[HN Gopher] Three-quarters of the land is drying out, 'redefinin...
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Three-quarters of the land is drying out, 'redefining life on
Earth'
Author : rntn
Score : 119 points
Date : 2024-12-25 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grist.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (grist.org)
| dark_star wrote:
| This doesn't address the ecosystem problems and costs imposed by
| climate change - but for crops and drinking water, it looks like
| fresh water created by solar powered desalinization is going to
| be very inexpensive in the future. [1][2] This is mainly due to
| the fact that solar power will be almost free in the near
| future.[3]
|
| 1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/a-vision-
| for-t...
|
| 2. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-
| more-w...
|
| 3. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-
| batt...
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| So, too cheap to meter?
| zweifuss wrote:
| Certainly not. But old solar cells that still have a certain
| lifespan can be obtained almost free of charge by anyone who
| wants them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Labor of installation is anywhere from 5 to 25% of the
| cost, depending on location. Add in any missing parts
| (wiring, inverters) and permitting costs, and you may find
| yourself just as well off buying new panels for the added
| efficiency.
|
| You'll either need less labor and materials, or get more
| output from the same land space, depending on your needs.
|
| Reusing old cells makes sense in some applications, but for
| almost anything commercial or not a handyman special, I
| don't know that the numbers work out very well in their
| favor.
| nine_k wrote:
| Too cheap to meter, as long as you have no SLA. Much like
| solar-generated heat is "too cheap to meter" in traditional
| greenhouses.
|
| Desalination is not sensitive to input power fluctuations, as
| long as you have a large enough reservoir to even out the
| spikes. The natural desalination cycle, with evaporation of
| ocean water, clouds, mountains, and rivers, already worrks
| like that, but probably a more localized setup with electric
| pumps and reverse-osmosis membranes could bring freshwater
| more directly where humans need it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Reservoir, solar (floating on the reservoir + ground mount
| nearby), cheap batteries. Would allow for balancing desal
| generation with grid needs.
|
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/03/12/floating-pv-for-
| desal...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98hZI5CfQXU
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXJJFBEX-g
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/87698.pdf
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Unfortunately the massive reservoirs tend to be quite far
| away from the salt water.
|
| For desalinization plants to operate with the sun entirely
| new massive fresh water reservoirs would need to be
| constructed.
| travisporter wrote:
| As a close follower of Casey, I have become disillusioned with
| the lack of progress in this space. Certainly solar is cheaper
| but his own company is very slow to scale up and ignores the
| logistical challenges of these huge endeavors. The salton sea
| lithium project should be a slam dunk but is very slow because
| building big things takes time.
|
| Also, not everything he says is gospel
| amandell wrote:
| Projects at that scale will never get built - it doesn't
| matter if it is solar desalination. High speed rail in CA is
| a perfect analog - way too many ways (regulatory +
| environmental) to kill projects of this size. The only way
| something happens at the salton sea is with state mandate to
| implement it.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| People don't understand the full impact and consequences of
| drought.
|
| When you draw down the water table, the ground compacts. _You
| never get that water storage capacity back._ There 's no way to
| uncompact hundreds of feet worth of ground across thousands of
| square miles of earth. There are places in California where the
| ground has compacted several dozen feet.
|
| When you put poison onto the ground, it usually goes _into_ the
| ground, and sure, the ground may act like a kind of HPLC column
| and some of that poison might take years to decades to reach the
| water table...but then what?
|
| When you melt chunks of the arctic and antarctic, you don't just
| cause sea water levels to rise. You also reduce salinity, and
| affect global-scale air and water currents like the jetstream -
| causing dramatic shifts in temperatures and water content of air.
|
| Indigenous peoples have been warning us for ~10 generations that
| selfishness will/is destroying the planet. Nobody in power has
| cared, instead mocking those who do as "snowflakes" and "anti
| growth" and "anti progress" and so on. All to make more money.
|
| You cannot eat money.
|
| Your friends cannot eat money.
|
| Your children cannot eat money.
|
| Their children cannot eat money.
| bubbleRefuge wrote:
| All true but most people in the world are worried about putting
| food on the table and taking care of their kids. Fix social
| justice and you get on the road to fixing the costs of
| unfettered capitalism.
