It seems like it would be more energy efficient to desalinate. Either way it's a big energy load that California probably doesn't have.

 

Well, if you're california then I would agree.

If you're lets say North Texas ... probably not so much.

Think of how long it's taking just to build a desalination plant. Then you have to set up piplines to get it from the ocean all the way up there. That's four or five decades minimum and most of that region doesn't have that much time.

They do however have an abundance of sunlight which means they can power the thing (about 380 watt-hours) with a few solar panels.

 

I look at it this way...

The areas of California that will likely survive are the coasts... and the naturally wetter areas like Northern California..

The rest, Central Valley to Eastern and Southern California are going to revert to their natural climate and habitat (desert)... and populations will have to adjust...

They don't have decades either.

A couple more years of this drought and its over.

 

A couple more years of this drought and its over.

Which is really kind of my question. If the population, like EVERYONE, were to install their own personal atmospheric water condensation units then there would no longer be a need to pull water out of the ground. The state would still be getting its money from increased energy usage.

Now include the rest of the western states, especially those not bordering the ocean all doing that.

 

its prolly a great idea...

One could say the same about solar panels too... a government mandated and subsidized program that requires every house to be a "net zero" consumption household, that turns every roof into an energy producing platform would go a long ways towards decentralizing the grid, and reduce real risk from a grid down scenario...

It hasn't happened because the water and energy providers AND other special interests (environmentalists) have a fairly strong lobby that keeps the status quo....


...and that's the real hindrance to any sort of positive change and/or solutions

 

I heard on the radio (and confirmed online) that some MIT folks made a cheap & easy graphite sponge that they hoped to use to create steam energy.

I wondered why not just make it bigger and use it both to desalinize and power the desalination plant?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ates-graphite-solar-sponge-that-converts-sunlight-into-steam-with-85-efficiency

Seems like it's simpler and cheaper than traditional solar panels.

 

I've wondered if some form of moisture vaporator system couldn't run on much less energy than reverse osmosis desalination. If you look at the amount of water that comes off a standard air conditioner or dehumidifier, it's pretty impressive for the size of the unit.

I also have to wonder if it would be cost effective to desalinate ocean water by constructing giant floating solar stills.

 

If desalinization was done with solar, it would be far more practical , but there isn't that much intelligence in the government.
If cities used water more efficiently, and practically we wouldn't have the problem.
But they are still building homes like crazy, it's hard to believe ,except for the fact that if they are going to drive people back on grid, from the out skirts of town, they will be forced into the city. I cannot ,make sense of it.

 

If desalinization was done with solar, it would be far more practical , but there isn't that much intelligence in the government.
If cities used water more efficiently, and practically we wouldn't have the problem.
But they are still building homes like crazy, it's hard to believe ,except for the fact that if they are going to drive people back on grid, from the out skirts of town, they will be forced into the city. I cannot ,make sense of it.

That doesn't address the what -- 80% or so -- of consumption that is associated with agriculture. Much of farmed land in California was probably always better left as range land, even before the current drought.

On the broader idea of pulling water vapor out of the air, I suspect there would be some sort of disastrous environmental change if done on a level to allow California's population and agro-business to go on with business as usual. It's a renewable resource, obviously, but so are aquifers if you don't annihilate them with over use.

 

Re: Water from air



Are you talking about water from air machines? They are commercially available and not that expensive, but as you mentioned not so great in dryer climates. I live in South Africa now and purchased one here. I works beautifully and produces the best tasting water I have ever had. I works on the air conditioner principle but is set up as a water dispenser and has a filtration system to clean and de-contaminate the water that is formed.

Here is the company I found in America...

http://www.atmosphericwatersolutions.com/home

The home or office unit looks like this...

https://d1fkwa1hd8qd6y.cloudfront.net/FAC7232F-1B5F-434C-BA49-99BE850A5A91/80b5fe5b-d25c-43da-b1c0-cf0996ee5460.jpg

It is expensive water when you calculate the electricity to run it, (about 500 watts) but it does work, especially near the coast like we are.

