It's interesting to hear this when places like the Pacific Northwest seem to be getting more rain fall. With a warmer climate, the atmosphere holds more moisture and results in more rain. It's been speculated before, but when will there be a war over water rights between states? Probably a good kernel for a sci-fi story there if not already written.
That's the story pretty much all over Europe: Italy, France, Britain... They all have problems with seasonal floods that are very recent. It's not that they were dry countries before, and overall annual rainfall is often lower than it was in the past, but it creates more problems because it's much more concentrated on shorter and shorter timespans.
Anyone know of some estimates of the (energy) cost of desalinating seawater, vs. shipping in freshwater from where it is plentiful? (as a function of distance).
Doesn't seem too far fetched that in near future, eg. oil tanker ships could be re-purposed for that job.
Fossil fuels consume a lot of water. Energy production accounts for around 40 percent of all water withdrawals in the United States[1]. Renewables consume zero gallons of water. Switching to renewables is the easiest solution to all water problems. Also, the cheapest!
> Energy production accounts for around 40 percent of all water withdrawals in the United States
But “withdrawals” is misleading, in the case of fracking over 93% of the water withdrawn is pumped back in according to your second reference.
> Renewables consume zero gallons of water
Renewable energy uses water during its manufacturing and transport to its site of final use. Solar panels and wind turbines are cleaned with water and even hydropower has a complicated relationship with water availability. It’s not true that renewables use zero gallons.
Yes, the joys of fracking[2]! "The presence of certain contaminants commonly found in fracking wastewater — including bromide (which can create toxic by-products) and radionuclides, as well as Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) like salts (for which conventional wastewater treatment is largely ineffective) — are of major concern not only because of the potential impacts on rivers, streams and groundwater, but also for downstream water treatment plants, where conventional treatment technologies are not equipped to deal with such contaminants. " https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/issues...
Both flowback and produced water may contain (PDF) heavy metals such as barium and lead (PDF), hydrocarbons, naturally occurring radioactive material, and incredibly high levels of salinity. Flowback and produced wastewater can also include chemical additive formulas, with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, ethylene glycol, methanol, and toluene. Between 2005 and 2013, the EPA identified 1,084 chemicals reported in fracking formulas: https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-frac...
Wind: on average a wind turbine should be cleaned every 5 to 7 years to achieve maximum performance[1], so 3 - 5 times total in a ~25 year lifespan. This recommendation is from a wind turbine maintenance company, of course they'll recommend these kind of services, just like dealerships recommend changing oils every 3000 miles, when reality is you don't need them that often. I can't imagine wind turbines needing any cleaning with water that rains can't do.
Solar: Can't imagine anyone cleaning panels that would do a better job than rains. Most of the utility scale plants are in deserts, highly unlikely they have any water. A few utility scale plants may wash once or twice a year for better performance.
"While dust and dirt settling on your panels is unavoidable, thankfully, so is rain. Even just a mild and short rain shower will do a sufficient job of cleaning the grime off your panels and will have them performing at their full potential with no effort or money spent.
This is backed by a University of San Diego study where researchers looked at how much energy production was lost due to dust and grime each month during the summer drought. They found that in nearly every situation, hiring a professional to clean your panels is not worth the cost."
Baja California is not that similar to Mexico City, but I will just mention that when I lived in Tijuana and Ensenada for a few years, the water being shut off for a few days or even a week at a time during the summer was fairly common. Many businesses or well-off families have backup water tanks.
But I never saw a point where there wasn't normal bottled or reverse-osmosis water available to buy in stores.
And in northern Baja, although it is semi-arid, the weather is not nearly as variable and the population is minuscule in comparison.
I'm just remembering the times when I had refilled water jugs stockpiled in the bathroom for flushing the toilet. If things get really bad in Mexico City, who knows, but there might be millions of people doing that sort of thing for a month.
And then if it gets to the point where you really can't flush your toilet or get water to drink, times a million people (supposing only a fraction of the 22 million are really cut off for a significant amount of time), times a month, people will get desperate and probably resort to doing things they normally wouldn't in order to survive.
> And then if it gets to the point where you really can't flush your toilet or get water to drink
These are not similar standards. If you can't get water to drink, you'll die in a matter of days, maybe about a week.
If water is scarce enough that you don't want to flush your toilet, you'll relieve yourself outside. You'll hit that point long, long, long before not having anything to drink is a risk.
The population of Mexico City grew from 1 to 20 million in the past century, but let's blame the Spanish in 1500s instead of the decades of populist administrations not investing enough in water reservoirs.
