
Why is America running out of water? - jelliclesfarm
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/partner-content-americas-looming-water-crisis
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ljlolel
This is literally labeled as an ad partner content for dish detergent

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_delirium
Hah, weird. Is this sentence in the last paragraph their angle?:

> And every American can save more water at home in multiple ways, from taking
> shorter showers to not rinsing dishes under a running faucet before loading
> them into a dishwasher, a practice that wastes around 20 gallons of water
> for each load.

~~~
hidroto
or we could just wash dishes in the sink.

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grandinj
Summary - more people, more farming.

BUT. This appears to be different from before, where there was water, just in
the wrong place, now the US appears to be coming close to using 100% of the
available resource.

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mjevans
Ban lawns, or at least watering them. Increase the use of aquifers and natural
water reserves on site.

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bsder
Almost all the water problems are due to agribusiness usage.

If you reduced all consumer usage of water to zero, it would barely make a
dent.

California can solve its consumer water problems with a couple of
desalinization plants. Farming in the Central Valley, however, would basically
need to be shut down to stop draining the aquifers.

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seehafer
Exactly.

This is equivalent to the "we have to convert to electric cars because of
climate change!" which will also barely make a dent in carbon emissions
(unlike, say, converting the world to nuclear power plants).

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bsder
> This is equivalent to the "we have to convert to electric cars because of
> climate change!" which will also barely make a dent in carbon emissions

Even if electric cars were carbon-equivalent, moving a million point sources
of pollution (internal combustion engines) to a single point source of
pollution (a power plant) is _way_ better for us all.

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jelliclesfarm
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars)
: California water wars.

Relatedly on a more entertaining note: Chinatown..1974 movie by Roman Polanski
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(1974_film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_\(1974_film\))

And Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert)

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t0mbstone
If humans really wanted to solve this problem, they could quite easily. The
ocean is full of water. All you have to do is desalinate it and pump it.

Would it be expensive as fuck? Yes. Would it require tons of work, and new
technologies to be invented? Of course!

If we really wanted to do it, though, we could. I refuse to believe that this
isn't true.

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jelliclesfarm
There is the issue of brine.

Further the ocean is a delicate and unique eco system of its own. It has its
own habitat and balance and equilibrium.

Desalination doesn’t come without its costs and it’s not just about the money.

Sea steading, desalination etc are not really robust solutions. Control human
population or control consumption. The planet isn’t expanding and resources
are not infinite.

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t0mbstone
Of course brine is a problem. I never said it wasn't. All I'm hearing, though,
are challenges that may require out of the box thinking.

Controlling human population and consumption simply isn't going to happen, so
you might as well give up on that idea. At best, you will merely slow down the
problem for a while.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I think controlling human population is the only solution. Depopulation will
happen anyways. When it does, we would still need resources and if we burn it
up ..and we are a super apex predator..faster than it can renew, we are
basically shooting our selves in the foot.

It’s like sitting on the top most branch and sawing the trunk of the tree.
Daft! Slow burn of resources and working with burning renewables only will
ensure humanity and species survival. Otherwise the planet will survive. We
won’t. Because when we hit carrying capacity, there is a dearth of
resources..we will start killing each other. Oh! Oops! Already happening!

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radium3d
Maybe once we don't need as much oil we can repurpose the pipelines to pump
water from the areas that have no shortage to the rest of the country so we
can expand our usable territory?

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Zenst
Costs to flush out and decontaminate the pipes would not be insurmountable.
That along with different liquids have different demands on pipes, pressure,
chemical reactions (corrosion) and then the viscosity factors. Maybe that
pipes suited for oil are not suitable for water carrying, or not as ideal.

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thewileyone
Cause Nestle is hijacking your water

