it's going to be heading down, might as well stick a few turbines there to take advantage." Fusion will probably be another big one, but I'm not sure how far off that is currently, I certainly see more investment being made into making it viable.
Now if we get out of the US and wealthy countries that are developed enough to take action to minimize the pain. Then I agree that things will be ugly for people there because we're now talking about countries that probably won't have the resources to stem the negative aspects of global warming. I also suspect that global warming will put a damper on international aid from wealthy countries, since that may result in them producing less food to be shipped and they have new issues, that are going to result in them having less money to spent on aiding poorer countries.
Granted I'd say any nation that is mostly coastal, islands or somehow low enough that it'll get fucked by rising sea levels, is pretty fucked regardless of how wealthy or poor it ends up being. It's not going to be terribly feasible to build walls around the country to keep the water out; especially, if you're a poor country. These countries also don't have the benefit of lots of land further inland, if they have any, to relocate their populations to when their current cities start flooding.
Individual action is meaningless, only collective action, which is to say political action can create the change required.
You could not achieve the degree of collective action required if space aliens were visibly mounting a global invasion. Subtle climate changes spread over a long time? Fucking forget it.
Moreover, let's say, as a hypothetical thought experiment, that the masses of modern society made an honest, eyes-open rational decision about the utility of paying the increased economic and social costs of climate change later, after it happens, rather than paying the (lower) costs of prevention/mitigation now. This is fundamentally a "pay now" vs. "pay more later" debate, after all. Would the choice really be different from the behavior that we're seeing?
In reality, that decision was made subconsciously, of course, but the action taken (or rather, lack thereof) works out much the same way.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
This water discussion is always an interesting thing for Colorado.
Due to legal precedent, the origin state for a river has almost exclusive discretion over the water that comes from that river. As a result, Colorado has an enormous amount of political influence with regards to the plains states and the Southwest. The topic of Water Law is so prominent in Colorado that pretty much every Civil Engineer that graduates in Colorado goes into Water Law in some form (that and it is super lucrative compared to Structural engineering). Many of my Engineering buddies have gone into this field over the years.
As a result of the precedent, we have Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada by the nutsack. It used to be we took what we needed and then bargained the rights off to the rest of them with little conflict. But in the last 30 years, Las Vegas and California have been wanting more and more. Initially we gave preference to Las Vegas, because Southern California has decent enough rainfall that they could take care of themselves if they built a few more reservoirs. Basically, Colorado blames them for the Colorado River not reaching the Pacific anymore due to their unwillingness to build more reservoirs. But CA population and farming kept growing and growing, and the US Government kept pressuring Colorado to give more to California, so we did (and Arizona got pooched in the process).
Now though, with warming being so pervasive in Colorado, glaciers melting, and low snowfall, we don't even have the water to take care of our own state. Luckily, some brilliant lawyer included a clause in the very first water contracts that basically gave Colorado a get-out-of-jail-free card in all of its water contracts. Essentially, Colorado's needs come first, regardless of whatever contract we signed. So now that we're hard up for water, the other states are pissed that they aren't only not getting as much as they used to, but aren't even getting their contract rates due to the requirement to fill Colorado's quota first.
Suffice it to say, shit is going to get ugly in the Southwest. I really wish my State would do more regarding restricting lawn-water and encouraging responsible water use, but everybody moves here thinking "tons of snow" and "green everywhere" not realizing that the only things that are green are trees, otherwise, you still live in a freaking desert so stop having that Kentucky Bluegrass lawn.
We were also rather amused when one of our state representatives punched a lawyer from California when he insinuated last year's floods meant Colorado had more than enough water.
Ocean acidification is bad juju. I read something in the last week about a particular kind of sea snail where the shells have been becoming transparent because of it. I don't have a source, but I remember it saying that this is one of those canary-in-the-coal-mine species.
This seaside city thought it had the perfect solution the last time California withered in a severe drought more than two decades ago: Tap the ocean to turn salty seawater to fresh water.
The $34 million desalination plant was fired up for only three months and mothballed after a miracle soaking of rain.
As the state again grapples with historic dryness, the city nicknamed the "American Riviera" has its eye on restarting the idled facility to hedge against current and future droughts.
"We were so close to running out of water during the last drought. It was frightening," said Joshua Haggmark, interim water resources manager. "Desalination wasn't a crazy idea back then."
