Phoenix Arizona Fresh Water Supply vs Mars City Fresh Water Supply

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-10 14:47:59

This post is about the Great Salt Lake. We have a number of posts about the Great Salt Lake, and there may even be a topic dedicated to it, but I'll drop off the post here to get it started.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/plan-sa … 48624.html

The article at the link above is written in a breezy style. It appears to contain updates on progress toward a pipeline to bring sea water to the Great Salt Lake from the Pacific Ocean.

I'm glad to see that a few people have taken this (to me quite reasonable idea) seriously.

Bill Gifford
Tue, May 9, 2023 at 8:00 AM EDT
This article originally appeared on Outside
Out in Utah's barren West Desert, past the hazardous-waste landfill and the military bombing range, on the far side of the Great Salt Lake, sits a silent, mysterious structure that will make a great ruin someday. Scratch that: it already is one.
The three-story industrial building was hastily erected in the late 1980s, at a cost of $60 million, to house a pumping station with an urgent task: to suck water out of the Great Salt Lake and spew it into the desert flats farther west. The lake was then at record-high levels, threatening to flood railway lines, interstate highways, and farmland. The pumps were in operation for about two years before nature took over and the lake receded on its own.
More than three decades later, the Great Salt Lake has the opposite problem--too little water. Twenty years into a once-in-a-millennium drought, exacerbated by the effects of climate change, the lake level has declined to record lows. Marinas have closed, migratory birds are struggling, and high winds whip up massive dust clouds.
In January, a group of scientists and environmentalists warned that what was once the largest lake in the West could disappear completely in as little as five years. "Examples from around the world show that saline lake loss triggers a long-term cycle of environmental, health, and economic suffering," they wrote in a report. "We are in an all-hands-on-deck emergency."
Translation: shit is getting real. How real? Even Republicans recognize that we have to do something to save the lake--that's how real.
The Great Salt Lake crisis has spurred a novel and extreme idea: Why not build a pipeline to bring in water from the ocean to revive and replenish it?
The concept sounds like something dreamed up by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, but it seems to have originated with the Utah legislature's powerful Water Development Commission, which placed the pipeline idea on its annual agenda last May. "There's a lot of water in the ocean, and we have very little in the Great Salt Lake," noted commission chair David Hinkins.
Environmentalists were urgently dismissive; the Salt Lake Tribune called it a "loony idea." But the loony idea persisted. In December, President Biden signed a bill that will provide $5 million per year in federal money to study possible ways to resurrect the Great Salt Lake and dozens of other saline lakes in the West. One option is the aforementioned ocean pipeline. "We must do whatever is necessary to save [the Great Salt Lake]," said Utah senator Mitt Romney, who sponsored the bill.
Which raises an urgent question: What is going to be necessary to enable us to survive climate change? And how much of that are we actually willing to do?
"My oil and gas friends tell me we build oil and gas pipelines all the time," Romney told me by phone, "and water is more important than that."
But the water pipeline is a much bigger deal than an oil or gas pipeline.
The problem, or set of problems, is not only relevant to the American West. Other places are preparing to spend boatloads of money to mitigate the effects of further climate change. New York State has budgeted $52 billion to armor its pricey coastal real estate against rising sea levels and ever stronger storms. Israel is exploring ways to deliver water from the Mediterranean to its own dying saline lake, the Dead Sea. Scientists in the Netherlands and elsewhere are developing salt-tolerant potatoes and other food crops that are less reliant on fresh water.
To climate scientists, Great Salt Lake and its basin, including the greater Salt Lake City area and famous ski resorts like Park City and Snowbird, offer a perfect little case study in doomsday planning, because the region is a largely self-contained water system. Snow falls on the surrounding mountains in winter, accumulating into a high-elevation snowpack that can measure 20 feet deep. When the snow melts in late spring, the runoff flows down via creeks and rivers into Great Salt Lake, raising its water level. As the summer wears on, a great deal of that water evaporates, and the lake level goes back down. (The water leaches salts and minerals from the soil as it runs down from the mountains, but none of the water flows out to other places, or to the ocean, which is why the lake is salty.)

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SpaceNut · 2023-05-10 17:58:24

With the high levels of rain and snow the big push is slowed as a result that draught condition have waned.

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-10 18:03:26

For SpaceNut re #377

It might be worth investigating a bit to find out where conditions have eased. The report in #376 seems to be taking the longer view. A single episode of departure from the trend line does not change the basic problem. There is not enough water flowing into the Great Salt Lake to keep it going.

Update:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/16/us/great … index.html

To reverse the decline, the Great Salt Lake needs an additional 1 million acre-feet of water – roughly 326 billion gallons – per year, according to the January assessment.
Bonnie Baxter, the director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College and one of the authors of the January report, said the state would “need another five years like this in order to get the system healthy again.”
“If I do the math, we got about three feet of direct precipitation that fell into the lake this year, that is fantastic,” Baxter told CNN. “But the last two years, we also lost 2.8 feet in the summer, and we expect to lose that three feet in the desiccating summer. So now, we’re pretty much even, and that’s not a good place to be.”

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Steve Stewart · 2023-06-10 20:37:20

There is a new podcast from NPR called "Thirst Gap: Learning to live with less on the Colorado River". Using the link below, I downloaded the 6 episodes as MP3 files and have been listening to them while I mow or during my commute to work. I've not listened to all of it yet, just the trailer and the first 3 episodes. It has a lot of good information as to the history of the Colorado River Compact of 1922, how the water was allocated, and how climate change has caused it to rain more and snow less, and that rain is harder for the Colorado river to capture than snow. Below is a link to all 6 episodes, which combined is about 3 hours long.

