Other countries are pro-nuclear like France.
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Not really. Due to the prolonged water shortages, there has been excess ground water taken, resulting in land sinking and compacting, and not able to hold as much water and having more runoff. And a big wet season only ties you over for a year or two.
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Itâs what happens when you try to farm in deserts⌠which many California city are.
The western world also looks at Russia and Ukraine and the ballsy moves of the USSR (Chernobyl) and the current Russia (they were ready to blow up a nuclear facility, if you remember) and they say âyeah, weâll stick with good old fashioned pollution instead of worrying about destroying the planet in one fell swoopâ
There are other steps to take before building desalination plants. Start with water conservation : Australia did a very good job on educating people not to waste water, Singapore and Israel recycle waste water, Taiwan can use this drought to maintain and fix old reservoirs, and if you want a quick fix : riuse water rates to reflect their scarcity. People will think twice before hosing their car, and will use a bucket insteadâŚ
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it is possible to farm in deserts, Californiaâs problem is more probably lawns, pools, and backyard jacuzzisâŚthose are not sustainable in that climate.
Agriculture accounts for some 80% of water use in California.
And yes, itâs possible to farm in the desert - all that sun is generally pretty good for plants - but the problem is the shit ton of water it takes. You couple that with then growing water intensive crops (tree nuts and alfalfa take up a ridiculous percentage of that agricultural water)âŚ
What they do in California isnât farming. Itâs basically just hydroponics.
If they had any sense theyâd attempt a massive re-greening programme. California is a brittle climate, but it isnât inherently âdesertâ - itâs been made that way. It could be modified quite dramatically by bringing in some appropriate agricultural practices.
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Twenty years tops to do it right and make it more profitable for the foreseeable future, I think. 
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The problem is lack of incentive for farmers given the antiquated water rights system.
Real prospector era first come first served rules, from what little I know. 
Quite possibly. IMO rather than attempt to address water issues directly, the solution would be to offer farmers incentives to do certain things that would (if enough people did them) modulate the Stateâs hydrologic cycle and improve soil water retention. The farmers would directly benefit - appropriate restructuring and planting would reduce their costs and increase yields - and the State as a whole would eventually see a return on investment.
It wouldnât be easy. Farmers are notoriously conservative and hate doing anything that their great-granddaddy wasnât doing. But with sufficient incentives they might be prepared to give it a go.
Making stomata open only enough to exchange the glasses needed would be great. Would save a lot of water.
Having huge water generators which capture water from the air, same as a dehumidifier, would be great. Still the same problem - no enough power to make this happen as it is uneconomical.
Let me ask, which uses less water?farming chickens and eggs or farming agriculture products?
This is a âhow long is a piece of stringâ question. There is no single activity called âfarming chickensâ, or growing crops. Itâs possible to do any these things really, really badly - such that large amounts of fresh water are required - or really efficiently. The short answer is that neither of them needs to demand a flow of fresh water that is greater than the local watershed can provide. You just size your operation appropriately.
The thing with water is that it doesnât get âusedâ at all, as such; not in the same sense oil is âusedâ. The oceans are full of water. Ultimately all water ends up back there, and it arrives back on the land from the oceans, too. Itâs all about flow rates - whatever water is being âpumpedâ from the ocean needs to balance, over the medium term, with the requirements of land-based lifeforms. Trees do the bulk of the pumping, and by happy coincidence trees integrate well with all kinds of agriculture. For some bizarre reason, politicians (and people like Greta Thunberg) imagine that productive ecosystems and productive farms are mutually exclusive.
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Yes, Iâm pretty familiar with the water cycle.
My wife wanted to throw out some old water. Water that had been kept bottled in jugs out of the sun. I reminded her that even fresh water was older than our sun.
I think the real travesty is that Canada forces me to wait 19 years to drink alcohol, but wonât even take into consideration that 70% of me is older than the sun.
The majority of me is way past 19.
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She is a DPP member; the party position on nuclear power and waste (with still no solution remotely in sight) is crystal clear and has nothing to do with Washington.
Guy
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this. and exactly. will write more later because I just got back drom the sun and Iâm in a foul f*cking mood!!!
loads of countries alhave being doing this for decades. or trying to. the classic example is taking rice into a C4 pathway and everyone has been researching sinceâŚI dunno. but a while. the reality being rice is a dense crop and grows well, its problem is it destroys water usage. which is still sort of retarded thinking as they can be grown other ways with less water. however then weeds become a logistics problem, as well as disease and pests related to weeds and the snowball effective of cost and efficiency grows. rice is popular because it grows easy, fast, even as a monopoly crop, and require very little effort or thought. Thatâs fine, if you have surplus water. In Taiwan, we dont anymore. havent for a while. so we end up doing dumb shit like like california, or china, like Finleyâs has pointed out.
Dumb doesnt cancel out dumb.
Edit. in case I dont remember to post (god damn am I on a.mood. as is every farmer here!!)
food prices will be affected this year unless there is a gift from the heavens with rain. but I think enough damage is already on the cusp. dont blame typhoons alone for increased non factory foods this year. bunch of friggen. god!!!