Removing salt from ocean water is not a far-out idea, but it's no quick drought-relief option. It takes years of planning and overcoming red tape to launch a project.
Santa Barbara is uniquely positioned with a desalination plant in storage. But getting it humming again won't be as simple as flipping a switch.
After the plant was powered down in 1992, the city sold off parts to a Saudi Arabia company. The guts remain as a time capsule — a white elephant of sorts — walled off behind a gate near the Funk Zone, a corridor of art galleries, wineries and eateries tucked between the Pacific and U.S. 101.
The city estimates that it will need $20 million in technological upgrades, a cost likely to be borne by ratepayers. Any restart would require city council approval, which won't vote until next spring after reviewing engineering plans and drought conditions.
Santa Barbara, population 89,000, has enough water for this year and even next year by buying supplemental supplies and as long as residents continue to conserve.
While it may seem like a head-scratcher to put the plant in hibernation soon after it was built, officials said the decision saved the city millions of dollars in unnecessary operating costs.
"With the current drought likely to continue, they now appear as if they will be able to cash in on their insurance policy," said Tom Pankratz, editor of Water Desalination Report and consultant on several other desalination projects in California.
The cyclical nature of droughts has made it difficult, if not impossible, to bet on desalination. It requires prime coastal real estate and the foresight to diversify the water supply in flush and dry times. Communities that choose desalination may be more resilient to inevitable droughts in the future.
Santa Barbara relies on water piped through tunnels from the Santa Ynez Mountains. But with Lake Cachuma, the main reservoir, dangerously low, the city expects desalination to play a role.
"We live in a desert. We can expect droughts. It's just inevitable that desalination is going to become a part of our regular water portfolio," Haggmark said.
Santa Barbara is not alone in mulling desalination as parched conditions persist for a third straight year, forcing some rural places to ration water and farmers to fallow fields.
Earlier this year, the agency that delivers water to the central coast town of Cambria voted to approve an emergency desalination plant with the hopes of getting it running by July before water supplies dry up.
Instead of drawing ocean water, the proposed $5 million plant would pull brackish water from a well, treat it and reinject it into the aquifer. Since that would require a lengthy study, the plant likely won't be able to go online until fall.
Not long ago, there was a rush to quench California's growing thirst with seaside desalination plants. Currently, there are about a dozen proposed projects, according to the California Coastal Commission, which is charged with permitting the facilities.
The Western Hemisphere's largest desalination plant is under construction north of San Diego after overcoming years of regulatory hurdles. The developer — Poseidon Resources LLC — is seeking approval to build another one in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles.
In California's agricultural belt, a solar-powered desalination plant in Fresno County has purified irrigation runoff for the past year. The output is small, but the operator hopes to expand.
Not every community embraces desalination. The port city of Long Beach is trying to reduce dependence on imported water but dropped the idea of desalination after realizing the cost.
Australia, Singapore, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other thirsty countries are big desalination supporters, but tougher regulatory requirements have made it a harder sell in the U.S.
Many environmentalists see desalination as a last resort, contending it's an energy hog that sucks marine life into the plants.
Other options should be exhausted "before you start putting a straw into the ocean," said Susan Jordan, executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network based in Santa Barbara. "People tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to drought."
The city council is set to take action Tuesday on an $820,000 contract spelling out what's needed to restart the facility. The city contends that it has the permits to reactivate the plant, but the state coastal commission said it needs new or amended permits.
On a recent tour of the ghost plant, Haggmark inspected the onetime state-of-the-art control room. A pair of bulky desktop computers boasting floppy disk drives served as a vintage reminder. A line of trailers outside store the original pumps and empty metal cylinders that used to hold parts that have since been sold. Intake valves pulled from the seafloor sit exposed to the elements.
The original plant had a capacity to produce about 7,500 acre-feet of water per year, about half of the city's average water use. An acre foot is enough to last a family of four about a year.
Haggmark acknowledged desalination's limits, but he said it made sense to start considering it as an option to ease the strain on local supplies. The earliest restart date would be summer 2016.
"This community can't conserve its way out of this drought as it currently has been unfolding," he said. "It's just been unprecedentedly dry."
Good news in italics.
Bolded is depressing as fuck though. With thinking this shortsighted humanity is super boned.