Thirst Gap: Learning to live with less on the Colorado River

Trailer: Thirst Gap
2 min 45 sec
...the Colorado River Compact — turned 100 years old in 2022. The anniversary was a somber one. Climate change is putting the compact's most basic tenets to the ultimate test. The agreement's fantastical promises, of an arid region flush with enough water to build massive cities and sprawling farms, have left the region's key water source drained. Climate change is warming parts of the basin faster than any other reach of the U.S. If the first 100 years of river management represent an attempt to ring every drop from the river for human use, the next 100 years will bring a heavy dose of reality.

Part 1: Wishing Up A River
26 min 12 sec
The Colorado River's current crisis traces its roots back to 1922. That's when leaders from the rapidly-growing southwestern states that rely on the river traveled to a swanky Santa Fe mountain retreat to divvy up the river's water. Growing populations in some of the West's burgeoning cities and sprawling farmlands, and the anxieties tied to that growth, pushed leaders to the negotiating table. The Colorado River Compact was the result of those talks. This attempt to manage the dynamic river system was fraught from the very beginning.

Part 2: Cash Flows
26 min 09 sec
Farmers and ranchers use the vast majority of the Colorado River's water. Getting them to voluntarily use less is difficult. The West's water rights system incentivizes farmers to use all of their water to prevent their rights from losing value. Trying to balance the region's water supply and demand will require farmers to use less.

Part 3: The Big Empty
26 min 12 sec
Lake Powell is a boater's dream. The nation's second largest reservoir on the Colorado River is a maze of sandstone canyons teeming with houseboats. But climate change and unchecked demand for water sent the lake's levels to a new record low this year. In this episode we explore changes to recreation in this popular vacation hotspot.

Part 4: A Crackdown in Sin City
26 min 09 sec
Las Vegas is known as a city of excess. But not when it comes to water. The desert metropolis relies on the Colorado River to keep its iconic casinos bustling. The short supply has caused city leaders to enforce some of the tightest water conservation measures in the West.

Part 5: First in Time
26 min 13 sec
Tribes in the southwest hold significant rights to the Colorado River's water. But they've been left out of nearly every major agreement to manage the river. Leaders across the region are debating how to use less water amid the region's warming climate. Tribes say they never got the chance to use their water in the first place, and that everyone in the river basin should plan for a future where they do. This episode features interviews with Leila Help-Tulley, and her daughter, Crystal Tulley-Cordova, principal hydrologist with the Navajo Nation. Also, a conversation with Roland Tso, a grazing official with the community of Many Farms. We also hear oral arguments from a March 2023 Supreme Court hearing on Arizona v. the Navajo Nation.

Part 6: Where the River Ends
26 min 14 sec
The Colorado River comes to an end at the U.S.-Mexico border. The entirety of its flow, already heavily tapped upstream in the U.S., is sent into an irrigation canal to grow crops in the Mexicali Valley and to flow through faucets in Tijuana and Mexicali. The river's final hundred miles have been mostly dry for decades. Environmental groups on both sides of the border are working together to let the Colorado flow again in its historic channel.

tahanson43206 · 2023-07-03 18:26:25

For Steve Stewart re #379

Thanks for the link to the NPR series!

***
This post is inspired by a report about research that led to a surprising discovery .... nanotechnology is still an infant field, and new discoveries are happening all the time. In this case, the researchers appear to have found a way to snag water molecules from the air without cooling the air. In fact, if I understand the article correctly, the process may even generate minute amounts of electricity, in a manner similar to how Nature produces lightning, but without all the drama.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-a … 21510.html

NextShark
Scientists accidentally turn humid air into clean energy
7
Carl Samson
Mon, July 3, 2023, 5:32 PM EDT
[Source]
A research team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has successfully generated energy out of thin air.
How it started: The team first discovered the possibility in 2018 while working on a sensor for air humidity.
Senior author Jun Yao told the Guardian that it all started when a student forgot to plug in the sensor’s power. Afterward, they realized that the sensor — which was made of nanowires — produced electrical signals nonetheless. They learned that each nanowire allowed for an airborne water molecule to enter, and each “bump” it made inside resulted in a small charge.
Their latest finding: The team has since worked to develop their discovery. In 2020, Yao and another co-author, Derek Lovley, reported that electricity could be continuously harvested from the air using a specialized material made of protein nanowires grown from a bacterium called Geobacter sulfurreducens.
More from NextShark: Top high school in US discriminated against Asian American applicants, judge rules
In their latest study published in the journal Advanced Materials last month, Yao and his team — including lead author Xiaomeng Liu, Hongyan Gao and Lu Sun — reported that nearly any material can be used for the same purpose as long as they are dotted with “nanopores.” These are holes with a diameter of less than 100 nanometers, or as Yao puts it, “less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.”
How it works: The result is essentially a battery. Because the pores are so small, water molecules harvested from the air bump into their edge. The upper part of the harvester then becomes concentrated with more charged molecules than its lower part. An imbalance is created, akin to clouds capable of producing lightning.
The bigger picture: The findings present the possibility for a future that derives clean energy from anywhere — as long as there’s humidity. Harvesters can be made from almost anything and can be tailored for different environments.
More from NextShark: The Philippines wins its first World Universities Debating Championship title
“This is very exciting,” lead author Liu said in a statement. “We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”
Enjoy this content? Read more from NextShark!

