Generally good points & I agree that energy is a key issue. However, the water loop is not quite as zero sum as some may think. To the extent that desalinated water is used for irrigation, it re-salinates to a degree so there is a net gain in dissolved salts. Admittedly, this is almost infinitesimal in the relative scheme of things (polar melt, increased evap, etc) & your main points are good ones. Most of the ocean salt came from land runoff over eons & will continue so.
I’d be interested to read comments from those who might react to the environmental impact of the high salinity in the suggested deep disposal sites, how confined it could reasonably be, & the spread rate/effects. Our species seems to have a history of solving problems with larger ones
Won’t such terrible depression cause knock-on effects in the surrounding shear zones?
It’s probably a tad hyperbolic of me to imagine the entire state is at risk but this really strikes me as a particularly deleterious, potential problem, caused by humans, in a place which is well overdue for catastrophic tectonic displacement.
For sure, the immediate effect is localised to those areas where aquifer depletion is causing such severe subsidence, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of amplification of the potential for existing disaster-causing processes.
I guess one could argue that after near-total depletion, technology could provide alternatives to the water shortage, minimising the effects on agriculture… seems like we really need some better science R&D in many areas.
The subsidence is really happening in the central valley, where farmers are pumping groundwater without restrictions. I understand there aren’t any faults there, luckily. The problems are more that once the groundwater is gone, not only is farming going to have problems, but the towns there are going to be screwed because they’ll have to get water pumped in from another water district (and it’ll probably be desalinated water, too), which’ll be expensive as hell, making it an even less desirable place to live, especially if agriculture is gone.
As people have noted, “must continue” is a questionable choice of words; farmers continue to pull water because the alternative is to pay for it. And “depends on”? Will everyone really face starvation when the farmers reduce their land to a dustbowl?
On the other hand, once the agriculture is gone, it’ll suddenly look a lot more palatable to just not solve the water problem for the now-economically-irrelevant towns that remain. If we want to avoid ugly news footage of piles of dessicated corpses and children drinking urine and salt water in an attempt to survive, we might need to buy them out and ship them somewhere; but that’s still likely to be cheaper than desalinating enough water to sustain a more or less superfluous population center in a former agricultural area.
The trouble now is that, until the agriculture actually dries up and blows away, full stop; the agricultural water users have enough economic clout and giant-tangle-of-utterly-dysfuctional-western-water-rights to stall for the forseeable future; but nothing(short of massively slashing output) that would make them viable in the long term; which creates the dangerous incentive to just strip-mine whatever aquifers remain within drill range for as long as they can and then leave.
Also, the brine is quite a concentrate of various elements. Capture them on e.g. zeolites or ion-selective exchange materials, and voila - copper, uranium, gold…
I knew an engineer who was working on a solar water desal program for use in UAE and while a lot of his new ideas were impressive by the standards of people in the know, various brackish water compositions were unsuitable for his technology. My point being that lack of will and money isn’t always the big hindrance to an emerging technology. There is technology on the horizon using electrochemistry, but ultimately, all these technolgies will not cancel out the energy requirement unless they discover cheap fusion in the process. There is a specific amount of energy required to remove salt from water that is dictated by the physical constraints imposed by the various laws of thermodynamics. The waste disposal issue is the least of it, because California is a populous state that will need an immense amount of water for agriculture in order to support that population economically.
That is an immense amount of electricity or thermal power just to help alleviate the problem, and one that won’t reverse the decades of inadvertent geoengineering that has already happened. Not to mention that it would be expensive, which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider that the expense gets added to agricultural production costs that will limit the competativeness of the state’s agro-industry. I’m not big on protecting profits, but the results could be catastrophic for the people whose livelihood may depend on the industry.
I’m not saying desal shouldn’t be considered as an option, or a supplement, but even with ideal desal technology, we’re facing down the barrel of a much bigger gun: Climate change. That’s going to take a lot more than a little R&D to fix.
Headline is.missing a few key words in front of “CA is sinking” . Specifically: “A few locations in”. Most of the state remains on rhe same geological trajectory it has been on for the past few millennium. Some of state is actually rising. Not that headline would not be as click-tastic.
