Never Underestimate Stupidity

[Sassy]

Never Underestimate Stupidity

A good article listing some problems but also suggesting solutions...

[benevolance]

sassy,

interesting that you pointed this article out... 2 days ago on the internet on Yahoo.. there was an article about water mismanagement being one of the largest causes for water shortages worldwide.

The article said that only 8% of the water consumed worldwide was for drinking...and that 70% was for farming.

What people don't mention is that in warm areas of the globe more water means more food per acre!

There is a sign in California on any country road put up by farmers protesting the state's allocation of water...It says...

Water feeds the nation... or something to that effect...And it is true!

I bought a truck from a guy in Bakersfield and we got to talking a few years back...He asked me about the growing season on the east coast...I told him that there were 2 cuts of hay or Grain if everything went perfect...he told me that if he could get the Water for it...he could grow 9 crops a year easily...Instead of 2...

Better water management...means doubling or tripling the amount of food produced on farms near the tropics...Which means ultimately less land needs to be used for farming everywhere else....

Which means more trees for cleaner air...More habitat for animals...More biodiversity...Less global Warming...

Look at the USA.... Los angeles is one of the largest cities in the world...They consume something ridiculous like 300 billion gallons of water a year...87% of it is pumped from the Colorado

And what of the water once we use it...It goes out to sea...Not really recycled enough it dumped to sea....In fact a lot of major cities in America just flush the drinking water out to sea...

Where as in Europe 90% of water used in the home is recycled and re-used for other things like farming

So let's play devils advocate here just with the city of Los Angeles... 90% of 300 billion gallons is 270 billion gallons...

If this water was  properly treated and pumped to nearby farmlands for use to grow food...

Which would increase the total amount of water available for irrigation by 4%...This may not seem like much...But it is! The relationship between water applied to land and the amount of food grown is not 1:1 it is much greater....a 4% increase in water applied to land should allow a 8-10% increase in yield of food grown on that land.

And this is just one city folks....

Want to talk of stupidity...America spends trillions yearly on military budgets...They are currently building even more devastating nukes that are smaller, faster and more potent...(being able to blow up the world 8 times over is not enough)

Spending 1/10th of the military budget on recycling the nations water.. preventing it from being pumped out to sea and entering it back into the water table would allow for massive increases in Food output...It would easily pay to do this as doubling the nations food output would increase the Domestic product and allow for narrowing of the massive trade deficits..More jobs... more income for american farmers...It is an absolute win-win!

I suspect that San Diego and San Fran's water could also be recycled and diverted towards local farms where it would greatly increase local yields...

The funny thing is that California relies almost entirely on the Colorado River...When it has 840 miles of coastline with access to abundant clean salt water for desalinization.

All across the rest of the globe mass scaled desalinization plants create drinkable water for about the same cost as farmers pay for crop water...

meaning that simply investing in and building de-salinization plants in California would allow the water table to be replenished....and it would allow for further increases in irrigation for farmers...

Or heck  even allow for other states that have no ocean access to use the colorado river water for irrigation ....States like Arizona and Nevada..both are desperately thirsty for irrigation water for their farmers and the cities of Vegas and Phoenix.

Talk about the genius of stupidity....It makes more sense to the Government to build nukes than it does to build and improve the water infrastructure that would feed the world...Employ millions and generate massive amounts of Exports for the American Economy.

[benevolance]

You know I got to thinking about it and the amount of drinking water on land is very small...Something like 3% of all the water on the planet...

If we kept recycling our waste water and entered it back into the groundwater...And added the massive amounts of water we could get from desalinization it would not be hard at all to greatly increase the amount of freshwater there is on the planet...

For all the talk of massive droughts and rising sea levels... replenishing the  water table worldwide would go a long ways towards combating global warming and rising sea levels.

[glenn-k]

Carmel is talking of desalinization as we speak however as usual funds mismanagement and private industry doubling their prices ahead of the project has the people fighting it already.

[Sassy]

Benevolance, you are too logical & practical   - now why would our gov't want to do something that would make total sense when it's controllers (ie central banks -read... Federal Reserve owned by international bankers) can make so much more $$$$ supporting all sides of the wars throughout the earth?  And another thing, [highlight]water[/highlight] is BIG BUSINESS now, it's the hot new commodity to invest in!  Besides, why would our big corporate farms want to grow more food when so many are being subsidized to not grow???  

Just wondering...  

PS I am in full support of the "little" farmer who cares about his land & uses wise & prudent farming practices because the 10, 50, 100, 200 acres is all he has & he can barely make it on that...  I had lots of relatives in Minnisota & Nebraska who were farmers.  In Nebraska, the farmer relies on the rain, on the whole, for irrigating his crops... IIRC 15-20 years ago, I had several uncles/cousins who lost a lot of their land - had to sell at loss due to a drought.  My dad & brother have about a 100 acres in almonds in California - they don't get any subsidies, my brother farms the place & works hard keeping it going.  