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SpaceNut · 2023-07-04 15:25:06

For those that like rain we have had 4 basic days of intermittent heavy down fall that at this point are not soaking into the ground but rather running off causing near flood conditions to occur in some places as the water levels rise.

tahanson43206 · 2023-07-30 19:06:40

This article has a Phoenix connection ....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/shortage-cul … 00689.html

Shortage of cult-classic kitchen staple continues amid severe droughts: ‘Unless there is rain, there won’t be a crop’
Jeremiah Budin
Sun, July 30, 2023 at 7:00 AM EDT
Huy Fong Food, the California-based maker of the beloved Sriracha hot sauce, has been forced to scale back production due to a scarcity of chili peppers — red jalapeños, in particular — due to persisting droughts in northern Mexico, the Guardian reported.
“Normally the pepper is grown by irrigation,” Paul Gepts, a crop researcher at the University of California, Davis, told the outlet. “But the supply of water has been decreasing and if you don’t have a certain minimum amount of water to irrigate your crops, unless there is rain, there won’t be a crop.”
In addition to the droughts, there is a depleted water supply in the Colorado River, which supplies water to much of the Western United States and has been drastically overused for years, leading to the river and surrounding groundwaters drying up. In response, Arizona has stopped approving building permits for new single-family homes that rely on the wells in Maricopa County.
Pollution caused by burning dirty energy sources like gas, coal, and oil to power our infrastructure has caused our planet to overheat, leading to more intense extreme weather events that wreak havoc on our communities.
Sometimes, the effects of our changing climate appear in unexpected places, as in the case of the Sriracha shortage, which has gotten dire enough that bottles of the cult-favorite hot sauce are now appearing on the secondary market. The Guardian found bottles of Sriracha listed on Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist for as much as $120, turning the product from a kitchen staple to a collector’s item.
The droughts in northern Mexico are consistent with the environmental science axiom “dry gets drier, [as the] wet gets wetter,” which means that as our climate changes, areas will experience even more extreme versions of the climates they already have.
In this case, we see a dry climate experiencing extreme drought, resulting in a shortage of a beloved food product.
Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more, waste less, and help yourself while helping the planet.

The Phoenix connection is that there is a proposal on the table to make fresh water from Sea of Cortez water.

it appears that peppers might be a candidate crop for artificial water supply.

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tahanson43206 · 2023-12-17 12:05:36

It is December of 2023 ... the most recent post in this topic was in July, and the theme was learning to live with less water.

This post is a brief summary of correspondence with our contact in Phoenix ...

it appears that farmers are moving toward using there land for solar panels.

I strikes me that this is a sensible decision for a land owner in an arid region with little or no prospect for fresh water in future.

Not long ago kbd512 commented on a quote of Elon Musk... as I remember the quote, Musk was estimating that a square of land 100 miles on a side would power the entire United States ... that would be an area of 10,000 square miles.

I asked Google for the area of Arizona:

About 57,700,000 results (0.48 seconds)
113,623.1 square miles
Arizona has a land area of 113,623.1 square miles and a water area of 331.8 square miles. It is the 6th largest state by area.

So Arizona farmers could meet that 10,000 square mile target all by themselves.

In a recent post, Void showed us a link to a video about mass production of solar panels in China.

It would appear there might be supply coming online that could meet a target of 100,000 square miles.

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SpaceNut · 2024-01-15 18:33:44

Lake Mead Water Levels Change at Rate Not Seen in Years

AA1n0EGx.img?w=768&h=507&m=6

The El Niño climate pattern has caused several winter storms to dump rain on the Southwest, but typically most of Lake Mead's rise occurs in the spring as snow melts upstream and then flows down the Colorado River to supplement the lake. It's unclear if the lake's recent increase is because of water release from Lake Powell or because of the winter storms.

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-15 07:45:54

The need for fresh water for Phoenix, Arizona has not gone away. It has just faded from day-to-day focus.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/next-round-p … 03249.html

AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Opinion
The next 'Phoenix is running out of water' stories will be worse. Let's stop them
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
Updated Tue, August 13, 2024 at 11:04 AM EDT·4 min read
121

The author of this opinion piece describes the political situation in terms that will be familiar to NewMars readers. Short term thinking to make quick profits is the province of one particular group, while long term thinking for the benefit of the entire community is the province of another group.

Absolutely no one appears to be thinking about the obvious solution, which is to harness nuclear power to make fresh water from sea water.

This topic contains plenty of posts about the advantages of pulling sea water from the Gulf of Mexico using nuclear power, and there are posts that report on the challenges. Arizona completed a study done in cooperation with the Nation of Mexico to consider a desalination facility in Mexico, but nothing came of it. That proposal did not include the nuclear power element.

Subsequently there was a proposal offered by an Israeli company, but that offer is off the table due to the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East, in addition to opposition in Arizona.

The entire subject ** should ** be of intense interest to those who are thinking about setting up shop on Mars. The water supply problems that Phoenix is facing and will be facing are NOTHING compared to the challenges humans will face on Mars.

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JoshNH4H · 2024-08-20 14:59:15

The water situation in Arizona is like the one on Mars in that they're both dry places, but otherwise they don't have much in common.

From https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts:

Here's where Arizona gets its water:

And here's how they use their water:

Some of these points are going to come across as obvious but the implications are significant. There are major differences between Arizona and Mars here.

Looking at sources, Arizona's water comes from rivers and groundwater. Reclaimed water is a very small fraction of the whole, which is to say that water is used once, then lost. Though not truly lost, since it remains on the planet. Even in dry places like Arizona, the water supply is basically an open system. On Mars, water is best understood to be a kind of mineral, it's something you mine, maybe like the image below (from Copilot AI). This makes it more valuable, something worth recycling. And recycling will be easier, because things will be more closed off.