For forumosans in Kaohsiung: Heads up, as water restrictions are reportedly coming at the end of the week:
https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202303240016
Guy
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Thank you. Though to be clear, our farms have been building resistence towards droughts for almost 20 years. so although we do indeed have serious problems, it is nothing compared to the âStandard Operating Procedure Farmsâ which are now fighting over drops of water.
the problem here, as I suspect in California as well (but I cannot speak on california due to ignorance) is that a heavy rainy season doesnt fix all the problems. examples along the west coast in the general regions of Changhua and pingdong, the water table has been raped beyond repair. The infrastructure costs they spend, both public and individual, for renovating/rebuilding houses and roadways etc must be insane.
In that respect, the water table cannot come back, at least not in the next thousands of years, because it has been compacted. Imagine a fresh new sponge, it can hold 100ml water. a crusted degraded sponge that has become hard then compacted can only hold 50ml water. Or whatever the numbers may be, it is massively variable. that sponge wont grow back into newness. rather long term geological and biological processes need to happen to reform that new sponge effect. this is where we are right fucked today. we could, theoretically buy up all the land and redo things things faster. I wonder how much it would cost to buy out all the real estate in Linbian and Dogang? Chayi coastline. Tens of trillions? usd⌠then just to start an experiment that may not work for decades.
the second issue, which is far more easily solved,at least as a temp fix, is water storage. but, in my opinion, the gov has largely fucked this up too. basically exactly the same as china though obviously the country of Taiwan is smaller than that of china so there are big differences.
here we are also channeling water out to avoid floods (basically this means we make a straight line from rain to ocean with next to zero retwntion) as well and sucking water up from the ground to provide water. these 2 combined have caused irreversible problems in Taiwan. probably our only real hope now, in terms of supporting ridiculously high density industry and residency as well as also high density agriculture, is to store water. And hopefully stop our continued raping of the water table. To boot, the reservoirs are getting filled with sediment, both naturally and due to construction, farming and poor logging practices. which means "rock n shit"is displacing water storage capacity in lakes and storage ponds. there is some effort of dredging going on. but too little too late. Also without enough future planning of more water storage capacity. They are doing some effort. and they like to pat (editâŚhaha autocorrect said pay instead of pat, which is sadly accurate) themselves on the back and show dollars spent as meaning of actual effectual effort. Taiwan has a history of being pretty fucking terrible at planning ahead and doing things right the first time. we are seeing this real time now in my opinion.
taiwan does export a fair amount. but to be honest, a large amount of taiwnaese export does not meet international quality standards. normally this means chemical residues, but thatâs not the only concern. japan banned pork directly because the government actually spread disease throught the country because they were dumb as fuck!
things like rice are an obvious export, and taiwans rice is considered of high quality. why? very high level of government involvement. things like guava, lemon, papaya, pork, chicken and so on are less government involved, corrupt as all fuck and usually end up testing positive for some illegal thing and destroying taiwans image and export prospects. it is a real problem. just think how big a problem this stretches. the US wouldnt sell us weapons to fldefend against China threatening to murder us simply because we would.import pork that has ractopomine, and we use ractopamine is LOTS of pork here!! the level of frustration is beyond words, in all sides. That is less water concerned but more about the level of competence we must deal with and why water is becoming an emergency because we the country are simply too retarded.
What does that have to do with water security? sure electricity production uses some water, but it is minuscule in comparison to more important issues.
Ya, they have more a lot of things. I remember when those glow animals came out, it was controversial because of obvious animal.cruelty concerns. it is still pretty fucked up (see the pet trade and the glowing tetras and daniâs still being sold everywhere). I am against it 100%. not because i am against GMOs per se, but because the fish, for example, are sterilized to prevent escape into the wild (which is a HUGE problem in the pet and nursery trades!). this leads to a lot of dead animals. never mind the far worse than puppy mill style farming. but I feel this is as unrelated to water security as Taiwan luthiers nuclear point. probably better for another thread. but ya, fucking disgrace on our society to do such horrific acts.
absolutely the problem!
Again ,spot on!
Cant agree more. hydroponics is really a good way to describe the complete bullshit they are doing there, and elsewhere!
The only hope I see is either the government AND society changes its values (i have zero hope for this) or farmers start creating their own companies and doing things their way to make a profit which stimulates R&D on their end to improve things. Many farmers are essentially factory workers doing what is laid out and just knee jerking.problems as they arise. many dont, but overall they are the minority. not being under contract for Nestle or someone(here it is mostly contract with quasi.government programs and university business ventures) and making pennies on the dollar. no matter what happens, we the consumer need to accept 2 facts. food will become more expensive, so best stop wasting it now. and the environment at large is going to get shittier (by choice, I must add). be it droughts or floods, it is inevitable. And it ainât the whole CO2 talking points that is so popular. people need to wake the fuck up and think other basically easy talking points such as your water table is dry and compacting, what happens in 100 years? this is absolutely human caused and the whole climate change narrative on both sides are arguing about 1 point only while ignoring actual reality.
when the water table is hard and crusty, and forests start going brown from drought on scale, and evaporation systems start changing, which affects currentsâŚthen what? "Sorry, we were mistaken"is not an acceptable answer in my books. especially when we know the problems and the cures already. and they are simple, although must be done on scale.
Exactly. though I disagree with farmers being stubborn neccesarily. in the sense they like money. they are already subsidized heavily. things like the government taking away their subsidy money if they grow a 3rd crop of rice in a year is simple (they have already done that due to water crises these few years) in my mind. it isnt enough, but in this sense, farmers are easy to control. speaking about Taiwan, they literally follow the government handouts and talk about them all day. they are stubborn in the beginning until the faucet of free cash stops flowingâŚ
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