So what is the solution, Benevolance?  I wonder if, now that water management is becoming "big business" & profitable, that we'll see more innovative uses/harvesting of water?  In a truly free market, that is how it should work - someone sees a need, works to fulfill that need & we have a solution... but when there are large controlling interests behind the scenes, it doesn't always work quite like that...   :-/

[benevolance]

Sassy

I know because I spent some time researching this a few years ago....But the large scale water plants being built in Saudi and Israel have proven it can be as cheap as what farmers in California are currently paying for water from a company like "Rain for Rent"..I am talking about Desalinization.

The good thing about free Market is that it will drive innovation and cost efficiency...If we just let the government build the water infrastructure they will Fuddle it up (trying to keep it clean for you and glenn   )...A joint venture where private firms bid on and compete for contracts to build recycling plants of sewage and waste water from urban cities in California...would ensure that residents get cost effective treatment of their water...

granola eating tree huggers should love the fact that the water is being properly recycled...Farmers should love the fact that there would be 10% more water for growing crops...The water table should be able to recover and places like the Sargasso Sea might actually become viable lakes again in California instead of polluted lifeless salt ponds.

As population grows and water becomes more valueable the changes I am talking about will become a necessity anyways....Vision, Insight and investment now will get California ahead of the Curve and enable them to sustain a healthy eco system.

Did you know that the High tech Water desalinization plant in Ashkelon in Israel makes 3.8 Trillion Gallons of water per year....Which is 40% of all the water used for Crop irrigation in California....This is 10 times the water that Los Angeles Pumps from the Colorado River each year!

The plant cost 250 million dollars...Which is nothing when you consider it cost something stupid like 50 million a day to be in Iraq...A couple weeks of Iraq war equals 3-4 of these plants...Which would ultimately triple the amount of food grown in California...Allow for the local lakes and rivers to replenish themselves as they have been killed off with irrigations demands...Allow for the  water table in California to replenish itself...People drilling wells 5-600 feet deep.. and it gets worse all the time.

It would allow the Colorado River water to go to maybe Nevada and Arizona..Which would boost their Economies...Create massive employment...Allow them to turn huge tracts of useless desert barren land into an oasis where they could grow orchards, and plant crops..Not to mention cities like Phoenix and Vegas who are on strict water conservation to be able to keep growing.

The other thing I see Arizona Doing is building a couple huge scale plants in Mexico on the Coast.. and building a short pipeline  to Phoenix and into the Valley....It is something like 20 miles across Mexico to the gulf of california and the ocean....A couple of pipelines and there is unlimited potential for Desalinization and irrigation. I expect Mexico would embrace this sort of thing...It would create a lot of Jobs in Mexico to operate the plant  and to maintain the pipeline and they would get some sort of royalty for the water being pumped

I expect this to get done...No places are growing faster than Nevada and Arizona...Water is big business...It is like Oil in that currently we have to have it and there is no other product out there that can take it's place.

In the last 40 years California has tripled the amount of food and crops it grows because of irrigation... 7% of the jobs in California come from Farming and 11% of the total gross national product! This is a staggering amount folks.

Ask any california farmer and he will instantly tell you that giving him more water means he can grow twice as much!....

Air quality has always been a huge issue in California...The more land that is covered with Orchards and Fruit trees the cleaner the air...It is a simple fact

They finally have got car pollution to a minimum...Alternative engine types and fuels have been reducing emissions to microscopic levels compared to 40 years ago....The air is getting cleaner... There is no reason not to start looking at the water...

Ocean ecologists would embrace better water recycling... which would mean drastic reduction in pollution....Which would make all the fishermen happy as well.

We have the technology to grow new human organs...and to fly to other planets in the solar system.. yet we lag on simple important things like Cleaning up our water....And building water infrastructure for our farmers and environment.

Maybe I am too practical...I just thought the sheer demand for the water would force these things to happen....It almost makes so much sense that it has to happen...For the betterment of all mankind

Smart investors will build pipelines and Desalinization plants...They are cheap to build for the profit potential they provide

[benevolance]

I spent some time reading more on the Israel plant ..They can desalinize water very cheaply there....It costs 50 cents to make 1000 litres of pure clean water...Which is 3800 gallons..This is 0.00013 cents a gallon...Less than farmers currently pay rain for rent...A lot less than LA residents are paying for their water as well.

Insanity comes to mind when someone argues against building this type of infrastructure....

[Sassy]

Are you talking about making our weapons into plowshares, the sheep lying down with the lion & ushering in the millennium?  Sounds good to me!  

PS It's obvious you've done a lot of research on this - and it makes so much sense - why aren't all the "greenies" jumping on the bandwagon or am I just not aware that they are?  

[benevolance]

Sassy

I am not sure exactly...Maybe they just need to have a cause...Maybe they are like  unions the Naacp and the women's liberation movement...No matter how much progress has been made and how amazingly close we get to equality they will never lay down and take to something else...The cause is all that they have.

You know the line of thinking where it is a lot easier to dismiss or down someone else than actually coming up with an idea of your own that will improve things!!!!

Which is what a lot of equal rights groups advocate....99% of them are all hippocrits because they would impliment actions which would not be tolerated if they came from the majority or those who they oppose...