F80NxflXIAAenoW?format=jpg&name=medium

Looking at Arizona water use, in reverse order, the lion's share goes to agriculture. The State is a bit circumspect on which crops this goes to, but an investigation into the acreage dedicated to each crop indicates that about 2/3 of this total (half of the total water usage) goes to cattle feed, the rest to food directly eaten by humans. Given that animal husbandry is an inefficient use of water and land, major gains in food production per gallon are available with a shift from beef to basically any other kind of food (vegan, vegetarian, or poultry).

In any case this is less relevant on Mars, because agriculture necessarily has to happen indoors in a sealed environment. The water isn't lost. Most likely it will just condense up against the walls and be reused or be taken out of the air by a dehumidifier in the life support unit. Unlike Earth, it's always going to make sense on Mars to recycle graywater and brownwater, because it'll still be purer and warmer than having to mine it new. There will still be some leak rate, but unlike on Earth where that "leak rate" is nearly 100% it'll be maybe a couple percent or less. (Animal husbandry is still probably going to be prohibitively expensive based on the space and caloric inefficiency of livestock).

Next is municipal: Homes, businesses, parks, government. The biggest use here is lawns, personal, commercial (golf courses), and public (parks, schools, etc). Those will not exist on Mars (whose built environment will be more comparable to Manhattan in density and certainly not suburban in character like the population-weighted average in Arizona). Human washwater, drinking water, cooking water, etc, is a smaller but obviously very important fraction. In any case on Mars this water is very likely to be recycled at very high rates, like agricultural water.

The last category is industry. Water in this category is used for mining and cooling, including cooling of power plants. Liquid CO2 might be used in some cases. It's easier to get in some ways since it's just compressed air but the high pressure (and therefore energy) required to produce it might mean it's not worth doing. On the other hand, the energy needed to freeze it out of the air is lower (followed by pressurization via melting--still with an energy cost), so it might be the preferred industrial solvent. There's no way around water for some things though. Mostly that will be recyclable but there are going to be industrial uses that produce non-reusable water.

I would not describe Arizona as an especially industrial state overall, and for Mars industry is unavoidably necessary.

Thermoelectric power plants are an interesting issue. On Mars, that means nuclear (or maybe solar utilizing fields of mirrors). It's a matter of dispute whether nuclear or solar is best overall, but I want to skirt that to talk through the cooling issue. How do you reject, say, 100MW of heat? Mostly I've heard it said to use radiators like the hard vacuum, but those are for packaged designs sent from Earth. That's definitely possible and consumes no water. We don't do that on Earth though because dumping the heat into a river or (more relevantly) using a big cooling tower that dumps heat via evaporation of water is cheaper and easier. Boiling water absorbs 2.2 MJ/kg, so 100 MW of heat (maybe 2500 people?) will take 50 kg per second of water (4500 tonnes per Martian day).

As a thought experiment, consider using a nuclear reactor to generate electricity to produce H2/LOX propellant. Obviously the water used for propellant is lost. But let's say it takes 20 MJ/kg of electricity to generate that (some inefficiency losses) and 20 MJ/kg takes 60-80 MJ of heat: For every kg of propellant, you lose about 30-40 kg of water to your cooling tower. That water is inherently nonrecoverable. Maybe that's fine. Maybe it's not--we wouldn't waste other mined products that way.

For reference, assuming perfect emissivity, at 0C you'll reject ~300 W/m2: 33,333 m^2/182 x 182m for 100MWt. At 50C, 600 W/m2: 16,667 m^2/129 x 129m. At 100C, 1100 W/m2: 9090 m^2/95 x 95m. Less area than you'd need in solar panels and easier to build (ignoring the nuclear reactor the radiators are attached to which is just a different kind of thing). You can also imagine a system where something like an evaporative cooling tower is serving as a simpler version of a radiator, moving heat from a point source to the metal walls of a pressure vessel (this might sacrifice efficiency for cost).

Rockets, even those using methane, will also be big water-wasting machines. Vehicles too where they use meth-lox or similar. Unavoidable.

Otherwise, there's a concept of "embodied water": It'll take some number of kilograms per person to build out structure and infrastructure, that water being found both as the liquid circulating within and in other ways: Water contained in concrete, water lost in the making of the things the habitat is made from, in addition to the flow into and through the habitat. When the population is growing, as you'd hope it would, it's likely that much of the water will go towards these "embodied water" needs.

In summary, water on Mars is going to be more expensive than Arizona, driving demand for much higher recycling rates, a difference in quantity becoming a difference in kind. But this recycling will for the most part be made easier by the way we respond to other challenges on Mars, namely by the need for self-contained pressurized structures.

As far as Arizona goes, yes the state is dry. Direct human needs are so high-value and low-quantity that desalination is economically viable. This may also be the case for some forms of agriculture (Might not be though! Depends on the alternatives, since food production *has* to be viable in aggregate), but other forms--namely beef--produce such little value per gallon of water that they are not viable if forced to pay the true market value of the water they consume. They may be able to buy water rights in the Colorado from California by paying California to build out their desalination infrastructure (Water is fungible!) and further conservation efforts.

Last edited by JoshNH4H (2024-08-20 15:59:34)

kbd512 · 2024-08-20 17:15:03

All the golf courses in Arizona use about 6,842,871,000 gallons of fresh water per year. All 960,000 cows in Arizona consume about 1 gallon per 100lbs of body weight per day. If each cow weighs about 1,200lbs, then it consumes about 12 gallons of water per day. That's 4,204,800,000 gallons of fresh water per year. If we're strictly fixated on what we think is necessary, feeding people is a much higher priority than entertainment or aesthetics.

