NASA: California will run out of water in 12 months

California has all the people living in all the wrong places. L.A. and the surrounding area needs to have half the population move out. The desert is no place to house 10 million people.
 
I saw that in the news yesterday.
Fortunately I'll be out of CA by June, so there's plenty for me for now!

--Patrick
 
Farming continues to eat up most of our water. I would complain, but the Central Valley is one of the main food suppliers for the country as a whole. I don't know how to tell farmers to stop growing crops without wrecking the economy. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington have more water than they need. We should build a giant canal and buy water from those two states.

If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.
 
A while back, someone floated the idea of towing giant plastic bags full of Great Lakes water through Chicago and into the Mississippi river for all the parched southwestern states.
tmp2BA30_thumb.jpg

It didn't go so well.

--Patrick
 

Necronic

Staff member
No one really lives where they are supposed to.

LA - Desert

Houston - Swamp

New York - Island

Dallas - Dallas

New Orleans - Below Sea Level
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Farming continues to eat up most of our water. I would complain, but the Central Valley is one of the main food suppliers for the country as a whole. I don't know how to tell farmers to stop growing crops without wrecking the economy. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington have more water than they need. We should build a giant canal and buy water from those two states.

If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.
As I was scanning frequencies at lunch today, I heard that Rush Limbaugh was actually talking about this. He said that California grows pretty much all our fruits and vegetables (like 90% of our broccoli or something), and his suggestion was to build a pipeline from Canada or possibly Alaska. Melt snow and ice there, and have it run down the pipe to california's reservoirs. And so what if the pipeline leaks? It's water.

Of course, my initial worry was, what happens when the pipeline freezes.[DOUBLEPOST=1426544551,1426544455][/DOUBLEPOST]
No one really lives where they are supposed to.

LA - Desert

Houston - Swamp

New York - Island

Dallas - Dallas

New Orleans - Below Sea Level
If I'd been drinking when you said "Dallas - Dallas" it'd have come out my nose.

But another example - the Mississippi flood plane. Doesn't that shit flood and wipe everything out like once every 10 years, and we always pony up to rebuild in the exact same place?

See also - Florida - Hurricane central
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Is 12 months enough to build a working pipeline from wherever it needs to come from?
I honestly have no idea... but it's water, not a nuclear bomb. If the pipeline isn't done in 12 months, it's not like California falls into the ocean.
 
Farming continues to eat up most of our water. I would complain, but the Central Valley is one of the main food suppliers for the country as a whole. I don't know how to tell farmers to stop growing crops without wrecking the economy. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington have more water than they need. We should build a giant canal and buy water from those two states.

If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.
It might be a bit dry here in Southern OR
 
Technically, the already have plenty of THAT water. It's not quite suitable for agriculture, however. You know, water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink irrigate.
IMO that's the better solution, but it's energy-intensive. When somebody figures out a cheap way that's NOT energy-intensive to desalinate water, they'll be richer than anybody else, anywhere. Well the corp that steals the idea then sues the original inventor into oblivion will be that, but you know what I mean.


The other alternative is to just build a bunch of nuclear reactors and desalinate directly from those. Don't use it for power, just for the heat to desalinate with. And if you're worried about danger, then dump billions into Thorium research. That'll pay dividends the fastest, and should work just fine for the water problem too.

You may or may not be surprised how many problems aren't really problems with near-limitless cheap energy.
 
If California wants, they can take all the snow that the Maritimes has been getting. Melt it, do whatever you need to make it usable. JUST TAKE IT. Please?
 
If California wants, they can take all the snow that the Maritimes has been getting. Melt it, do whatever you need to make it usable. JUST TAKE IT. Please?
Seriously, we would if we could. It is horribly dry out here these days. Technically the drought is in year 3, but before having a rainy winter 4 years ago we had another drought that lasted a few years. Really, this is one looooong drought that had a short break in the middle.
 
OK, what's really funny/creep about that is that I've seen the movie, but not read it, so unless the quote is in the movie, I didn't know it, and even then it was unintentional.
I've read the graphic novel but haven't seen the movie (big surprise), and they make a point of explaining that the current status of relatively "clean" energy was only possible due to Dr. Manhattan's ability to transmute large enough quantities of lithium so that every car could be powered by lithium batteries.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Will there be a reverse Grapes of Wrath in the future? My cousins in Sacramento are trying to get out. One left for TX last year.
Well heck, 2008 saw a huge number of people leave California and an increase in new Texas residents already, just because that's where the jobs were.
 

Necronic

Staff member
Well heck, 2008 saw a huge number of people leave California and an increase in new Texas residents already, just because that's where the jobs were.
And a HUGE THANKS to all the people from CA for our new standard of housing prices.....we REALLY LOVE you bringing your completely unsustainable housing market down to Texas.
 
Well heck, 2008 saw a huge number of people leave California and an increase in new Texas residents already, just because that's where the jobs were.
THAT'S why Texas is (gradually) becoming more open to gay marriage and such. It wasn't the Texans changing their minds. It was those damn hippie Californians moving in and ruining everything!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
THAT'S why Texas is (gradually) becoming more open to gay marriage and such. It wasn't the Texans changing their minds. It was those damn hippie Californians moving in and ruining everything!
It's been my experience that it's unusual for anybody to change their minds about anything (big), once they're of an age (and I don't mean elderly).

Somebody around here has it in their signature, I think... what did it say, something to the effect of "nobody ever accepts new theories, it's just those adhering to the old theories die out while young people grow up having never known anything other than the new theories?"
 
Farming continues to eat up most of our water. I would complain, but the Central Valley is one of the main food suppliers for the country as a whole. I don't know how to tell farmers to stop growing crops without wrecking the economy. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington have more water than they need. We should build a giant canal and buy water from those two states.

If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.
I can not agree with this more. California has been buying water rights from nevada for decades (at least if what i was told while growing up holds true) and washington is a much better option. And the US wants a pipeline, give them this one. Nevada has its own drought to worry about.

No one really lives where they are supposed to.







Dallas - Dallas
Heh, this too i agree with
 

Zappit

Staff member
They may be expensive, but might desalination plants be a possible solution to this? I mean, it is a coastal state, after all.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
They may be expensive, but might desalination plants be a possible solution to this? I mean, it is a coastal state, after all.
As I understand it, most of the farming happens in the San Joaquin Valley, which for the most part has a mountain range between it and the coast, except possibly around the San Francisco area. In any case, I'm thinking that if it was THAT cheap and easy, they'd have done it already.
 
I feel like every house in Colorado should be required to have solar paneled roofs. Though there are HoAs that frown on them for being ugly. Which is dumb, and they can't actually bar you from having them.
 
There was a huge push to install solar panels here a while ago, with ridiculous tax incentives and subsidies for installing them. Turns out these things pretty much pay for themselves, so the subsidies were a bit exaggerated - people were making a profit from selling back power after 2 years, and they were promised subsidies for 20 years. The power companies were furious as well since having distributed power supply like that meant much more expensive maintenance and having to put in counters that could run both ways and whatnot, but they were legally barred from charging for the extra costs.
Now the government is trying to roll back the subsidies, but they're being challenged in court for reneging on a contract. Lovely. So the power companies have hiked up all prices for everybody, forcing those who couldn't (afford to) put in solar panels to pay for those who could/did.
Once the subsidies were lowered, the solar panel installation companies have started complaining -their business imploded, about 85% less work :p

Ahhh, lovely political decisions by people with no business sense.

Still, solar panels are a great investment in sun-drenched regions.
 
Top