Yeah, it's incredibly stupid that they didn't stop and say "hey, if we opened that plant to deal with a drought, something that does seem to be cyclical to our region, why the fuck are we putting this on the chopping block?" Surely, they could have found something else to cut, to save money. Hell, did they even do the math to see how much of that money gets cycled back to the city via wages at the plant? Also given that water rights have been an issue in that region, why not look into producing enough water to sell to others. I mean what's the harm in keeping it running, so that they don't have to deplete the existing sources of fresh water?
This is why I get super pissy too when a new reservoir keeps getting voted down in Northern Colorado.
Our population has expanded 200% since the last reservoir was built. We are running out of water, but people are both unwilling to enforce water restrictions and unwilling to vote in a new reservoir.
The cyclical nature of droughts has made it difficult, if not impossible, to bet on desalination. It requires prime coastal real estate and the foresight to diversify the water supply in flush and dry times. Communities that choose desalination may be more resilient to inevitable droughts in the future.
Santa Barbara relies on water piped through tunnels from the Santa Ynez Mountains. But with Lake Cachuma, the main reservoir, dangerously low, the city expects desalination to play a role.
"We live in a desert. We can expect droughts. It's just inevitable that desalination is going to become a part of our regular water portfolio," Haggmark said.
...No. it's just inevitable that you will run out of water.
I really don't think people 'get it' yet.
Just watching all of the derp related to the Nevada land that was tentatively planned for a solar farm before that deal fell through... is there a reason, aside from Republicans, that the U.S. government (or, say, a state government) can't just put together a program for built a large solar farm in a few areas? It's not like you even needs specialized labor to do it, aside from the manufacturing of the panels themselves (which could just be either built by, say, the DoD or NIST, or even perhaps a contractor). Build the panels, hire some locals to do the basic set-up / install, bring in specialists at the end to make it operational. Retain some part-time engineers or whatever to maintain the farm. Done.
I'm so tired of listening to talk about 'emissions standards' legislation when what we actually fucking need is a Goddamn long-term energy program and the machinery / infrastructure to support it.
which costs money. Which means taxes. Which means wqgwe;lkfjwl;qj;lf. Basically, in terms of large scale structural investments we actually expect to get shit for free. We want it, but fuck you if you ask us to pay for it or cut a supercarrier to make up the difference.
I guess the weird thing is I wonder why some oil companies aren't going into heavy R&D on Renewables. I mean, one of these days, they're all going to become the next Kodak.
Sure, we'll always need lubricants for machines and oils are pretty useful in making plastics, but once shit finally goes down and people make the switch, there's going to be a lot of bankrupt companies out there. It seems more prudent to take those massive profits now and insert yourself into a long-term industry so you don't end up like LoLKodak.
Edit: And I mean, sure the Oil companies definitely still have a good 50-100 years ahead of them, but still, you'd think at least one company would see the massive gaping opportunity in front of them.
I guess the weird thing is I wonder why some oil companies aren't going into heavy R&D on Renewables. I mean, one of these days, they're all going to become the next Kodak.
Sure, we'll always need lubricants for machines and oils are pretty useful in making plastics, but once shit finally goes down and people make the switch, there's going to be a lot of bankrupt companies out there. It seems more prudent to take those massive profits now and insert yourself into a long-term industry so you don't end up like LoLKodak.
Edit: And I mean, sure the Oil companies definitely still have a good 50-100 years ahead of them, but still, you'd think at least one company would see the massive gaping opportunity in front of them.
It's just how companies behave. Nobody wants to tell an investor, "Hey, if we take a hit this quarter and take a risky position on a future technology that might or not be The Next Big Thing, maybe we can still be profitable while also future-proofing ourselves!"
Investors don't give a shit about future proofing, and therefore neither do publicly traded companies. They want to get whatever they can right now, and when the cheddar goes dry, walk away and send out the pink slips.
It's a fundamental part of why capitalism is a shitty system.
Desalination is actually the perfect application of solar--it requires a ton of power, demand is higher at low latitudes, and it produces a product that is both easily storable and transportable.
My inclination would be to set up offshore, but not too far off, and tank the water in to a coastal city. You should also be able to mitigate some of the environmental issues if you're not exhausting hot brine directly off the coast. I wonder if floating solar desalination has been well explored.