In the 1970s, we required about 140 million head of cattle to feed everyone. In the 2020s, we feed many more people using only 90 million head of cattle. That's a fairly healthy efficiency boost.

Speaking of the true market value of water, Arizona grows a lot of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Their chief cash crop is pecans, and all nut-bearing trees consume an inordinate amount of water, relative to the total production yield, so the idea that a vegan lifestyle consumes less water doesn't appear to hold water in a desert environment. Incidentally, California does also grows a lot of nut-bearing trees, especially pistachios and almonds, and to such an absurd degree that they frequently run short of fresh water for human consumption. Almond trees are well known for guzzling down water. That said, who wants a chocolate bar without peanuts / almonds / pecans? Such people must be even nuttier than Californians.

Anyway...

22 million pounds of pecans produced $55M in total revenue, back in 2016.

(960,000 cows * 800lbs) / 2 = 384 million pounds of meat and related products
This would be saleable meat and organ products (liver, stomach, tongue, etc), minus the bones, leather hides, which make shoes, belts, and clothing. I'm guessing that the hide makes each cow even more valuable due to all the products which use leather.

Live cattle prices from 2016 ranged between $55/cwt and $166/cwt, so if half the herd is slaughtered each year...

(480,000 cattle * 1,200lbs of body weight * $55/cwt) / 100 = $316,800,000

Even if only 1/3rd of the herd was slaughtered every year, it's still twice as valuable as the pecan crop for providing protein.

Pecan is 9.17g of protein per 100g of product.
Beef is 26g of protein per 100g of product.

Young pecan trees consume 150 to 250 gallons of water per day, although it doesn't have to be potable water.

I'm not suggesting we stop eating pecans or cows. After all, pecan pie is a perfectly good desert to wash down a good steak. Nuts are a decent alternative source of protein for people who don't want to eat meat, at the cost of consuming a lot more water. It's not a major problem, though, because Earth recycles water for us, just as it always has.

We should probably be more honest about how much food / water / land resources are truly required to feed each person an enjoyable meal when they opt for a vegan or vegetarian vs omnivore diet, as well as how much fresh water and other resources different types of foods actually consume. People who believe there's no acceptable balance between what they want and what other people want are generally not impartial judges. I'm perfectly happy to allow vegans to eat 100% nut diets, if they feel that works the best for them. As long as they get to eat what they want, so too do the rest of us who are not vegans.

SpaceNut · 2024-08-20 17:41:31

Most treated sewage has the water outlet somewhere down stream of any inlet for use. That said it ends up mostly in the ocean. Which includes drainage water as well from roadways.

JoshNH4H · 2024-08-20 21:18:32

kbd—

The thing about the water consumption of animal husbandry is that the water consumption doesn't come from thirsty cows but from thirsty alfalfa, which feeds the cows. My rough numbers suggest the crops grown to feed animals consume about 1000 billion gallons of water per year in Arizona (vs 4 billion in direct drinking water per your estimate). This obviously has a large effect on the value per gallon of the product.

I'm no friend to golf courses either, but their water consumption isn't on par, so to speak, with animal feed. I do think it's asking much less of someone to say they should give up golf than beef, though.

As far as Earth goes, I do think you could make an argument on paper for giving up beef. But the fact that you can do it on paper doesn't matter when you're looking at the culture of the US and the economic and political power of ranchers.

Instead, what I'd recommend in the medium and long term for Arizona is what I said above: Buy as much as you can afford of the water rights to the Colorado River water off of California by paying for their desalination systems.

Meanwhile, ensure the water you have and use isn't wasted by putting a price on it. Part of the reason water is such a problem in the dry states out West is that water rights—the right to use a certain amount of water from a given source per day or year—are treated as property. I understand why this makes sense: If a stream runs through your property, it makes sense that you have a certain amount of right over that stream.

At the same time, this creates distortions, since you're getting something for free which is in short demand.

My proposal is that, if water rights are a kind of property, they should be subject to a state property tax. An economist would say the tax should be as high as the marginal cost of creating additional water rights. You might not want to make it that high (it might bankrupt the entire Arizona agricultural industry overnight if you did—that water is hard to get). There's already a tax on water use in the cities (in that 22% municipal fraction), so I think that should be broadened to all users on an equal basis. This is a more market-oriented way to distribute the scarcity than ordering ranches to close their doors. If it ultimately means that Arizona ranchers start feeding their cattle with corn, soy, and hay imported from the wetter Midwest, I think that's fine.

kbd512 · 2024-08-21 01:30:13

JoshNH4H,

I feel as though much hay has been made over cattle feed and water consumption non-issues, mostly by people who lead lifestyles that are only made possible by vast natural resource expenditures on their behalf. They obviously won't see it that way, but it is fairly obvious to an independent observer who is not hellbent on achieving an ideologically or aesthetically pleasing outcome. Humans also live in a lot of different places that make life more difficult than whatever is or could be "most ideal". Life on Mars is quite clearly "next level" difficult, in that regard. So what? Rather than figuring out how to best use all available resources, or to make more of what we wish to consume, certain people would rather fetishize their lifestyle choices and focus on all the different ways that someone else's lifestyle choices are wrong or bad, according to them. For example, I think people who live on top of each other the way they do in New York or Tokyo are a little "out there", but I still support their right to do that, even if it means they consume more of X or Y or Z and less of A or B or C than someone living on a farm.