| mmooss wrote:
| > but most people in the world are worried about putting food
| on the table and taking care of their kids
|
| People love to repeat this myth, as if most human beings
| won't care about others or about their own future, as if they
| can't understand enlightened self-interest, or can't
| understand climate change. Mostly, it's yet another argument
| for powerlessness and inaction.
|
| The public has gotten behind so many things now and
| historically. Right now they are the power behind movements
| that have nothing to offer but brazen falsehoods, corruption,
| and hate. And yet all the good people say, mass movements are
| impossible, there's nothing we can do but suffer.
| sb8244 wrote:
| From my perspective, the feeling is people at large don't
| care. Likely because it's difficult, uncomfortable,
| expensive, or all 3.
|
| Do I wish it wasn't that way? Yes. But what if it stays
| that way? Is there a solution then?
|
| I'm not saying the fight shouldn't be had. I am saying that
| --at least in the USA--change doesn't really appear to be a
| priority unless the $ is there.
| mmooss wrote:
| You are not an observer watching from the Moon, you are
| an agent, a full participant right here on Earth. Your
| 'perspective' is the problem, not a third-party
| observation.
|
| In wars, enemy propaganda says the kinds of things you
| are saying, to create despair and powerlessness. Look up
| operations like Tokyo Rose, for example. It's more
| powerful than any other weapon - it causes the foe to
| unilaterally disarm. And, as propagandists intend, here
| you are repeating it, spreading the disease.
|
| Imagine you are working on a team, and someone keeps
| saying 'nobody cares', it's probably hopeless, etc. That
| person is the problem, spreading a communicable disease
| within the team.
|
| The good people outnumber the bad, by a lot. Goodness is
| not a new or alien concept, but fundamental to humanity
| and to every culture. Human rights has been
| overwhelmingly successful and popular across people and
| cultures. History shows it overwhelmingly. All that is
| missing is belief in themselves and a way forward.
|
| Instead of this disease, you could spread what people
| actually need. Hope, courage, belief in what is right.
| sb8244 wrote:
| Gross generalization and characterization.
|
| You can push for change while also recognizing that
| others don't respond well to it. Why? Because you need to
| adjust tactics to get the outcome you want.
|
| Blindly "spreading hope" is just as lazy imo as saying
| everything is futile.
|
| You have to live in the world the way it is, not the way
| you want it to be.
|
| And let me be very direct: I'm close to positive the
| approach you've shared will not work. Sorry. It will be
| too late by the time people get onboard (when it's clear
| that the medium-term negatives will outweigh shorter term
| costs).
| mmooss wrote:
| You don't provide any evidence; you just seem to think
| your despair is objective reality, not merely your
| subjective perception, and insist on it. You are
| following the rhetoric of propaganda.
|
| As I said, there is a long, long history of people doing
| far more against much greater odds. What many people are
| doing now is just propaganda and cowardice; nothing is
| stopping them.
|
| Make the future a bright one, don't drag everyone down
| and make those bad things happen.
| sb8244 wrote:
| A Pollyanna approach is not the answer (and rarely is.) I
| believe you've missed my point.
|
| I'll state it again although I don't have good faith in
| this conversation: because the majority of people don't
| prioritize (or even believe in climate change), the
| tactics are going to be different than other social
| issues.
|
| Literally look up any polling on the matter for "proof."
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| With what happened to the CEO of UHC, I think we are
| starting to see society hit a breaking point. Where
| simply "acting through the process" is no longer
| acceptable to an increasing minority of people who are
| getting ready to... well. Best not type it, lest I end up
| on more watch lists.
|
| I don't endorse that kind of action, FWIW, I've lived
| through enough historically significant events already
| and I'm not even forty. But the powers that be seem
| unwilling to simply make less money, so something's going
| to give eventually.
| yarekt wrote:
| It's more that change won't happen until it has serious
| impact to majority of population.
|
| It sounds cold but food/water/housing shortage will be
| solved once it starts affecting > 51% of the population.
| (or at least resources will start flowing towards real
| solutions).
