Superb detail and explanation, Geoffrey. My long-dead uncle worked as a Civil Engineer for the Dept of the Interior from Amarillo, TX and told the extended family decades ago that the Ogallala Aquifer was being mined and some day it would be depleted. It's easy to imagine that some chemical processing plant could add closed reuse systems (at added cost to their products for sure) but it's hard to imagine any replacement can fix the need for irrigation as drought becomes normalized.
Thank you, I appreciate the comment. An article like this leads to one rabbit hole after another. Almost every paragraph could become its own essay.
I didn't dive into it, but some of the industrial entities I called out in Corpus Christi appear to have made efforts to reuse water. That makes for good PR, but is nowhere near creating a sustainable future. We're between the hardest rock and hardest place possible, continuing to burn fossil fuels or quit them.
Continuing to burn them is a guarantied outcome for humanity as a whole. Quitting them aside from the cowardice of greed and politics that led us here is a non-starter, and also fatal, for the majority, possibly everyone. Either way we're looking at the inevitable results of an irresponsible "good times" system hiding the invariable results.
Marc Reisner, in Cadillac Desert, covered this in 1986. He points out that the aquifers were laid down during the last Ice Age, when Canada was covered by an ice sheet and there was perpetual rainfall south of the ice sheet. There were mammoths and mastodons and lions and smilodons and cheetahs and lamas and giant sloths and short faced bears and bison in North America. There was an inland ocean in Utah. Lots of water, lots of grass and trees, lots of megafauna. And it all went away with the ice sheet. The aquifers are the last bit. And it will take another Ice Age to replace them. Which means Canada gets covered by an ice sheet again.
So, do we hope that the collapse of the AMOC starts the return of the glaciers?
Cadillac Desert has been recommended to me a number of times recently, perhaps by you? It sounds like a worthy read, however, keeping up with current events to do this writing consumes all my time.
We know AMOC cycles off and on, on its own. Tragically we have hastened the cycle by overheating the oceans.
From the greater perspective of the planet going on, I suppose we don't have to worry about AMOC or the return of the glaciers. From the perspective of you and I and those we love is a different story.
It appears to me, we are more likely to succumb to the realities of heat than AMOC first. Of course, that said exact timing on the cessation of AMOC is unknown. We do know drought and ever more powerful storms fueling flooding are making agriculture and drinking water questionable, and those are just two factors with a host of others, so at this moment I see that as the more immediate threat. And there is the question of the food supply the oceans provide.
A reasonable question, John, one which another reader asked me.
I have not studied desalination enough to give a completely responsible opinion. However, building such facilities requires vast amounts of diesel fuel from mining the rock for concrete steel, copper and more to physically constructing such facilities with heavy equipment. All of those resources are in decline, thus requiring more energy expended for less return. Economically, this is not a sustainable model.
Additionally, US crude is not suitable for diesel, so that's a vulnerability.
Corpus Christi embarked on desalination, but it stalled, an aspect that didn't fit in the confines of this article.
There is also the question of time. Even if desalination could work miracles, such infrastructure at this date may be too late. Wish I could give a more optimistic answer.
Problem is with the reject brine from the plant - it runs out into the Gulf which isn't deep water and you're increasing the salinity of the next water to desalinate, due to the meager currents in the Gulf. Operation requires high electricity consumption.
I have a folder full of links about desalination. The problem is trying to find time to write about all the information I collect, no idea anymore of the articles and reports I've saved — in the tens of thousands I'm sure. No doubt it's high energy and yeah, that brine has to go somewhere. No free lunches in physics. Thanks for your input.
Thank you, Geoff. It's been since the late 80's, when I lived in Brownsville and worked in Matamoros for 4 years, that I've seen the Rio Grande. Back then, when crossing the border, there were not only immigrants wading through the river, but it was often waist-high. This cat-and-mouse game was far less harmful and a matter of routine, rather than the current administration's dehuminization campaign against immigrants. To think that Reagan was a "resonable" conservative vs. the MAGA lunatic autocrat in office today, is a fair statement. Back to climate change, it is ashame that the Rio Grande and other water resources in Texas are dried up. Is desalination in the Gulf possible?
The dehumanization campaign is now one of murder and prison camps. The prison industry, Core Civic for instance is expanding and making hundreds of millions from ICE roundups. It's remarkable how hidden this reality is to the majority in spite of the Minnesota protests and murders of Rene Goode and Alex Pretti. It is chilling to gain insights into how Nazi Germany arose. Hell, ICE was in a suburb of Buffalo where I live jut months ago.
Nobody talks about this.
