The increasing lack of water in the West is having dire effects on numerous states including Utah, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Climate change and population pressures have led to shrinking water supplies that are affecting agriculture, fisheries, hydroelectric power production as well as residential water supplies. What do you do about a problem that has no great solutions?
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"Shrunk reservoirs. Depleted aquifers. Low rivers. Raging wildfires. It’s no secret that the Western U.S. is in a severe drought. New research published Monday shows just how extreme the situation has become.
The Western U.S. and northern Mexico are experiencing their driest period in at least 1,200 years, according to the new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change."
I think the best thing we could do is flood America with the rest of the world’s poverty and problems so that these existing problems become more magnified and worsens the situation for existing Americans.
I think California and Texas will have to consider nuclear desalination plants. They both have the benefit of being on salt water (the gulf for Texas and the Pacific for California).
The issue is the start up and operating costs. It’s expensive. That said, we could get advice from the Saudis. They rely on desalination more than any other country in the world with thirty years of experience relying on it.
This is at the core of it. That area simply can’t handle the population load, especially with climate change causing immense long lasting mega-droughts.
Conservatives would say just stop immigration- legal and illegal - and there is some truth to that. But the reality is that even without immigration there are over a hundred million folks in the area dependent on shrinking reservoirs, lakes and water tables.
I’ve always said that Phoenix, Arizona is the greatest middle finger ever thrown against nature. Followed very closely by New Orleans.
Those two cities are an affront to natural living conditions for humans. A monument to our hubris as a species. We think we have conquered nature. But we really haven’t and never will.
I doubt either city will be inhabited in a hundred years.
As previously suggested, a dedicated, nuclear-powered desalination plant on every coast in every coastal state. Boom. Problem solved. Water for the whole damn country. All aquifers “saved” (there’s more water inside the Earth’s crust and mantle than there ever will be in the oceans).
Hell, we’ve been cloud seeding since the early 40’s. It can rain wherever we want, whenever we want. We got in “trouble” for using it as a weapon to flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Operation Popeye).
In the Mid-Eazy, they cloud seed daily to cool off the local population. It’s used for VANITY for crying out loud!
But, FEEEEEAAAAARRRR because a puddle of water might run out!
I agree, there are solutions. The question is, are we smart enough to employ them? (Based on our inability to agree on anything, I’m leaning toward “probably not.”)
“We” are. The bigger question is, why aren’t “we”?
I don’t accept incompetence. Contrary to popular layman belief, incompetent people don’t run multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporations that literally control our most basic survival needs (well, people on public water anyway).
The solutions are decades, almost a century old technology. This BS about aquifers in danger, or “mega droughts” is just that, B ■■■■■■■ S.
Does it really matter if those states start running out of water? People will move out of the desert if it hurts economically. Aside from farmers who actually have a reason to be in the southwest, everyone else should reconsider their lifestyle.