Desalination is why I'm not too worried about fresh water in first world nations, it's not like fusion where the challenges require a leap in physics or something, all the practical challenges are solvable with a concerted effort
Of course we'll get around to taking care of that like, 2 months after LA runs out of water
itll be a great future with 30% of household GDP going to water and soy-food
If you run with a complete desalination process. That removes all the water for use and leaves behind sea salt. I suppose that could hose salt mines, but that probably isn't a bad thing at all.
But yeah, our species needs to do something about it's shortsightedness and greed. As pointed out, most of the fossil fuel companies aren't looking into renewable energy or research period because it costs money now. They would rather make the biggest possible profits now and then bitch about the company going under later, even if someone shows them the math, that long term, it's likely more profitable to invest in new technology and research now. It's the same issue with the most of the populous, they want their fancy, shiny shit now and they don't want to pay a damn cent for it.
Honestly, if we ever get a functioning AI, that doesn't try to kill us all. The smartest thing we could do as a species, is give it control over the infrastructure decisions (maintenance, funding streams, total expenditures and research) and make it so that it's practically impossible to override the decisions. That way stupid, greedy fuckers can't run on "I'll cut taxes, but we're going to have cut infrastructure spending," or "Boot the fucker out, he raised taxes, just ignore that it's shit that we really needed to fund."
Desalination is actually the perfect application of solar--it requires a ton of power, demand is higher at low latitudes, and it produces a product that is both easily storable and transportable.
My inclination would be to set up offshore, but not too far off, and tank the water in to a coastal city. You should also be able to mitigate some of the environmental issues if you're not exhausting hot brine directly off the coast. I wonder if floating solar desalination has been well explored.
I bet you could even re-process the brine into materials for making sodium-based batteries to store the solar power.
Of course, nobody has explored anything remotely close to this, because we decided we were fine with 50-60s-era infrastructure at best and innovation in that field is either laughed at or frowned upon. Oklahoma started taxing people for using solar.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I guess the weird thing is I wonder why some oil companies aren't going into heavy R&D on Renewables.
Because those rich people are going to invest their money into biodomes or space stations to escape the choking death of our planet. They don't give two fucks about the planet, being as the massive fortunes they've accrued for themselves will help them afford to avoid the worst of it.
We've got all the necessary technological know-how right now (except for fusion, I guess, which is the "nail in the coffin to the problem" solution) and it's just a matter of investment. It's a shame Denmark is leading the charge and not, you know, the country that is supposed to be the world's leader on world leadership.
I'm reasonably optimistic given the huge advances in solar and wind in the last decade or so we're going to edge off some of the worst-case scenarios. We're still locked in to lose something like 10-20% of global GDP to climate related changes over the century, though. Which is great depression level bad.
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Basically. The really expensive part would be creating infrastructure to pump it inland. That's a big fucking project.
Goats yes; sheep not so much.
See here the barren desolation of the area where I grew up, where there are ~no goats but jillions of sheep:
As V1m just posted, sheep are fine.
Do you know where the "look" of modern American mown lawns come from? That's how English manor houses looked when they had extensive land and kept a bunch of sheep around to eat it up so they could sell the wool. So the whole "lawn" thing is normal folk wanting their little bit of land to look like the rich folks land but because of scale taking a money maker and turning it into a labor sink.
Thanks for the analysis. I appreciate the comparitively rigorous approach you used, much better than "it seems really dry around here guys".
There is also the issue of ocean acidification. Basically as the CO2 in the atmosphere increases and the oceans get warmer they'll absorb more CO2 and become more acidic. This is bad for several forms of life in the ocean, including shellfish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_(sheep)
They do not overgraze as far as I know.
Hue hue hue
But
I find it important to talk about the worst case, but I also think it is important to talk about the near term effects in a realistic way. Climate change will result in more wars over scarcer resources. Crop yields will go down, so our standard of living will be less than it is now. Climate refugees will be a huge problem, though not as huge for countries like the US because we've the money to deal with them and the political will to ignore the ones we don't care about (Katrina, Montana snow disaster last fall, etc etc).
Are you well off? You're probably going to be fine. Middle Class? Well, that barely exists now anyway and it'll get harder and harder to keep it going. Poor? Good luck.
The social aspects of this are, I think, the most important and least talked about. I think maybe people would be more apt to participate in collective action if they realized that coastal poors will soon be stalking through their neighborhoods and the local Food and Stuff will have less food and they won't be able to afford as much stuff.