I'm neither friendly nor hostile towards golf courses. I view sportsball as yet another giant "so what" issue. If I never saw another golf tournament or football game for the rest of my life, it wouldn't affect me in the slightest. My father and his father played golf for many years. I see nothing at all wrong with the guys who dress up like painted clowns to cheer on their favorite sportsball team. Good for them I say, if that is what brings them joy. I don't think golfers need to give up golfing anymore than other Americans need to give up eating beef. When most people, regardless of other personal beliefs, quit basing their beliefs about others on "me" or "not me" when we decide what public policy should be, I think we'll all lead much better lives.

In the grand scheme of things, what people choose to eat or where they choose to live ultimately doesn't amount to a hill of chili legumes. People who believe otherwise have my deepest condolences for never having learned that they're just not that important, and whatever they value so highly won't be valued at all by the next person.

Ruminants have roamed the Americas for at least as long as humans have. Killing off all or most of them to somehow "save ourselves" is about as nutty an idea as any I've ever heard, sort of like pecan pie without the pecans. It's a solution in search of a problem to solve. Cow farts vs no cow farts is not going to make or break humanity's future. I would humbly opine that anyone who believes otherwise is suffering from the noxious effects of their own brain farts.

As far as market-based solutions are concerned, water services are typically public utilities for good reason. They make a modest profit in return for guaranteed market access, which usually incentivizes them to deliver the demanded water so their customers hand over their money. Centerpoint thinks they're special, in that regard, but their customers and our Governor disagree. Water and water services are already taxed here in Texas. I think we all pay enough taxes already. We don't have nearly enough to show for all the billions and trillions spent on our behalf. Have you ever heard of a country that was taxed into prosperity, or merely economic equilibrium? I haven't. The ultimate solution is to desalinate water, and to distribute it to wherever it's required. That will cost money, obviously, but it's an organic economic activity that brings life with it. You get more of whatever you incentivize.

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-21 07:32:04

For kbd512 re most efficient use of solar energy to desalinate sea water...

This YouTube video seems to be talking about the same idea as you presented in the recent Google Meeting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVW2-UA0SB4

An interesting difference is that the animation shows domes as the mechanism to collect evaporated water. The air outside the dome is still responsible for conducting thermal energy away from the water vapor.

(th)

JoshNH4H · 2024-08-21 17:52:49

Two quick points for kbd:

1—I don't see any place in your post where you dispute my estimate for the amount or fraction of water going to cattle feed in Arizona. Can I take this to mean that you think the numbers I've provided are generally correct?

2—When business-as-usual is resulting in the shortage of a necessary item like water, there are two things you can do: Mount a policy response before it gets too bad, or not. Sometimes you do nothing and get lucky, more often if you do nothing the outcome is more severe shortages later.

Should you choose to mount a policy response, you need to do some combination of increasing supply and decreasing demand. In suggesting ways to do this I set aside my personal feelings about the beef industry to suggest the least disruptive course of action. Increasing supply costs money, of course. There are two main levers for decreasing demand: Pricing or mandates. I suggested pricing as a more market-oriented solution, which conveniently also generates the cash to increase supply.

Having said that, when you mount a policy response it's worth thinking about what outcomes you expect. This can help you to maximize the good outcomes and minimize the bad ones

Looking at the realities of water usage in Arizona, the biggest consumer and lowest-value user of water is cattle feed. So I'd expect a pricing mechanism to extract the greatest cuts from there (it also harms the smallest number of people relative to cuts to municipal supplies). Compared to alternatives, that's the ideal outcome when talking about cuts.

Taxes alone do not produce prosperity. But when, as here, they promote efficient use of scarce resources they make a positive contribution to society. And when, as here, they fund projects that improve the quantity and stability of water access—history is littered with cases where this has been greatly beneficial, including many in the United States, in fact including Arizona itself.

The water rights system is itself a policy architecture, which attenuates a maximalist view of property rights to one that's more fair. Under a maximalist view, the person furthest upstream would be entitled to use all the water since it flows through their property. Instead, water rights are allocated based on historical use, interstate treaties, regulations, and purchase, with the goal of ensuring that everyone who needs some gets some. There's a lot of good in that system, but in a world where an already-limited supply is falling and demand is rising something has to change.

On Mars in the early days there will be a command economy. It's unavoidable: You have to come in with a plan, and things will be of such a size that the idea of competing companies doesn't really make sense. When your economy is tiny and very isolated, everything is too big to fail. Ideally decisions on what to grow will be made by everyone living off that food together. The decision on whether or not to have cattle on Mars (or Earth) isn't about "fetishizing" any particular kind of lifestyle. It's about basic material facts: Humans can live just fine on a plant based diet. Cows take up a lot of space and consume much more food than they produce. It's not up to me what NASA or Martians will decide, but I can look at this and guess. When there's more people around things will open up and it's very possible that you'll see markets for more things and things will be more pluralistic.

Last edited by JoshNH4H (2024-08-21 18:03:44)

kbd512 · 2024-08-22 02:09:08

JoshNH4H,

The more I read about cattle feeding operations, the faster I came to the conclusion that there is no standard practice anywhere, not here in America or elsewhere, thus no point in arguing over how much water is devoted to hay production when the diet fed to dairy and beef cattle varies so much. More to the point, it may not even be meaningful if the water was sourced from somewhere that there is no scarcity.

I know what my uncle fed his cows on his ranch here in Texas, but that's about it- and yes, they ate a lot of alfalfa. Houston has no water shortages. We tend to have the opposite problem. Anyway, his ranch is east of us and everything there is very green. How closely either his or the practices of other ranchers in Texas, or Arizona ranchers in particular, follow some sort of standard or norm might be unknowable because there are so many different ranches and only a handful of very large commercial ranches. That is why I dropped my argument. Too much assumption, too little hard data, and far too many different feeding practices to make generalized statements, beyond the fact that growing alfalfa consumes a lot of water.