There was nothing reasonable about Reagan. If it appears so, it's just because our situation was less virulent than today. Milton Friedman, Nixon and Kissinger got neoliberal economics rolling in S. America. Reagan furthered it and Clinton played right along.
I have not studied desalination enough to give a completely responsible opinion. However, building such facilities requires vast amounts of diesel fuel. US crude is not suitable for diesel, so that's a vulnerability. Also, the fuel burned, mining required and GHGs released contribute to the global warming and overshoot. It's likely such efforts at best merely stave off the inevitable IMO, but like I said it's a subject I need to study more.
Most immediately, Australia, Europe and many Asian countries are in immediate serious crisis from the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. The effects will reach are shores soon as will the economic fallout of economic and agricultural failure in the west and southwest states on its heels. We haven't felt the true effects yet.
I can't give you exact numbers at the moment, but there is no question they are accelerating our problems. I wrote about it a while back, doubtless I would like to address it again on many levels.
Thanks again, Geoffrey for another highly informative and wide ranging piece. The current plight of Texas, California and Mexico as you describe them is alarming and worse in prospect: likely within the coming decade. Given the obvious importance of this topic for Americans, I wondered if anyone else in the MSM has written about it, and with similar honesty and clarity? (I’m not holding my breath.)
Thank you. I do what I can with humility. Other people who have seen through MSM have been doing the same. I try to elevate those voices as well. MSM occasionally does good work on our dilemmas, but turns around and does equal harm. I have dumped all my subscriptions in favor of smaller, local and regional reporting. I don't ignore all MSM, but can't take it at face value either.
Where could this awesome and terrifying reporting go that could do us any good? Let's say we successfully "revolt?" How does that alleviate the water situation we have blundered into by ignoring overshoot and the regenerative workings of the planet?
In the meantime, I'm good with "revolt," and I have suggestions I'd like not to be screaming in the wind about: Lately, it's been getting Trump to fire his hires and he and Vance resign. And I wrote about what might get Trump to do a mea culpa. Bearing in mind he is cornered now, why wouldn’t he be receptive to a way out?
Sue, you know I admire your optimism and searching for a reasonable way out of this box, but tragically removing Trump is just a nodule on systemic cancer. Our best hope of removing him appears to be the Epstein files, but then we get Vance, another grifter, and no removal of the evil sycophants who have brought us here, regardless of party. And both have blood on their hands.
This is a moment when blood both figurative and literal is being shed. It's not obvious to the majority, at least its root causes, but is destined to result in chaos. The violence, slavery and misery of fossil fuels perpetrated on the world have come home. This article and my preceding one merely point out some of the specifics of a far larger predicament.
to answer your question regarding revolting, it wouldnt fix the current catastrophe but would help lead us into a "post catastrophe" world where we arent literal slaves to those with all the power and control, whatever kind of that world may be
I agree. The ecological catastrophe would continue. Climate change is just one aspect of overshoot, a result of overconsumption and overpopulation which are a result of fossil fuels jeopardizing our existence and an estimated 100 species a day going extinct. Most unfortunately, we have to overthrow the system first to have any chance of surviving as a species. What a loss of critical time.
IMO, we were likely cooked regardless of Trump winning. Perhaps his utter stupidity and those that use him at least speed us to the necessary overthrow of this deadly system. Perhaps the shock gives us a better chance.
This article and my last one are microcosms of what is happening at world scale. The chaos is going to be overwhelming, and organizing it into a healthy collective response challenging to say the least. For the most part people are uneducated to the issues at hand and guided by propaganda and ignorance of how the planet actually supports us.
We are seeing the same thing. I've said Trump may have saved us by making it bad enough so we'd deal with what was killing us. And no one knows how to deal with it, but my take is that the best chance we have is for everyone to be up to date on the danger. Then this awesome species will at least pay attention, and who knows what genius could result.
You know about another idea is to get us jazzed as to how awesome this species is, where we can be proud of the accomplishments we've made up to this very day, with the moon mission. A depressed humanity wouldn't have much energy for salvation, but a turned-on humanity would.
Just doing some re-reading of this, you don't know what I've proposed. I have some specific ideas that deal with the "won't work" in your response. My posts are a lot easier to get through than yours. Have a look at them.
Superb detail and explanation, Geoffrey. My long-dead uncle worked as a Civil Engineer for the Dept of the Interior from Amarillo, TX and told the extended family decades ago that the Ogallala Aquifer was being mined and some day it would be depleted. It's easy to imagine that some chemical processing plant could add closed reuse systems (at added cost to their products for sure) but it's hard to imagine any replacement can fix the need for irrigation as drought becomes normalized.