That is more real to people than a melting glacier or a vanishing island nobody cares about (not that these things aren't important, but people barely care about the stuff that happens in front of them, much less to people they've never met).
Predictions of Mad Max are likewise ill advised.
i like to live as green as possible, its a really small thing for an earth but you have to start somewhere i guess.
I think nuclear power is probably one of the better alternatives. We have plenty of fissile material, it doesn't generate CO2 and it doesn't have the drawbacks of many of the other alternative energy sources. I'm sure we'll see plenty done solar and wind, I'm just not sure we'll ever get them up to a point where we don't need some other energy source to cover for gaps in energy production with those two sources. I'll admit I'm not up to snuff on geothermal, but I believe the issue with that is that there are limited areas to get it currently. Probably will see more with hydroelectric sources as well; especially, if we end up investing in desalinization plants, whose purpose is to pump water in land, where there might be a few cases of "we're pumping water to an area, where it's going to be heading down, might as well stick a few turbines there to take advantage." Fusion will probably be another big one, but I'm not sure how far off that is currently, I certainly see more investment being made into making it viable.
Now if we get out of the US and wealthy countries that are developed enough to take action to minimize the pain. Then I agree that things will be ugly for people there because we're now talking about countries that probably won't have the resources to stem the negative aspects of global warming. I also suspect that global warming will put a damper on international aid from wealthy countries, since that may result in them producing less food to be shipped and they have new issues, that are going to result in them having less money to spent on aiding poorer countries.
Granted I'd say any nation that is mostly coastal, islands or somehow low enough that it'll get fucked by rising sea levels, is pretty fucked regardless of how wealthy or poor it ends up being. It's not going to be terribly feasible to build walls around the country to keep the water out; especially, if you're a poor country. These countries also don't have the benefit of lots of land further inland, if they have any, to relocate their populations to when their current cities start flooding.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Which sadly won't happen because we've mined all of the easily-extractable minerals and fossil fuels.
We haven't destroyed all the mountains in the world yet, so there is that...
You could not achieve the degree of collective action required if space aliens were visibly mounting a global invasion. Subtle climate changes spread over a long time? Fucking forget it.
Moreover, let's say, as a hypothetical thought experiment, that the masses of modern society made an honest, eyes-open rational decision about the utility of paying the increased economic and social costs of climate change later, after it happens, rather than paying the (lower) costs of prevention/mitigation now. This is fundamentally a "pay now" vs. "pay more later" debate, after all. Would the choice really be different from the behavior that we're seeing?
In reality, that decision was made subconsciously, of course, but the action taken (or rather, lack thereof) works out much the same way.
or is it something like this
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's more like getting everyone to answer the prisoner's dilemma correctly.
Due to legal precedent, the origin state for a river has almost exclusive discretion over the water that comes from that river. As a result, Colorado has an enormous amount of political influence with regards to the plains states and the Southwest. The topic of Water Law is so prominent in Colorado that pretty much every Civil Engineer that graduates in Colorado goes into Water Law in some form (that and it is super lucrative compared to Structural engineering). Many of my Engineering buddies have gone into this field over the years.
As a result of the precedent, we have Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada by the nutsack. It used to be we took what we needed and then bargained the rights off to the rest of them with little conflict. But in the last 30 years, Las Vegas and California have been wanting more and more. Initially we gave preference to Las Vegas, because Southern California has decent enough rainfall that they could take care of themselves if they built a few more reservoirs. Basically, Colorado blames them for the Colorado River not reaching the Pacific anymore due to their unwillingness to build more reservoirs. But CA population and farming kept growing and growing, and the US Government kept pressuring Colorado to give more to California, so we did (and Arizona got pooched in the process).
Now though, with warming being so pervasive in Colorado, glaciers melting, and low snowfall, we don't even have the water to take care of our own state. Luckily, some brilliant lawyer included a clause in the very first water contracts that basically gave Colorado a get-out-of-jail-free card in all of its water contracts. Essentially, Colorado's needs come first, regardless of whatever contract we signed. So now that we're hard up for water, the other states are pissed that they aren't only not getting as much as they used to, but aren't even getting their contract rates due to the requirement to fill Colorado's quota first.