If we could even apply a rule-of-thumb argument about how much of what kinds of feed are fed to most cattle, then I would lend your argument more weight. Let's say you're correct for purposes of argumentation. If the hay was actually brought into Arizona from a state with no water shortages, then the fact that Arizona uses more water for agriculture may not relate specifically to cattle feeding operations, so even if you're absolutely correct in your assertions about water usage for cattle feeding operations, it might still be a moot point.

How much water is used by the State of Arizona to grow all the other foods they grow there?

Do we have any hard numbers for that, or just more vague general assertions?

I have little data points like this:
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension - Consumptive Water Use of Pecans in Southern Arizona - July 2023

The production of pecans [Carya Illinoinensis (Wangeh.) K. Koch] in Arizona has increased substantially in recent years (Parsons, 2017; Murphree, 2020). A recent economic impact study indicates more than 30,000 acres of pecans are now established in Arizona, nearly double the acreage reported in 2013 (Duval et al., 2019). The majority of Arizona pecan orchards are located in Southern Arizona with nearly all new production located in Cochise County where groundwater levels are declining due to overdraft of local aquifers (ADWR, 2018). Pecans are considered a high-water use crop due in large part to an extended growing season that begins in late March and continues through mid-November at most locations. Aside from one study that evaluated the feasibility of using infrared thermometry to schedule irrigation events (Garrot et al., 1993), there are no published data sets addressing the consumptive water use (CU) of Arizona pecans. The purpose of this bulletin is to summarize the results of a three-year study conducted in southern Arizona to 1) quantify the CU of southern Arizona pecans and 2) provide crop coefficients (Kc) and CU curves to facilitate improved irrigation management of pecans.

Arizona's nutty water regulations

Then there are little gems like this which don't use consistent units:

For context on water usage, consider the following: 1 almond = 1 gallon, 1 pistachio = 2 gallons, 1 walnut = 5 gallons, 1 orange = 13 gallons, 1 apple = 18 gallons, 1 pound of alfalfa hay = 100 gallons. Poor little almond seems maligned.
Almonds: CA: 1.37 million acres, producing 2.8 billion pounds; 80% of world and 100% of domestic supply. Spain and Iran, the next largest growers, produce: 0.7 billion pounds combined. Almond trees take about three to four years to harvest a crop. Average economic life span is 20-25 years.
Walnuts: CA: 400,000 acres, producing 720,000 tons; 14% of world and 100% of domestic supply. Top producing countries by tons: China (2.5 million), U.S. (720,000), Iran (320,000), Turkey (225,000), Mexico (170,000) and Ukraine (126,000). Walnut trees take about 8-10 years to produce a crop, with an average economic life of 35 years.
Pistachios: CA: 375,000 acres, producing 500,000 tons; 75% of world and 100% of domestic supply. Top producing countries by tons: U.S. (500,000), Iran (135,000), Turkey (25,000), Syria (8,000), EU (4,000). Pistachios are pollinated by the wind, not bees. It takes a pistachio tree five to seven years to produce a harvestable crop, and 15-20 years to reach full production. Pistachio trees’ lifespan can reach 100 years.

If there are around 349 almonds per pound, then that's around 349 gallons of water per pound of almonds grown. That means 977.2 billion gallons of water are consumed by California to grow almonds every year. I'm not complaining about that fact, nor lambasting them for doing it, just pointing it out to our readers. I like almonds. In fact, I like eating all kinds of nuts. I love pistachios. I worked for the largest nut growing operation in California on their forecasting and promotions software solution.

All 90 million beef cattle in the US consume about 394.2 billion gallons of water per year if they all weigh about 1,200lbs. If all of them are fed 5lbs of alfalfa per day, then 16,425 billion gallons in total, or 32,850 billion gallons over their average 2 year life before being slaughtered. If that means we get 36 billion pounds of beef per year. We get around 117g of protein per pound of beef with 85% lean meat. We get 99g of protein per pound of almonds, or 277,200,000kg of protein for the entire crop. We get 4,212,000,000kg of protein from beef for the entire culling per year.

If I extrapolate out 15.195X greater almond yield to replace the protein in our diet, because protein is absolutely necessary for humans to survive, then my annual water usage is 14,848 billion gallons. That's only about twice as efficient. That's meaningful, but water is clearly not in short supply elsewhere. When you go outside here in Houston, even with the oppressive heat, everything is very green. So, maybe the fresh water supply in Arizona is insufficient for cattle, but clearly not for growing nuts. Well, if you can grow nuts there then you can also grow cattle there, even if it makes more economic sense to grow cattle elsewhere. You just can't grow as many of them, and the cattle herd in Arizona is about 1/90th of the total herd size in America, so it seems that their cattle ranchers are fairly sensible in terms of the total numbers.

So... What's changed over the past 20 years?

Population has increased dramatically as Californians fled to Arizona over your proposed tax rate increases. They clearly haven't learned very much since they're busily re-creating what they ran away from.

Arizona never grew significant numbers of pecan trees and other fruits and nuts before, but now they do.

My broader point, though, is that data tidbits alone are not enough to make generalized statements about how much water is devoted to producing nuts vs feed for beef cattle, nor what the general productive nutritional output (for human consumption of food products) happens to be. That requires an actual unbiased analysis. I can generalize to say that animals consume more water than plants per pound of body weight, but the total pounds of weight of plants vs animals is incredibly lopsided in favor of plants. Plants consume far more fresh water than animals, in aggregate. Since the animals depend upon the plants for their survival, in much the same way that many plants rely upon animals for their continued survival, that makes sense.