Thank you, I appreciate the comment. An article like this leads to one rabbit hole after another. Almost every paragraph could become its own essay.
I didn't dive into it, but some of the industrial entities I called out in Corpus Christi appear to have made efforts to reuse water. That makes for good PR, but is nowhere near creating a sustainable future. We're between the hardest rock and hardest place possible, continuing to burn fossil fuels or quit them.
Continuing to burn them is a guarantied outcome for humanity as a whole. Quitting them aside from the cowardice of greed and politics that led us here is a non-starter, and also fatal, for the majority, possibly everyone. Either way we're looking at the inevitable results of an irresponsible "good times" system hiding the invariable results.
Marc Reisner, in Cadillac Desert, covered this in 1986. He points out that the aquifers were laid down during the last Ice Age, when Canada was covered by an ice sheet and there was perpetual rainfall south of the ice sheet. There were mammoths and mastodons and lions and smilodons and cheetahs and lamas and giant sloths and short faced bears and bison in North America. There was an inland ocean in Utah. Lots of water, lots of grass and trees, lots of megafauna. And it all went away with the ice sheet. The aquifers are the last bit. And it will take another Ice Age to replace them. Which means Canada gets covered by an ice sheet again.
So, do we hope that the collapse of the AMOC starts the return of the glaciers?
Cadillac Desert has been recommended to me a number of times recently, perhaps by you? It sounds like a worthy read, however, keeping up with current events to do this writing consumes all my time.
We know AMOC cycles off and on, on its own. Tragically we have hastened the cycle by overheating the oceans.
From the greater perspective of the planet going on, I suppose we don't have to worry about AMOC or the return of the glaciers. From the perspective of you and I and those we love is a different story.
It appears to me, we are more likely to succumb to the realities of heat than AMOC first. Of course, that said exact timing on the cessation of AMOC is unknown. We do know drought and ever more powerful storms fueling flooding are making agriculture and drinking water questionable, and those are just two factors with a host of others, so at this moment I see that as the more immediate threat. And there is the question of the food supply the oceans provide.
Thank you for the comment and question.
Is it time to start construction of desalination plants on the Gulf of Mexico and the California coast?
A reasonable question, John, one which another reader asked me.
I have not studied desalination enough to give a completely responsible opinion. However, building such facilities requires vast amounts of diesel fuel from mining the rock for concrete steel, copper and more to physically constructing such facilities with heavy equipment. All of those resources are in decline, thus requiring more energy expended for less return. Economically, this is not a sustainable model.
Additionally, US crude is not suitable for diesel, so that's a vulnerability.
Corpus Christi embarked on desalination, but it stalled, an aspect that didn't fit in the confines of this article.
There is also the question of time. Even if desalination could work miracles, such infrastructure at this date may be too late. Wish I could give a more optimistic answer.
Problem is with the reject brine from the plant - it runs out into the Gulf which isn't deep water and you're increasing the salinity of the next water to desalinate, due to the meager currents in the Gulf. Operation requires high electricity consumption.
I have a folder full of links about desalination. The problem is trying to find time to write about all the information I collect, no idea anymore of the articles and reports I've saved — in the tens of thousands I'm sure. No doubt it's high energy and yeah, that brine has to go somewhere. No free lunches in physics. Thanks for your input.
Thank you, Geoff. It's been since the late 80's, when I lived in Brownsville and worked in Matamoros for 4 years, that I've seen the Rio Grande. Back then, when crossing the border, there were not only immigrants wading through the river, but it was often waist-high. This cat-and-mouse game was far less harmful and a matter of routine, rather than the current administration's dehuminization campaign against immigrants. To think that Reagan was a "resonable" conservative vs. the MAGA lunatic autocrat in office today, is a fair statement. Back to climate change, it is ashame that the Rio Grande and other water resources in Texas are dried up. Is desalination in the Gulf possible?
The dehumanization campaign is now one of murder and prison camps. The prison industry, Core Civic for instance is expanding and making hundreds of millions from ICE roundups. It's remarkable how hidden this reality is to the majority in spite of the Minnesota protests and murders of Rene Goode and Alex Pretti. It is chilling to gain insights into how Nazi Germany arose. Hell, ICE was in a suburb of Buffalo where I live jut months ago.
Nobody talks about this.
There was nothing reasonable about Reagan. If it appears so, it's just because our situation was less virulent than today. Milton Friedman, Nixon and Kissinger got neoliberal economics rolling in S. America. Reagan furthered it and Clinton played right along.
