
Not just oil: US hit peak water in 1970 and nobody noticed - lukeqsee
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/not-just-oil-us-hit-peak-water-in-1970-and-nobody-noticed.ars
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stretchwithme
too much water goes to users that don't pay a market price. that means
subsidies or shortages, as it does in other markets.

~~~
bh42
I can't confirm but allegedly Seattle tap water is much more expensive then
Phoenix tap water.

~~~
stretchwithme
not surprising.

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hugh3
_there are some significant differences between petroleum and water. For oil,
using it involves a chemical transformation that won't be reversed except on
geological time scales. Using water often leaves it in its native state, with
a cycle that returns it to the environment in a geologic blink of an eye.
Still, the authors make a compelling argument that, not only can there be a
peak water, but the US passed this point around 1970, apparently without
anyone noticing._

Indeed, but since (as mentioned) water is nothing like oil, the concept of
Peak Water hardly matters. I hear the US also passed Peak Rubik's Cube in
about 1983 and nobody noticed that either.

~~~
probablycorey
It hardly matters until we pump all the aquifers dry. At that point a majority
of US crops will be reliant upon rain water, which won't be enough to sustain
the farms in the west. Much of Oklahoma, Kansas, California will revert back
into the Great American Desert (as it was known before).

For a great book on the subject, check out [http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-
Desert-American-Disappearing-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-
American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244)

~~~
hugh3
Most of California's agriculture is the Central Valley. Surely that was never
desert? It's got rain all winter and runoff from the mountains all summer.

~~~
edj
From Wikipedia[1]: "The northern Central Valley has a hot Mediterranean
climate (Koppen climate classification Csa); the more southerly parts in
rainshadow zones are dry enough to be Mediterranean steppe (BShs, as around
Fresno) or even low-latitude desert (BWh, as in areas southeast of
Bakersfield)."

Central Valley farms and the coastal cities are mostly fed by water from the
Sierra's, via either rivers or one of California's many aquifers (e.g. Hetch
Hetchy, Los Angeles, Colorado, California).

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_(California)#Cli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_\(California\)#Climate)

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bryanh
I would imagine a key difference here is that with water, the root sources
will never be eradicated. Evaporate it and it enters the atmosphere. Dump it
on the ground and it drains to the water table. Flush it down the drain and it
enters a treatment system which dumps it into a river where it enters the
ocean in due time.

The tech required to recycle the water is already available (and is
commonplace), however, costs associated with this practice lead to government
subsidies.

That's why nobody noticed. Oil runs out. Water sticks around (though it may
need some cleaning).

~~~
tbrownaw
> That's why nobody noticed. Oil runs out. Water sticks around (though it may
> need some cleaning).

Except it doesn't run out. Sure at some point you can't pump it out of wells
any more (just like with water) and the tar sands will run out, but there's a
zillion other options that are just not-quite-profitable right now. Water has
sewage treatment plants and desalination, oil has various forms of biological-
based sources and I'm pretty sure some straight chemical options.

~~~
khafra
The difference is that with water, if the aquifers run out you can increase
the output of your desalination and sewage treatment plants, or build more of
them, or whatever--all it takes is more energy inputs. Oil _is_ energy inputs;
if the EROEI drops too low we can't replace it until we find _more_ than the
energy we're currently getting from it from non-petroleum-based sources. It's
unfortunately quite difficult to build thousands of nuke plants overnight
without using petroleum inputs.

~~~
wisty
Fortunately, a lot of oil use is recreational. Look at the USA, which uses 10
times the oil per capita as heavily industrialized China.

When oil does start running short, there will be huge price shocks. Either
market driven, or war-style command economies will curtail most shipping;
while manufacturers pump out electrical vehicles and wind generators as fast
as they can (wind generators can be built in factories and set up fairly
quickly; nuclear plants require a long lead time due to site construction,
planning, etc). Energy production is a relatively small part of the economy,
so cutting back on the rest of the economy can pay for alternative energy
supplies.

Planes can run on bio-fuel (which costs a fortune, but nobody needs to fly),
cars can run on stationary energy (if you convert them to use electric
motors). I don't know what container ships can use, perhaps rail will replace
them in many cases (though this will be a big disruption).

It won't be pretty. There may be severe shortages. But at least the technology
is being developed now.

~~~
ghshephard
Or, alternatively, people will live close to where they work and just walk
there.

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ck2
I start to understand more and more why cheap clean power is so important the
future where population and industrialization is going to be off the charts.

Desalination can solve the water problem, if power is cheap enough, right now
it's $2-3 per 1000 gallons.

Hurry up and invent a portable fusion generator!

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steveplace
Peak $resource is not the right phrasing.

Peak _cheap_ $resource is.

~~~
jarek
Depends on how it's used. Fundamentally, peak $resource refers to the peak in
production of $resource, which under laws of physics as we understand them
will necessarily happen eventually. Barring changes in demand, $resource whose
production has peaked will become more expensive; peak $resource implies peak
cheap $resource in this case.