As to your general assertion about taxation and public policy being broadly beneficial "when used properly", I would say that's far more of a mixed bag. Public policy is almost never wisely administered by a conscientious group of benevolent oversight committee. Your proposed solution is to "make more efficient use of scarce resources" through taxation. You're not incentivizing behavior, you're repressing human prosperity with regressive ideologically-driven beliefs about how humans should respond to publicly-sanctioned theft of their livelihoods. Scarcity-driven mindset is the same kind of thinking which devastated the British economy following WWII, as well as every command economy that's ever been attempted. All the public policy and recorded outcomes are readily available for anyone to read, but almost nobody ever does.

My proposed solution is to make more fresh water. There is no shortage of water on Earth at all. Some regions of Earth have far more fresh water available than others. The entire reason we invented all of our technology is so such impediments wouldn't prevent human flourishing, not even in the harshest of local environments. What was the point of creating all that tech if we're not going to actually use it?

As far as living on Mars is concerned... Humans can survive on bread and water. That's not very healthy, and it's certainly not flourishing, it's mere survival. We haven't come this far to "merely survive". You believe a command economy on Mars is unavoidable, yet no command economy here on Earth, operating with far fewer resource constraints, is anywhere close to being able to send a ship to Mars. It's easy to figure out why. Their governments are more fixated on controlling the behavior of their own fellow citizens than they are in their collective flourishing. Both you and them operate within imaginary constraints imposed by this blatantly wrong "limited pie" mindset.

Somehow, in direct contravention to your assertions about which mindset produces more broadly useful results, a privately-held corporation operating in a capitalist country is the only entity on planet Earth which developed the technology to affordably send people to other planets, and they did so using a tiny fraction of the budget that our various central planning commissions - NASA, ROSCOSMOS, CNSA have to work with. This is either more evidence (as if more was required) that central planning doesn't work, or it's more evidence that there aren't any wise, conscientious, and benevolent administrators in charge of our various government organizations devoted to space exploration.

There is no part of the technology set incorporated into a reusable SpaceX rocket booster that is more sophisticated than what was available during the 1980s. I don't mean the chips available today are less capable than what was available back then, merely that 1980s sensors and chips were fully capable of autonomously landing a reusable rocket booster. Improved materials and computer control tech has merely increased the payload capacity of the rocket, but that's it. The fundamental tech hasn't changed in decades.

NASA and DoD threw money at our major aerospace contractors for many years, yet because our defense primes had already become lethargic bureaucratic organizations like our government, utterly incapable of fundamental change, they produced nothing of lasting value and no wise government administrators stepped in to persist with result-focused product development using either a more willing or more capable contractor, so that humanity would ultimately reap the benefits of fully reusable rockets (unlimited pie thinking).

As a result, space technology languished for decades while no competitive processes existed to separate the doers from the talkers. ULA is the direct result of command economy thinking. We can't compete, because then we'd have to innovate, and we're not interested in that. ULA is now on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, if they haven't already. X-15s, SR-71s, and Saturn Vs were built and operated by unlimited pie doers. Nobody who built and flew a Saturn V was wringing their hands over how much fuel a Saturn V would burn, because if they ever ran out then they would also figure out how to make more.

Humanity would never reach Mars if limited pie command economists were in charge of that effort. Russia and China talk endlessly about going to the moon. They have our computer and sensor technology now, because we gave it to them. They've successfully flown plenty of rockets, both large and small. They even built long duration space stations, so mission length and life support clearly aren't showstopper problems for them. They have their own space suit designs to boot. All the bits and pieces exist for their own lunar mission, using arguably much better tech than the craptastic stuff we had to work with during the 1960s.

What's preventing them from achieving what we did 55 years ago?

Oh, that's right. They're all "limited pie" thinkers who are more fixated on who's in charge or what they ate for dinner or how much water the moo cows drank yesterday, rather than getting things done. If it doesn't involve murdering someone who said things they disagree with, then they're not really interested. The people who are attached to limited pie simply cannot be convinced to let it go. They "know" they're right, and that the results of the experiment simply must be wrong, so they'll repeat it endlessly until they get the result they're after. I'm over here with my popcorn watching the show, wondering when, if ever, their non-working ideology will be abandoned for lack of results.

Here in America, when the pie runs out, we make more pie. It works.

tahanson43206 · 2024-10-29 19:18:48

This topic has been quiet for a while. kbd512's piece on alfalfa (and much more) was a welcome addition to the series...

Today an announcement of a new book about water showed up in the Internet feed... I took a quick look at the review:
https://civileats.com/2024/10/28/the-so … wtab-en-us

Mr. Gleick wrote a whole book about the subject of water shortages out West in the US, and how policy needs to be changed to deal with the reality.

The author notes that while there will be no new ** traditional ** sources of water, some reuse of water appears possible, and he does make a brief nod to desalination, but he dismisses all those "new" sources as expensive.

The author appears to be most interested in how humans might be able to sort this out so that the 100 year old me-first tradition is set aside.

What will take the place of ** that ** set of agreements is to be determined. Apparently the author offers some suggestions.

I am more interested in the traditional US solution of just providing more water, and kbd512's piece certainly points in that direction.

The most obvious solution is to use nuclear power to desalinate sea water, and the attendant problems of what to do with the "waste" is solved by the same answer. Nuclear power is more than capable of collecting ** all ** the valuable atoms in sea water and sorting them into pure form, so they are valuable on the marketplace. This solution has been obvious, but since nuclear power is not yet readily accepted/practical, not much is happening in that arena.

(th)

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