[Cog]

Three years living in California courtesy of the us army was enough for me.

[Tanada]

If these folks have their way California won't need migrant farmers because they won't have water to waste on Agriculture.

https://youtu.be/5eCytLfHaPw

[KaiserJeep]

Hey, I just moved out of the place.

However I must point out that in Silicon Valley, this year the price of an average Middle Class home such as the 1350 sq ft I just sold, is about $1M, and houses are in short supply. There are more homeless about every day, and more illegal immigrants as well, the underground economy is florishing.

There are no portents of Doom anywhere in sight.

[Tanada]

Hey, I just moved out of the place.

However I must point out that in Silicon Valley, this year the price of an average Middle Class home such as the 1350 sq ft I just sold, is about $1M, and houses are in short supply. There are more homeless about every day, and more illegal immigrants as well, the underground economy is florishing.

There are no portents of Doom anywhere in sight.

The video, which you clearly didn't watch, is about setting the Colorado free by removing the dams on the river. No dams, no irrigation, no electricity, no problem...

[Newfie]

I like it! It certinally supports degrowth.

[Tanada]

I like it! It certainly supports degrowth.

That is not how humans in the real world work. You take away two major hydroelectric dams and people will demand new fossil fuel plants be built to make up the difference ASAP.

[KaiserJeep]

People in California have been agitating for dam removals for decades. Thing is, once the dam has been built and used, the majority of environmental damage is in the past. The benefits are there for as long as you make power and confine irrigation water. That makes most dam removals silly ideas.

[Tanada]

People in California have been agitating for dam removals for decades. Thing is, once the dam has been built and used, the majority of environmental damage is in the past. The benefits are there for as long as you make power and confine irrigation water. That makes most dam removals silly ideas.

You behave as a rational human being. The anti-dam advocates on the other hand operate on emotions though they do tend to throw in a random cherry picked statistic here or there to try and sound more credible.

Unfortunately a dozen or so dams on smaller water courses in Washington and Oregon have been 'decommissioned' and demolished. Each time that happened the loss of electric generating capacity was made up by additional fossil fuel consumption. Even worse these small 'victories' whetted the appetite of the anti-human Luddite crowd who want to see "Nature returned to its pristine state" with no concept that their own lifestyle would be completely abrogated by such measures.

[Newfie]

I like it! It certainly supports degrowth.

That is not how humans in the real world work. You take away two major hydroelectric dams and people will demand new fossil fuel plants be built to make up the difference ASAP.

Yes I understand. But also I understand we will likely have population collapse in the relative near future. Since collapse seems inevitable I’d like to see us do the least damage possible in the meantime.

That and I’m in a quarrelsome mood. I spent near on a month in the USA and it’s gotten under my skin. LOL

[EnergyUnlimited]

You behave as a rational human being. The anti-dam advocates on the other hand operate on emotions though they do tend to throw in a random cherry picked statistic here or there to try and sound more credible.

Unfortunately a dozen or so dams on smaller water courses in Washington and Oregon have been 'decommissioned' and demolished. Each time that happened the loss of electric generating capacity was made up by additional fossil fuel consumption. Even worse these small 'victories' whetted the appetite of the anti-human Luddite crowd who want to see "Nature returned to its pristine state" with no concept that their own lifestyle would be completely abrogated by such measures.

Why not to dismantle a dam voluntarily, in orderly fashion, if it may well fail in the future due to lack of funds necessary to maintain it and decomission it safely?
Look on your failing infrastructure around. Tens of thousands of compromised bridges, decaying roads and railways, outdated designs of NPP. Skyscrappers won't last for ever either.
All these need careful management because lack of funds for infrastructure maintainence seen already US wide may easy lead to a pile up of emergencies where critical tasks are overlooked to a prospect of catastrophic outcome.
It is also observed that students are increasingly underperforming in STEM courses and quality of education in general deteriorates alarmingly fast.
There is a good chance that in the future intellectual potential required for certain tasks might no longer be available and certain decomissioning works may no longer be possible or unacceptable and dangerous time delays may haunt such projects.
It is important to manage pending decay carefully, while skilled labor, funds and equipment are still there.

[KaiserJeep]

The first part of dismantling anything is to plan and build a replacement. We are not after all, returning the country to wilderness, instead with our growing population, we are further developing it.

[Ibon]

A bridge only collapses one time
A dam only fails once.

No need to decommission. Easier to just have a population socialized to the inherent instabilities that are part of de industrialization.

You drive slow and cautious on roads full of pot holes.

Potholes slow a culture down.....

Potholes are good

Collapsing infrastructure instills gratitude and appreciation on a culture that survives another day

Dont decommission anything


Let the collapsing infrastructure redefine our cultural values.

[Cog]

Hey California is offering free health care to all. Citizen? They don't care. Just take up residence and its all free to you.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Hey California is offering free health care to all. Citizen? They don't care. Just take up residence and its all free to you.

You mean dispensing tens of millions of syringes for peoples in need?

At least there is some progress in Washington though.
Those who have died will be composted, presumably to prevent them rottening on the street as they fell.
https://www.newschannel6now.com/2019/05 ... an-bodies/
It wont take long before the dead became a precious resource.
We could make soap, nitroglycerin, matresses or even a very cool and fashionable lamp out of them and whatever is left could be converted either into a ferilizer or white phosphorus for incendiary munitions.
The good news is that all necessary technology is already in place and tested.

[Cog]

I was very much against making Narcan freely available to save these people from overdoses.

[diemos]

Freedom ... means being free to destroy yourself.

Society is under no obligation to expend resources to save you from yourself and should be expending resource to minimize the impact to innocent bystanders of the collateral damage of your self destruction.

[rangerone314]

The main reason why politicians want to "save" people is not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it gives them an excuse to control EVERYONE more tightly and have more power for THEMSELVES.

[ozcad]

In late response to earlier parts of this thread, I notice that nobody seems to have proposed the use of wave action to push sea water through desalination filters.
It seems to me that it would avoid the need for cubic amounts of electricity too be generated and regulated and transported down to the ocean.
It would pump when there were waves and not pump when there were not, needing only to maintain an average target over weeks or months. No critical regulation required beyond a big water tap.
O.K. you mech. eng. types, what do we need to make it work? ...Apart from controlling objections from vested interests, that is. For example I foresee high pressures if the water needed to be raised to significant heights on its journey inland.

[Newfie]

Desalinization requires high water pressure, something like 1,500 PSI IIRC.

Unless you know of some other technology.

[ozcad]

Newfie said:

Unless you know of some other technology.

Nope. I got nuffin else. Sorry.
My main thrust was about the doubtful wisdom of burning FF's followed by multiple energy transformations to get a bit of mechanical work done when you could directly harness the mechanical energy of waves, which, I hear, are often close to water. Near-zero GHG emissions to run.
The high water pressure is a worry, the head of water required to raise water over intermediate terrain to get it inland is directly added to the filter pressure differential.
We could use one pump for filtering, the LOW pressure output of which is fed into a secondary delivery pump. All wave-powered.
This would reduce the danger of having extremely high pressures throughout a large scale delivery network. All of the above is still required if FF's are used to power things anyway.
Suggestions invited.