|
| The sad part is by then there will most likely be
| irreparable damage (as well as enormous amount of human
| suffering). That's at least how the western part of the
| world sees things
|
| For the record, I care, but there's only so many people I
| can convince to stop eating meat
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| For me personally it has been very disheartening to see how
| many people simply don't care about what goes on slightly
| outside of their immediate vicinity.
|
| The one simple easiest thing you can do to fight
| environmental disasters is to stop eating meats. Or at
| least reduce the consumption of the most harmful ones. Try
| taking up that conversation with people whose opinion on
| the matter you don't know. Most of the time it's not going
| to be pleasant, satisfying or leading to much progress.
|
| People like to think about big picture decisions with their
| taste buds and emotions.
| mmooss wrote:
| > it has been very disheartening to see how many people
| simply don't care about what goes on slightly outside of
| their immediate vicinity.
|
| They are disheartened by you spreading this myth. Plenty
| of people have and do and will do otherwise.
| lazide wrote:
| Have you ever lived in any of those places?
|
| As someone who has, the western concept of social justice is
| a laughable pipe dream.
| asah wrote:
| Environmental damage is real sure, but conservation and
| deprivation inspire nobody and aren't politically practical.
| The obvious conclusion is that the solution lies in some form
| of geoengineering, with $trillion budget to modify the Earth to
| suit billions of humans enjoying comfortable lifestyles.
| bwestergard wrote:
| Our current way of living is a deprivation. The popularity of
| homesteading fantasies bespeaks the desire for a very
| different and less self-destructive way of life.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| Until we demonstrate the ability to actually perform
| meaningful feats of geoengineering and the sustained
| willingness to commit trillions of dollars to it, this
| proposal is basically science fiction
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| Your children, however, can eat their friends, and their
| friends' children.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Nobody in power has cared, instead mocking those who do as
| "snowflakes" and "anti growth" and "anti progress" and so on.
| All to make more money.
|
| I'm the type of person the Trumpers call a "Soy Boy", and I'm
| so sick of this hyperbole.
|
| The main solution, if we listened 20 years ago, was that we
| should all stop using non-renewable energy (basically all
| energy at the time) and eat bugs.
|
| We are at a point now where if we don't do anything, there's a
| decent chance current trends take us to a nearly ~100%
| renewable future in 40 years (if you count nuclear and hydro).
|
| >90% of people on the planet will take the climate change that
| is most likely to come from our 20-years prior fossil fuel use
| and the coming 40 years, than to have gone back to living like
| indigenous people 20 years ago and remained there forever.
|
| There isn't really a world in which we all stopped using fossil
| fuels and industrial farming and arrived at all the renewable
| tech we have today, and the ability to produce it at the scale
| we do now.
|
| Climate change is real, so is progress. Most people are willing
| to make the trade.
|
| We are so inferior to be able to turn this planet into Venus,
| like most of the climate Doomers say we're going to.
|
| We likely won't even bring the Earth back to it's typical
| temperature range - which is MUCH hotter over the last ~450M
| years than it is now.
|
| If you're telling me we're going to cataclysmically destroy the
| planet because we _might_ bring temperatures _close to_ their
| average over the last ~450M, I 'm going to be skeptical.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Do we have to eat bugs? I'm vegan
| boothby wrote:
| You eat bugs. Be they flour mites, dust mites, eyelash
| mites, fruit fly eggs, parasitic wasps... your home, body,
| and food all have a nonzero chance of hosting bugs small
| enough to escape your attention. They inevitably end up
| going down the hatch from time to time.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Obviously not what people mean by that.
| palata wrote:
| > We are so inferior to be able to turn this planet into
| Venus, like most of the climate Doomers say we're going to.
|
| This is absolutely beside the point. We don't remotely need
| to turn the planet into Venus for our civilization to
| collapse.
|
| The question is: how do you feel about probably living in a
| state of global instability (including war) and famines
| before the end of your own life? Because that's what seems to
| be the most likely if we don't magically start giving a shit.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > The question is: how do you feel about probably living in
| a state of global instability (including war) and famines
| before the end of your own life? Because that's what seems
| to be the most likely if we don't magically start giving a
| shit.