There have been very few true leaders for change...Martin Luther King was one...He said that you have to love everyone...Even your enemies...Even if they hate you....Hate does not heal hate...Only love heals hate...

And they shot him the first chance they got...

I imagine that some military war machine corp would want you and I dead if we had the power to divert even 10% of military spending on things like securing a clean renewable water supply for the next 100 years and beyond...

Ditto for clean pollution free renewable energy...Mr Oil would not look at you favourably if say you pushed for a solar power plant like the one being built in Australia that can produce enough power for 200,000 homes...

Work out the details to have 50 of them built in the desert outside of  San Fran, San Diego, Los Angeles Vegas, Phoenix...and I imagine a lot of people involved with coal and oil would be  sticking pins in voodoo dolls that looked an awful lot like you.

Nevermind that you would be producing enough clean pollution free energy to power these states for the next century...Nevermind that they could stop using coal fired generators and truly achieve real emission controls...Global warming, greenhouse gas... smog, acid rain...All eliminated in one fell swoop...

Of course it would take a generation of clean air practices before the smog and Acid rain went away.. but they would go away...

It costs 670 million dollars to build a 200 MW pollution free solar tower...And it costs 600 million to build a 200 MW coal power plant...So the cost to build is not much different...There is no fuel for the solar tower...Just let it work...it works day and night and even in the rain...Producing power

Each solar tower would reduce carbon emissions by 920,000 tonnes per year.

But yeah it just makes so much more sense to gather to march, wave banners and flags.. chant sing smoke dope and wear burlap than to pol their resources together to get a solar plant built....

It would only take one in America...get one built in California...When consumers saw it lowered the cost of electricity...Produced no pollution...was cheaper to maintain than conventional power....They would demand 50-100 of them be built in Texas west to California to power the southwest.

Mr Oil would and will do everything he can to stop this sort of thing from being built...Ditto for Mr Nucular and coal....

I could go on, but I think I hear black helicopters.. time to scoot

[Amanda_931]

Irrigating does have its problems.

It is what turned Iraq from something very like the Garden of Eden into a salt-laden desert.  I think parts of this country are and/or are headed that way now.  See--either or both--Diamond's Collapse or the much earlier Ponting Green History of the Earth.

And if it's done the cheap and dirty way--running water into the air at noon even in a humid area like ours will waste a lot of the water, without helping salinization issues.  I don't think we've gotten the trickle irrigation systems up for any size of commercial projects yet.

Might also check out the status of the Ogalalla aquifer.

Not as many places with the water level rising 40 feet as falling, it looks like.  And this is from ten years ago.



From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

[Sassy]

Don't we now have huge dead zones down in the Mississippi delta from all the salts that run off of irrigation water (commercial fertilizers & herbacides)...   http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/general.html  I guess there now are areas around the world like this...  :-/

[benevolance]

Amanda

The ogallala Resevoir has been in trouble for a long time...They are starting to put heavy restrictions on the amount of water that farmers can draw from it...

I agree that Salt levels need to be kept in check...This is why Desalinization is so important..

Irrigation from Desalinization means salt free water being used for crops...Traditionally in the western USA they have used the Colorado River water...And it has a higher than average salinity which over time builds up to cause problems...

Combining  the river water with salt free water is a better way to keep the Salinity levels in check.

Another promising development is the use of genetically altered plants that can grow and feed on the salt...Combine salt marsh grass with wheat to get a plant that can grow in higher salinity.

People forget that from Nebraska to The gulf in Texas...East of the rockies is not viablie  commercial farmland without irrigation for the most part

I think that we are going to see massive irrigation from Canada to the dakotas  montana and plains....Manitoba has more water than you can ever imagine...Lake Wiinpegosis, Manitoba and winnipeg are massive...The whole province is mostly water... The smaller of the three lakes is 2,000 square miles and lake winnipeg is 9500 square miles...Which makes it larger than three of the great lakes.

What is even better about their potential for irrigation for the USA is that they drain into Hudson's bay....I know tree eating burlap wearing hippies would pitch a fit...But even the smallest of dams would allow the water to flow south to the barren us states, instead of out to sea via the hudson...

Water is going to be become precious enough that the plains of the usa will not be able to sustain high yields without that water.....Canada will benefit greatly from a pipeline selling water to the USA...The value of the water is going to double and then double again....And the best part of it is that Canada in Manitoba has a unlimited supply to send to the thirsty states.

For those that say this is a a huge pipedream....Ask yourself how many of us would habe believed that bottled water costing a buck a bottle would exist today...25 years ago....People would have said you were insane!

The farmers in the USA will gladly pay to get the water....It means doubling and tripling their crop yields and it even means that they can grow other trypes of crops.

For example...Corn is in Demand as Ethanol is Sexy right now....Well Corn takes more water than a lot of the crops currently being grown...and water scarcity is preventing many farmers from even attempting to try and grow corn... But there is twice the money in growing corn as opposed to some other crops....So yes the Farmers are willing to pay to get the water.

Insight and investment in our futures is what is needed....Building infrastructure now that will serve us for the next couple hundred years.

okay sorry, end of rant