Unfortunately, peak $resource has been used, reused, and abused in so many
different ways that stating one way is the definitive is bound to be
incorrect.

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tbrownaw
This sort of thing is why I don't take the peak oil panic-mongers seriously.
It starts getting harder to find, the price goes up a bit, and people find
ways to use less (for water this is largely better irrigation and various
kinds of recycling, for oil I guess it would largely be switching more to
electric power with nuclear/renewable generation)... and a few years later
some analyst drives their used electric car to work, looks over the numbers
for a report they're working on, and sees that the peak went by unannounced.

~~~
roc
You're begging the question of how large the gulf is between our current
standard of living and what's sustainable as well as the time needed to mature
the alternatives.

The peak itself was never billed as a dramatic moment of change. It's simply a
leading indicator of an impending, rapid, potentially disastrous,
reconciliation of past and future standards of living.

In the case of oil, if you don't pay attention to it, you'll never be able to
bring up alternatives or nuclear nearly fast enough to avoid serious economic
shocks.

Water's easier, at least in America, because so much of it is literally wasted
on American lawns. You can avoid quite a bit of economic shock with an order
to shut off sprinklers.

But that's what the peak is all about: the canary in the coal mine. You're
still alive and well when the bird pitches over. But you should probably take
the hint, because you might not have enough time if you wait until it starts
to notably impact you.

~~~
tbrownaw
No, I'm saying there's really no reason to expect a "rapid" change after peak.
It's not like all the world's oil is coming from one upended bottle that'll
just suddenly run dry, there are many different fields with different amounts
left and different costs of extraction. Right now it looks like some of the
larger fields (particularly the alberta tar sands) are becoming economical,
and also various alternatives (wind, solar) are becoming economical.

~~~
roc
I'm using "rapid" as on a time scale of development and rollout of
infrastructure technology. If the price of oil triples in 2 years, that's
pretty darn rapid, because people will need to adjust their lifestyles for
_years_ before the alternatives and technological improvements can possibly be
produced, delivered and installed.

I'm not suggesting the oil will all one day run out. But the sum production
will drop. And the world's appetite will no longer be met and the bidding on
the remaining oil production will skyrocket.

We saw this when the price of oil shot from 30/barrel to 100 over 3 years.
Life changed and alternatives, though now-viable are still a decade away. And
that was due a fairly small increase in total demand, due growth in Asia.

If you ignore the peak and wait until that first press conference from OPEC,
when the world economy starts to regain its footing but they're still cutting
production; your electric cars are a decade away from mass production. your
solar panels are a decade away from mass production. your nuclear plants are a
_generation_ away from being built.

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kadavy
Maybe a good time to pick up some PHO?
[http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:PHO](http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:PHO)

~~~
chengas123
What's up with the EPS of -7? Is this really a weighted average of its
components?

~~~
kadavy
I guess so, but I'm no expert. I think this is an emerging industry, so I
imagine it will be awhile before it is really turning profits.

------
protomyth
At some point, California is going to need to build some water desalinization
plants.

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stretchwithme
My sister-in-law is a hydrologist and gave me this great book called Cadillac
Desert. All about the "The American West and Its Disappearing Water". It tells
the story about how many awful projects were funded by Congress as a means of
sending pork home.

Many made no economic sense at all, even after the ridiculous stretching of
the facts used to justify them. There's even a river in OK or TX whose course
has been continually changed, with all the work being done by a company in
which the local Congressman had a financial interest.

Yep, a lot of that $13 trillion has simply been flushed down the river with no
real benefit.

The book also talks about how Jimmy Carter tried get the states to pick up a
tiny percentage of the cost. Suddenly, interest in water projects plummeted,
at least until that silly idea was repealed.

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Saad_M
Water usage will become a big issue. Especially if the planet keeps warming
up, which could see many glacial fed rivers drying up. Impacting millions of
people’s across the globe.

There’s several things that needs to be worked out very soon:

\- Sustainable water desalination in arid countries that doesn’t consume
hydrocarbons (Solar-Thermal desalination? Nuclear desalination?).

\- Better reuse of human waste for the growing of food. Currently most food is
grown with artificial fertilisers, which aren’t sustainable in the long run.
We need to make better reuse of our waste so that the amount of phosphorus
(Another resource soon to peak), potassium, and nitrogen from artificial or
mined sources can be reduced.

\- Better waste water and grey water management systems to recover domestic
waste water for use in industries and farming.

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bootload
living in the one of the wetter parts of the driest continent ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195809887...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195809887/)
I'm acutely aware of it's scarcity ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/413507302/in/set-72157...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/413507302/in/set-72157600195809887/)
Not understanding scarcity is a first world urban problem.

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ahoyhere
In Vienna, we flush our toilets with alpine spring water. One of the many
benefits of settling in a defensible, well-situated spot and implementing
urban planning for the future. The city was built for 4 million, and is
inhabited by about 2 million.

Empires ftw!

