Calirofrnia has about 1 years worth of water left

[N35t0r]

That will surely drive water prices down!

[pchang]

Have any of you had desalinated water? To me it still tastes slightly salty.

[C0ckney]

Hope is fine, but it is in principle unreasonable. More likely is a central action of some sort in the right direction (desalination plant for example) which will alleviate this particular issue, culture change is downright impossible without some catastrophe.

However the most likely outcome both in Brazil and the US is that nothing is done, water runs out, the rich to leave the area, local economy to collapse (even in a multi million city/area) and chaos to ensue. Not enough to cause WWIII or something on a global scale, but large destruction locally - this one is a near certainty, ie Detroit but in Brazilian environment, and possibly even worse as you still have basic amenities there, just not the jobs. Once water runs out the hit will be much harder than "just" no local jobs.

This is reality, given the general poor governance and mass media hypnosis, it is an outcome with 99%+ chance of the outcome. In some other country they could pre-empt, but there may be a dozen countries in the world which are governed well enough to do so. Neither US or Brazil are one of those.

i'm not against building infrastructure in all cases, and believe that it is often necessary. however, the problem is all too often such things will just allow the same wasteful and unsustainable practises that caused the whole mess in the first place to continue. must we turn the whole the central valley in california or greater são paulo into deserts so that farmers can continue to grow unsuitable crops and people can continue to waste water for a few more years?

there are many measures that could be taken, some trivially easy, others less so, which would have a real impact on domestic consumption. presently we have the choice, we have some time to adapt and make adjustments in a considered way. when the water runs out, we will have to make all these changes at once and it will be very difficult. agriculture is more complicated, but it will have to happen sooner or later, and it's far better to start sooner.

[ZEE]

c0cKney is a Fart-Sniffer™ lol.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

While there is no doubt that many practices should be changed now while there is time to work with natural cycles, there is a huge difference between not having infrastructure at all and the local region level the economy/living standard outright collapsing, or having something to fall back on and only have the price of water go up 2x. While expensive it can keep the disruption manageable and also help with practices as the price will naturally help the process of change.

The issue is though that a collapse type of scenario is most likely for most regions under threat.

[C0ckney]

that's true but very often the two are linked. for example in são paulo one thing people are doing in sinking deep wells to get at groundwater, everyone agrees that this will cause disaster in the medium to long term. when you have no water, 10 years from now seems like an eternity, but it will come soon enough and then what? and this is the problem, the logic behind it all is to use, to consume until the last drop, but that last drop isn't very far away.

the worst case scenario is that it becomes no longer viable to have 20 million people living there, rather like rome after the 5th century loss of north africa cut the grain supply. you won't be surprised to hear that i have some rather radical ideas on how this mass depopulation might be done .

[I AM MOBIUS]

Sooner or later we'll come to realise we're all living on one giant Rapa Nui...

[pchang]

And which one of you will be chopping down the last aerospace engineer?

[kentonio]

you won't be surprised to hear that i have some rather radical ideas on how this mass depopulation might be done .

[Dinner]

Poly ate my last post.

[Dinner]

The big problem is how water rights in the western US are all use it or lose it. As water rights cost almost as much as land no one wants to lose it thus they WILL find ways to consume every last drop they are allocated just so they don't perminently lose access to that water. That means the rules not only discourage conservation but outright reward wasteful use. That is why so many farmers out here still use wasteful and inefficient flood irrigation when drip or broadcast irrigation would actually reduce water usage by 50%-75% even while producing the same crop.

You can bet any reforms will get tied up in court for decades though because there is so much money on the line.

[pchang]

It's all much clearer now.

Cockney = Pol Pot

[I AM MOBIUS]

Time to buy a big ****-off supply of almonds then...

[The Mad Monk]

[Dinner]

Have any of you had desalinated water? To me it still tastes slightly salty.

Yeah, deal is so expensive they only remove just enough salt so that it is barely drinkable by humans, they then blend it in a reservoir with regular fresh water to further lower the salt content but it is still fairly salty.

That is using the series of semi permiable membranes method which the Israelis developed. The old style method where they boil and then condense the water vapor method uses completely uneconomical amounts of energy and the only country I have heard which still uses that method is Saudi Arabia because they have so much natural gas that they just flair off anyway because they don't have a gas pipeline network to deliver the gas to market.