I have not studied desalination enough to give a completely responsible opinion. However, building such facilities requires vast amounts of diesel fuel. US crude is not suitable for diesel, so that's a vulnerability. Also, the fuel burned, mining required and GHGs released contribute to the global warming and overshoot. It's likely such efforts at best merely stave off the inevitable IMO, but like I said it's a subject I need to study more.
Most immediately, Australia, Europe and many Asian countries are in immediate serious crisis from the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. The effects will reach are shores soon as will the economic fallout of economic and agricultural failure in the west and southwest states on its heels. We haven't felt the true effects yet.
How much water do these data centers, currently being built, use. Any idea?
I can't give you exact numbers at the moment, but there is no question they are accelerating our problems. I wrote about it a while back, doubtless I would like to address it again on many levels.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-is-hot
Thanks again, Geoffrey for another highly informative and wide ranging piece. The current plight of Texas, California and Mexico as you describe them is alarming and worse in prospect: likely within the coming decade. Given the obvious importance of this topic for Americans, I wondered if anyone else in the MSM has written about it, and with similar honesty and clarity? (I’m not holding my breath.)
Thank you. I do what I can with humility. Other people who have seen through MSM have been doing the same. I try to elevate those voices as well. MSM occasionally does good work on our dilemmas, but turns around and does equal harm. I have dumped all my subscriptions in favor of smaller, local and regional reporting. I don't ignore all MSM, but can't take it at face value either.
Where could this awesome and terrifying reporting go that could do us any good? Let's say we successfully "revolt?" How does that alleviate the water situation we have blundered into by ignoring overshoot and the regenerative workings of the planet?
In the meantime, I'm good with "revolt," and I have suggestions I'd like not to be screaming in the wind about: Lately, it's been getting Trump to fire his hires and he and Vance resign. And I wrote about what might get Trump to do a mea culpa. Bearing in mind he is cornered now, why wouldn’t he be receptive to a way out?
A few recent posts:
Donald to humanity
And from me about Heather Delaney Reese
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/from-donald-to-humanity
Removing this administration now?
Setting us up for civilizational change
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/removing-this-administration-now
Open Letter to Heather Delaney Reese
Can we start something?
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-heather-delaney-reese
Sue, you know I admire your optimism and searching for a reasonable way out of this box, but tragically removing Trump is just a nodule on systemic cancer. Our best hope of removing him appears to be the Epstein files, but then we get Vance, another grifter, and no removal of the evil sycophants who have brought us here, regardless of party. And both have blood on their hands.
This is a moment when blood both figurative and literal is being shed. It's not obvious to the majority, at least its root causes, but is destined to result in chaos. The violence, slavery and misery of fossil fuels perpetrated on the world have come home. This article and my preceding one merely point out some of the specifics of a far larger predicament.
to answer your question regarding revolting, it wouldnt fix the current catastrophe but would help lead us into a "post catastrophe" world where we arent literal slaves to those with all the power and control, whatever kind of that world may be
I agree. The ecological catastrophe would continue. Climate change is just one aspect of overshoot, a result of overconsumption and overpopulation which are a result of fossil fuels jeopardizing our existence and an estimated 100 species a day going extinct. Most unfortunately, we have to overthrow the system first to have any chance of surviving as a species. What a loss of critical time.
IMO, we were likely cooked regardless of Trump winning. Perhaps his utter stupidity and those that use him at least speed us to the necessary overthrow of this deadly system. Perhaps the shock gives us a better chance.
This article and my last one are microcosms of what is happening at world scale. The chaos is going to be overwhelming, and organizing it into a healthy collective response challenging to say the least. For the most part people are uneducated to the issues at hand and guided by propaganda and ignorance of how the planet actually supports us.
We are seeing the same thing. I've said Trump may have saved us by making it bad enough so we'd deal with what was killing us. And no one knows how to deal with it, but my take is that the best chance we have is for everyone to be up to date on the danger. Then this awesome species will at least pay attention, and who knows what genius could result.
You know about another idea is to get us jazzed as to how awesome this species is, where we can be proud of the accomplishments we've made up to this very day, with the moon mission. A depressed humanity wouldn't have much energy for salvation, but a turned-on humanity would.
Just doing some re-reading of this, you don't know what I've proposed. I have some specific ideas that deal with the "won't work" in your response. My posts are a lot easier to get through than yours. Have a look at them.
I remember the children who died in the flood last summer, and wonder what has been done to prevent that from happening again?
Camp Mystic has not reopened and is under criminal investigation.
https://www.statesman.com/news/article/rangers-investigate-camp-mystic-22193465.php