Unless you’re pumping it into very deep, very cold water (which forces the upper layer of water to sink) it’s not going to work like that. The salt water will simply disperse along the upper currents where the water is warmer. The oceans only very slowly mix from the depths to the upper currents (we’re talking decades and centuries*).
@miasm - You talk as if desalination is a brand new problem that has only had limited R&D so far. You think the UAE hasn’t invested in massive research into desalination already? There are emerging technologies, there will certainly be improvements to the process over time; but realistically no amount of money from the Californian or American coffers will solve this problem in a timeframe that doesn’t leave California’s groundwater already depleted.
It’s not nitpicking if it’s pointing out fundamental flaws.
I’m not for a second arguing that California should be acting in a business as usual fashion, but rather it must seriously look at other realistic options. Desalination might be a part of that, but it will not solve the problem of a large water hungry agriculture industry in a drought stricken state in time to leave the groundwater supplies intact.
*on an interesting side note, this is how a scientist first discovered how much lead was being pumped unnaturally into our atmosphere by leaded petrol. The upper layers of the ocean had far, far higher concentrations of lead than lower layers. There is an exceptional episode of ‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ which covers it.
You’ve got it right. The problem is that California farmers aren’t paying for the externalities of their water use. They’re using an outdated system of water-rights that ignores the changing climate of the area.
Adapt your agriculture to dry-land methods. Otherwise you’re going to destroy it.
A way for California legislators to force the issue, would be to implement significantly higher property taxes for water-rights holders. You have water rights under the old system? Congrats. Your property taxes went up 100%.
Some regolith-walking humans and a financial/political industry predicated on the furtherance of s single, metastasised and corrupt energy-industry begs to differ.
Massive investment with massive commitment can advance the state of the art massively in a time frame that can seem like pure fantasy to the naysayers. And if you think there isn’t a fundamental need to advance the technology which could ameliorate the coming water-wars, I have some bad news for you.
It’s more like three gallons at least, maybe as much as five - the efficiency of desalination is really low.
Oh, and the cost of replacing the membranes every couple of years or so - adds up to more than the cost of the plant after a couple of cycles.
Question is, does California have the time for that? It sounds to me like they’re going to run out of water long before you can produce enough desalinated water to feed even part of the state’s agriculture…
Or in other words, the only way to solve the problem is to make it worse so that the people creating it go away?
My understanding is that, based on my predication of total destruction ( ), the employment of even the current state of the art would still be preferable to allowing the destruction and depletion of the aquifers.
My entire bloody point, everybody, is that short-sighted resource depletion will turn out, in the long run, to be far more expensive than really, truly, super-expensive counter-options we might currently employ.
We have some experience with desal plants here. I don’t think the current tech can be ramped up fast enough to make a tangible difference. You may be able to save a few towns, but from where I’m sitting, agriculture is doomed.
Unless, that is, you start seeing massive precipitation events for the next ten years or so. Even then, the ground water table’s not going to go back to where it was…
What’s that saying about rolling in the mud with engineers?
“Well, if I completely ignore the point of what your saying and instead focus on technical hurdles inherent to your suggestion, I think you’ll find I have no sense of proportion or humour.”
Really someone soon is going to get it and fall back on, ‘snyerk, jus’ trollin bro!’
I get what you’re saying. What I’m saying is that it’s not enough. It’s not a question of throwing money into it. I don’t think there exists enough money to make desalination work at the scales you need in the timeframe you need. There’s no Yankee-ingenuity-pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps-elbow-grease-sweat-of-the-brow solution for this.
“Well, actually it’s been proven that the sweat-wicking and skin-conditioning properties of, uh, many forms of mud, had been proven to be effective in creating an atmosphere of comfort conducive to the completion of engineering goals. Uh.”
You understand that even the current state of the technology and the implementation of such, as expensive as that would be, would still be preferable to the destructive implications of continuing with the current program of water usage buuuut you’d still like to focus on issues with developing desalination technology?
Underlining my hyperbole is the suggestion that the implementation of more expensive options, even really fucking expensive, impractical options, is preferable to the short-sighted and ultimately destructive continuation of current practices.
Are you commonly to be found beating dead horses into dust, or is this just a new hobby for you?
Wars for water not oil 