 

It doesn't matter what solution you come up with, it's going to make someone mad somewhere. California will die of thirst before the environmental lobby gives up. It took 7 years and 14 lawsuits to get a small desal unit under construction in S. Cal. Anything that would abate the drought conditions short of a continuous monsoon season is going to fail.

As for desal units taking that long, If the lawyers and lobbies would get out of the way, Cali could be in the wet within 3 years. Under the current conditions, get prepared to be hosed with dry sand.

 

Lets all hope kalifonia's drought increase by a couple orders of magnitude and last a few hundred years.

 

Terrible idea. Then all of the liberals will leave kommiefornia and infect other states with their liberal cancer.

 

It is not people where the bulk of the water goes. Agriculture is 80% +/-. The token demands by government to conserve even more will do nothing.

They may run out of water and have to adjust. Animals and people have done that for centuries.

 

Solution to CA drought

Buy the northwestern half of MEXICO, divert all of the Colorado River...problem solved. If not the answer...move before it gets worse.

 

Buy the northwestern half of MEXICO, divert all of the Colorado River...problem solved. If not the answer...move before it gets worse.

If I remember correctly from my trip to Arizona a couple years ago, our use of the Colorado river is so immense, I think they said it no longer flows out of Arizona, at the very least, I know none of it reaches the Pacific anymore.

 

"...aren't we potentially jacking up the entire water cycle across the entire globe?"

Not potentially. We HAVE and continue to do so. We have dammed rivers, built levies and done all kinds of things to command the rivers and such to bend to our will. Mostly for recreation. Some for water "conservation". There are consequences for every action. Look at Lake Meade....lowest level ever. Cant close the inlets or they can't create electricity...

So what do you do?

We don't fully understand the affects of the global weather currents...is it normal? Maybe...maybe we caused it. Either way, there will be a mass exodus....unless there is a major rainfall. That will cause mudslides yadda yadda....so more disasters....
The logistics of hauling enough water in for the population is pretty ridiculous...

 

fighjting the drought out west is as simple as evaporation. 1 acre of corn produces 4000 gal of water in evaporation a day, so all you need is to put some kind of movable cover over part of an acre that will captutre some of that evap and use it to water other crops, move the cover each day to a differant spot.

 

California uses billions of gallons of water a day. These solutions will return hundreds...you can't sustain this level of population in a desert. We have robbed Peter to pay Paul for so long, and now the bill is due. Simply the greatest disaster the country has faced in the history of our country and our president is wringing his hand over how a drug felon gets treated. It doesn't matter that millions are gonna die to him as long as his people get away with any felony they commit. Too little, too late.

 

California uses billions of gallons of water a day. These solutions will return hundreds

Not everyone was using one. It would slice individual water consumption in the state by 30% or so pretty easily.

No it's not a permanent fix but it sure could give the state time to get desalination plants online.

 

My wife laughed when I said there could come a time, in the near future in fact, that there has to be a mass migration (e.g. a reverse grapes of wrath) away from CA due to the water shortage. She looked at me like I had two heads. It only sounds crazy and unprecedented until it is.

 

It won't be very effective if it is a reverse grapes of wrath and they migrate to certain states in the Midwest. They'll just have to migrate again decades later when the Midwest aquifer goes dry.

 

20 years ago I made this suggestion to solve the problems of the arid SouthWest, tornadoes in Oklahoma and Hurricanes in the Gulf. But nobody liked it because I was fooling with nature. Well, nature is what brought these problems, not me.

Here's the cure, submitted for you to urinate on.

Blast a couple of valleys through the mountains to allow clouds to make it through without going up and over, losing moisture needed for rain and creating wickedly unstable air currents that spawn tornadoes.