Ironically, the same kind of left wing populist administrations in Spain are responsible for the same problem due to under-investment in water systems. And it's mostly out of spite because the existing system is one of the main Franco's legacy talking points. So no update in decades and now they blame climate change alone.
I work in the restaurant industry. When the South Africa cities were having severe water shortages, I started to imagine how would they cope. Most of the water in restaurants goes not into the soup, but is used for sanitation.
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[ 8.2 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadhttps://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/01/spain-expected-to-...
Is that 39% number deceiving, meaning that the actual supply to Mexico DF would run out sooner?
So it would need to be days of reserves or something like that.
For 39% to be low enough to get to 0 by june though they'd have to get through the whole thing in under a year with no rain.
"Mexico City may be months away from running out of water" is a better title, and it is, surprisingly, the title of the HTML page this links to.
I do follow the guidelines, which I understand is to use the title of the page.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Doesn't seem too far fetched that in near future, eg. oil tanker ships could be re-purposed for that job.
For example, one of the first things you'll read in the wikipedia article on "Drought" is this:
> The longest drought in recorded history started 400 years ago in the Atacama Desert in Chile and still continues.
[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/energy/3...
[2] U.S. energy system requires an estimated 58 trillion gallons of water withdrawals each year: https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2018/08/how-much-water-is...
But “withdrawals” is misleading, in the case of fracking over 93% of the water withdrawn is pumped back in according to your second reference.
> Renewables consume zero gallons of water
Renewable energy uses water during its manufacturing and transport to its site of final use. Solar panels and wind turbines are cleaned with water and even hydropower has a complicated relationship with water availability. It’s not true that renewables use zero gallons.
Both flowback and produced water may contain (PDF) heavy metals such as barium and lead (PDF), hydrocarbons, naturally occurring radioactive material, and incredibly high levels of salinity. Flowback and produced wastewater can also include chemical additive formulas, with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, ethylene glycol, methanol, and toluene. Between 2005 and 2013, the EPA identified 1,084 chemicals reported in fracking formulas: https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-frac...
Wind: on average a wind turbine should be cleaned every 5 to 7 years to achieve maximum performance[1], so 3 - 5 times total in a ~25 year lifespan. This recommendation is from a wind turbine maintenance company, of course they'll recommend these kind of services, just like dealerships recommend changing oils every 3000 miles, when reality is you don't need them that often. I can't imagine wind turbines needing any cleaning with water that rains can't do.
Solar: Can't imagine anyone cleaning panels that would do a better job than rains. Most of the utility scale plants are in deserts, highly unlikely they have any water. A few utility scale plants may wash once or twice a year for better performance.
[1]https://fairwindres.com/wind-industry-maintenance/turbine-cl...
[2] The Latest Fracking Science Finds More Serious Health Risks: https://www.nrdc.org/bio/amy-mall/latest-fracking-science-fi...
"While dust and dirt settling on your panels is unavoidable, thankfully, so is rain. Even just a mild and short rain shower will do a sufficient job of cleaning the grime off your panels and will have them performing at their full potential with no effort or money spent.
This is backed by a University of San Diego study where researchers looked at how much energy production was lost due to dust and grime each month during the summer drought. They found that in nearly every situation, hiring a professional to clean your panels is not worth the cost."
https://www.paradisesolarenergy.com/blog/do-solar-panels-nee...
But I never saw a point where there wasn't normal bottled or reverse-osmosis water available to buy in stores.
And in northern Baja, although it is semi-arid, the weather is not nearly as variable and the population is minuscule in comparison.
I'm just remembering the times when I had refilled water jugs stockpiled in the bathroom for flushing the toilet. If things get really bad in Mexico City, who knows, but there might be millions of people doing that sort of thing for a month.
And then if it gets to the point where you really can't flush your toilet or get water to drink, times a million people (supposing only a fraction of the 22 million are really cut off for a significant amount of time), times a month, people will get desperate and probably resort to doing things they normally wouldn't in order to survive.
It sounds apocalyptic to me.
These are not similar standards. If you can't get water to drink, you'll die in a matter of days, maybe about a week.
If water is scarce enough that you don't want to flush your toilet, you'll relieve yourself outside. You'll hit that point long, long, long before not having anything to drink is a risk.
https://archive.ph/rWfix
Ironically, the same kind of left wing populist administrations in Spain are responsible for the same problem due to under-investment in water systems. And it's mostly out of spite because the existing system is one of the main Franco's legacy talking points. So no update in decades and now they blame climate change alone.