Suffice it to say, shit is going to get ugly in the Southwest. I really wish my State would do more regarding restricting lawn-water and encouraging responsible water use, but everybody moves here thinking "tons of snow" and "green everywhere" not realizing that the only things that are green are trees, otherwise, you still live in a freaking desert so stop having that Kentucky Bluegrass lawn.
We were also rather amused when one of our state representatives punched a lawyer from California when he insinuated last year's floods meant Colorado had more than enough water.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
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Whoops huge gif
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Good news in italics.
Bolded is depressing as fuck though. With thinking this shortsighted humanity is super boned.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
God damn, is there so much stupid there!
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Our population has expanded 200% since the last reservoir was built. We are running out of water, but people are both unwilling to enforce water restrictions and unwilling to vote in a new reservoir.
You can't have it both ways, people.
...No. it's just inevitable that you will run out of water.
I really don't think people 'get it' yet.
Just watching all of the derp related to the Nevada land that was tentatively planned for a solar farm before that deal fell through... is there a reason, aside from Republicans, that the U.S. government (or, say, a state government) can't just put together a program for built a large solar farm in a few areas? It's not like you even needs specialized labor to do it, aside from the manufacturing of the panels themselves (which could just be either built by, say, the DoD or NIST, or even perhaps a contractor). Build the panels, hire some locals to do the basic set-up / install, bring in specialists at the end to make it operational. Retain some part-time engineers or whatever to maintain the farm. Done.
I'm so tired of listening to talk about 'emissions standards' legislation when what we actually fucking need is a Goddamn long-term energy program and the machinery / infrastructure to support it.
Sure, we'll always need lubricants for machines and oils are pretty useful in making plastics, but once shit finally goes down and people make the switch, there's going to be a lot of bankrupt companies out there. It seems more prudent to take those massive profits now and insert yourself into a long-term industry so you don't end up like LoLKodak.
Edit: And I mean, sure the Oil companies definitely still have a good 50-100 years ahead of them, but still, you'd think at least one company would see the massive gaping opportunity in front of them.
It's just how companies behave. Nobody wants to tell an investor, "Hey, if we take a hit this quarter and take a risky position on a future technology that might or not be The Next Big Thing, maybe we can still be profitable while also future-proofing ourselves!"
Investors don't give a shit about future proofing, and therefore neither do publicly traded companies. They want to get whatever they can right now, and when the cheddar goes dry, walk away and send out the pink slips.
It's a fundamental part of why capitalism is a shitty system.
My inclination would be to set up offshore, but not too far off, and tank the water in to a coastal city. You should also be able to mitigate some of the environmental issues if you're not exhausting hot brine directly off the coast. I wonder if floating solar desalination has been well explored.
Of course we'll get around to taking care of that like, 2 months after LA runs out of water
itll be a great future with 30% of household GDP going to water and soy-food
But yeah, our species needs to do something about it's shortsightedness and greed. As pointed out, most of the fossil fuel companies aren't looking into renewable energy or research period because it costs money now. They would rather make the biggest possible profits now and then bitch about the company going under later, even if someone shows them the math, that long term, it's likely more profitable to invest in new technology and research now. It's the same issue with the most of the populous, they want their fancy, shiny shit now and they don't want to pay a damn cent for it.
Honestly, if we ever get a functioning AI, that doesn't try to kill us all. The smartest thing we could do as a species, is give it control over the infrastructure decisions (maintenance, funding streams, total expenditures and research) and make it so that it's practically impossible to override the decisions. That way stupid, greedy fuckers can't run on "I'll cut taxes, but we're going to have cut infrastructure spending," or "Boot the fucker out, he raised taxes, just ignore that it's shit that we really needed to fund."
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I bet you could even re-process the brine into materials for making sodium-based batteries to store the solar power.
Of course, nobody has explored anything remotely close to this, because we decided we were fine with 50-60s-era infrastructure at best and innovation in that field is either laughed at or frowned upon. Oklahoma started taxing people for using solar.
Because those rich people are going to invest their money into biodomes or space stations to escape the choking death of our planet. They don't give two fucks about the planet, being as the massive fortunes they've accrued for themselves will help them afford to avoid the worst of it.
I'm reasonably optimistic given the huge advances in solar and wind in the last decade or so we're going to edge off some of the worst-case scenarios. We're still locked in to lose something like 10-20% of global GDP to climate related changes over the century, though. Which is great depression level bad.