Blast a true seaway through Mexico to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
This will set up a sweep current through the Gulf of Mexico cooling it down to remove the heat energy that spawns hurricanes, and the extreme humidity that plagues the South.

This hot steamy water will contribute to the cloud formations where it is critically needed in the American SW.

A side benefit is a navigable seaway with no locks or obstructions connecting the 2 oceans. (Although it will be a wild ass ride). Any breach of a long barrier results in extreme wind and wave development.

Speaking of which, this current that would be established in the seaway could also generate massive amounts of power.

The energy that used to go into the making of hurricanes would essentially be repurposed to make electricity.

Yes, this would be an expensive project, but so is rebuilding the South after each deadly hurricane strike. So is the economic impact of plentiful rainfall in the SW. And the cure is permanent.

By the way, whoever wrote the spell checker that changes the word "cloud" to "could" should be shot, dipped in tar, set on fire and then strapped to a nuclear missile and shot into space.

 

By the way, whoever wrote the spell checker that changes the word "cloud" to "could" should be shot, dipped in tar, set on fire and then strapped to a nuclear missile and shot into space.

I am blaming the POTUS = Obummer for this mishap.

 

If a pipe line can be built to move oil across the country,then why can't a pipe line to move water?Fresh water is flowing from rivers into the ocean, that could be used and just gets wasted now.

 

Why should water from sane law abiding parts of the country be sent to water the lawns of movie stars and brain dead liberals?

 

I am not going to worry about Mexifornia any longer than it takes water on the stove to get hot Just running every thing brown back into Mexico would solve most of the problem. It will fall back into the Pacific soon anyway. Why waste money and time on those left wing whackos? Even most of the Angleos there aren't worth the powder to blow their brains out. Doing a "scientific" sample of the population one comes up with Pelosi and Feinstein. I rest my case

 

70.% of the Earth's surface is covered with water and we have nuclear energy. This should be a non issue.

They should be building Thorium powered nuclear power plants they are so much better then the Uranium designs we use. Thorium plants can be turned off, the reaction shut down they had one in the 60s that they would shutdown on the weekends. Impossible with uranium reactors. New systems use salt instead of water and are not under high presssure it's a world of difference from these cold war era reactors we use today. They can't meltdown like the ones in Japan did.

Nuclear energy is millions of times more powerful then any chemical fuel. That's insane if you think about millions of times more powerful. There's not really anything else man made that can boast millions of times better results. Imagine if your car got 10 million times the MPG that's the level of improvement we are talking about.

 

How about clearcutting incentivation. But, wait till the disaster already happens since thats whats everyones doing already; the payouts can be cheaper when its too late.

Pay someone a 'moving' fee to willingly bulldoze their own house and return that plot to nature. A team comes in and inspects, and if you dont leave any trash you can have the money. Someone who doesnt want to leave till after the californipocalypse gets to kick rocks empty-handed to make up for other people having to bulldoze.

People who were smart and left before all this happened can sell their own house and get out now.

This way, the stricken areas are returned to proto-normalcy so nature can heal while the aquifers refill. Then in a few hundred years people can move back in if they want, hopefully with better habits.

 

Desal plants use power.
power plants use water.
Good luck.

 

Solar and wind power generating facilities use no or very little water.

 

Yes, only drink water when the wind blows.

 

.

One of the coolest ideas I've seen for this is to simply draw in some air, cool it to the dew point to condense the water vapor into liquid, and then capture the condensed water.

It works on Tatooine. Ask Luke Skywalker about his moisture farm.

 

I have nothing nice to say about California so I will say nothing.

 

The "problem" is not the amount of water in use. The "problem" the demtards can't import 30million new komifornian voters from 3rd world hellholes if their is not water for them to drink.

SO the agitators new project is "water crisis". If you have not been paying close attention you may not realize that this project is not just in CA. Is in the public schools nationwide preaching the newest envirowacko religious doctrine of "water salvation". And that IS Obumster and his ilk.