Vanishing Sea

[Gunner]

Originally Posted by Black Mamba

Wave Energy is being funded, developed and pretty close to being online:

Not to be repetitive, but... well, maybe. All of these alternative power technologies have been "funded and about to go into service" since about 1965... at least, so cover after cover of PopSci, PopMech et al. kept assuring me through my goggle-eyed tens and teens. And twenties, thirties, forties...

It's like Paul Moller's flying car, about to go on sale in showrooms everywhere since... 1962.

so if we're talking about offshore desal the main issue is probably the excess salt

Load it on flatboats. Trundle it out into the ocean a few miles. Dump. Problem solved. It's not toxic waste; that's where it came from and as long as the water is deep enough and the dumping is spread a little, I don't think any human-scale effort could change ocean salinity a meaningful amount, even for short terms.

It all boils (heh, heh) down to a helluva lot of electrical power (or equivalent) or a helluva lot of square miles of solar/ocean/wave/wind power plants. I'd go so far as to say the only really workable option for the foreseeable future is nuclear desal.

Haven't heard about towing icebergs...

I believe it's actually been done on small scale (UK in the 1970s?) It's actually more practical, in terms of energy used, than many alternatives. If you tow the berg to a warmish climate and park it in a giant floating drip cup, natural solar heat will keep the flow of extremely pure water coming without any hassles. But yeah, it's pretty, uh, weird.

[Jamo]

Originally Posted by Gunner

Mediterranean is more a description of climate than geography. You'll note that most areas of the Med are scrubby, sandy territory that's not terribly arable or fertile. Cultivation in Italy and Greece is largely olive trees because they're extremely hardy and don't require irrigation in most years. Also consider the entire top of Africa, which is "Mediterranean." Most of the area is not some lush resort jungle, or anything like it.

A map of underlying geography and ecology shows that the LA Basin has a few arable regions, but can fairly be described as a scrub desert, chaparral or similar low-water, hardy-growth zone. It doesn't have one tenth the water it needs for its population and never did; IMVHO squatter's rights don't entitle it to half the water in the Western US.

Those vast stretches of desert north of the Grapevine - you know, the ones posted with b*tch signs every mile or so - are even less naturally arable and have an even lesser right to someone else's water.

I might change my mind the next time I fly over and see a lot more native-plant landscaping and a lot fewer pools.

You really do just grab bullsh!t out of the air and type it up don't you.

The area north of the Grapevine does not receive water from anywhere else...they draw from aquifers below ground. The area west of Bakersfield was the Tulare Lake basin, where water from the Kings and Kern Rivers reached their terminus. The Kern, like the Mojave, is generally an underground river once it leaves the mountains. The ground in these areas are far more productive than the Sacramento Valley, which is why fruits and vegetables are grown around Bakersfield while rice for Korea is grown around Sacramento. As for LA, the San Fernando Valley always a had enough water for agriculture...ever since the original Spanish land grants. Same for the Beverly Hills, Riverside and Orange County areas. The need for more water came from urban growth...due to Mulholland and his pack grabbing the streams in the Owens Valley and inviting folks in cheap. That labor supply drove the industrial machine in the 30s, 40s and since that created the economic power that California generally has been. The areas you note are full of water...only a moron would judge the presence of water based upon the appearance of the land. Only a bigger moron would dismiss arid land as being non-productive.

As for those "b!tch" signs...I represent most of the folks you're talking about and that you allege take water from elsewhere...in this case, you're way off track. The end point for ag water from Shasta ends about a 100 miles north. This is what screws up everything...morons who know little about the subject giving opinions from their city addresses.

I really haven't enjoyed your presence here since day one...you've started sh!t repeatedly, told Ron and me how to do our job, and generally have grown into an absolute PITA. You've gotten a few suspensions already. And now I caught you in a lie based on arrogance or stupidity or both while you tell other folks off.

Had enough...we no longer have patience around here. Don't like it...suck eggs.

[Ron61]

Maybe this statement that I cut from a history of the Sacramento River will help people understand that the water here doesn't go to Los Angles or any other area past the San Francisco Bay. We even have people here that have moved up here from Orange County claiming that they got their water from here. I never intended to start a big argument about water when I started this thread. Just trying to point out that if we keep building and demanding more and more of it, there is going to one of these days be a serious shortage of fresh water. The high usage of water from the Sacramento is what is letting the salt water creep farther and farther into the Delta Area. I believe that Jamo mentioned in an earlier post that the farmers there told him that it wasn't the amount so much as the quality of water that was going to hurt them.

San Francisco Bay is also the spot at which California’s two greatest river systems, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, first mingle with salt water before reaching the Pacific at the Golden Gate.

Ron

[Jamo]

Ron...this IS an interesting thread. There is no reason for bullsh!t to be thrown around by others.

And so folks understand what we both know...the Sacramento water does not go directly to farms and LA...only the peripheral canal or the new concept of tunnels would do that. Instead, gates are opened on the south end of the Delta to deliver water down the CVP canal to San Luis Res. (a holding facility) and then transferred south from there. The Sacramento River water displaces what is drawn from the south.

We also now have the San Joaquin River flowing all the way to the Delta along its natural course, save for a section near Los Banos where the natural course is displaced by the Eastern Bypass for better flood control. So, it's not a lack of water flowing through the Delta that is hurting it. Like I said earlier...it's the lack of quality...salt intrusian and urban runoff. The gates have been shut down by Judge Wanger's rulings (following current law...not his fault) because the smelt get sucked into them...

...which is why the peripheral canal was supposed to be built decades ago...the pumps were devised as the cheap alternative.

[Sharroll Celby]

Originally Posted by VRM

Well, maybe the solution is for all of us in the northeast who have waaaay more water than we can use (due to record rainfalls the last few years) to send it out to CA.

We have folks here with so much water that they could probably email each of you a few gallons every minute and not even miss it.

Steve

It WOULD be a HUGE financial undertaking, but an East/West canal could be built to alleviate all the "flood-stage" rivers back East, and pump it to the water-starved West. With a natural bed, it could even help to replenish the Ogallala Aquifier, which is under the eastern edge of the Rockies, running thru eight states, from west Texas to South Dakota.

[Jamo]

Originally Posted by Sharroll Celby

It WOULD be a HUGE financial undertaking, but an East/West canal could be built to alleviate all the "flood-stage" rivers back East, and pump it to the water-starved West. With a natural bed, it could even help to replenish the Ogallala Aquifier, which is under the eastern edge of the Rockies, running thru eight states, from west Texas to South Dakota.

Dam the Arkansas!