|
| That's pretty typical for the global civilization. We have
| a recency bias to the post-ww2 is the norm. That was a
| highly atypical peaceful time.
|
| It would be surprising that trend continued - even in a
| climate vacuum.
|
| How do we know that wouldn't happen anyway just given how
| many people have been born? How do we know that the planet
| getting 2C hotter is the cause, and exactly how much of the
| cause it is?
| wat10000 wrote:
| Maybe it would happen regardless. Do you think massive
| disruptions in agriculture would make it more or less
| likely?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| We've had massive distributions in agriculture for the
| last 40 years.
|
| Are the going to offset productivity gains, and new areas
| being more productive?
|
| We could almost feed 50% more humans if we had less
| livestock (or even just more efficient - like more pork
| instead of beef).
|
| Livestock takes up almost 80% of ag land...
|
| We're not all going to starve to death if crop yields go
| down slightly.
| jfim wrote:
| Depends on who "we" includes. First world, probably not.
| People doing rainfall based subsistence agriculture, some
| will.
| wat10000 wrote:
| You seem to approach this with extremely binary thinking.
| Either we all starve or we're all fine. The Earth is
| destroyed, or climate change isn't a problem.
|
| No, we're not all going to starve to death. But it
| doesn't take that much change in agricultural output for
| some people to starve to death. And it doesn't take that
| many starving people to severely disrupt a society.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Hell, people all over the world are already and have been
| starving for decades, because we don't feed people
| because people need to eat; we feed them because it makes
| money. And in the areas of the globe where it doesn't,
| people starve, while elsewhere people throw away shit
| tons of food.
| palata wrote:
| > We're not all going to starve to death if crop yields
| go down slightly.
|
| You vastly under-estimate the problem. We are talking
| about crop yields going down _dramatically_. The way we
| are heading right now, it 's completely worthless to talk
| about livestock: the question is really how many billions
| will die because we can't grow enough food anymore.
| palata wrote:
| > How do we know that wouldn't happen anyway
|
| We don't know what would happen if we didn't screw
| ourselves, but we have some idea what will happen from
| what we are doing.
|
| > How do we know that the planet getting 2C hotter is the
| cause, and exactly how much of the cause it is?
|
| 2C? You're being optimistic. We've past 1.5 this year.
| The consequences of climate change have just started:
| right now it's minimal (people die from natural
| disasters, but globally that's minimal). What we see,
| though, is that "bad things" (e.g. natural disasters,
| extreme events) are happening faster and worse than what
| our models predicted.
|
| In other words, every day we observe that the
| consequences of us screwing the climate is worse than
| what we thought. Let's now think a bit about that part:
| the "optimistic" scenario:
|
| * We are now heading towards 4C unless we dramatically
| change the way we live. 2C is already out of reach, 1.5C
| is already here.
|
| * At 4C, you have a whole strip of countries around the
| equator that becomes unlivable for humans: it's too hot
| and humid, meaning that we can't regulate our temperature
| by sweating, meaning that we die. We are not talking a
| few millions refugees, we are talking _billions_.
|
| * Imagine billions of people, from entire countries,
| deciding to move to _livable_ territories. We 're talking
| billions of people, with their military, moving into the
| lands of other billions people with their military. We
| have never seen that in human history, but it doesn't
| seem good.
|
| * Apart from that strip of land and the 4C, in a much
| shorter term we are talking droughts. Imagine first world
| countries not having enough food for everybody.
|
| * And last point: all of this (and more) happens in a
| world were the amount of oil is dangerously reaching a
| peak (in some places it already has: the European economy
| feels it since 2007 because access to oil has become
| harder since then). Not only it means more wars for oil,
| but also it means that globally we will have less oil to
| tackle those challenges. There is no real alternative to
| oil, that's just a fact: we will have less energy,
| whatever it is.
|
| * Of course, in order to tackle all those challenges, we
| will need energy. So we will be more likely to keep using
| oil as much as we can, which makes it even more likely
| that we are going towards a world with 4C.
|
| Last fact: the climate changes that made the dinosaurs
| (and countless other species) disappear happened orders
| of magnitude _slower_ than what we are _measuring_ (I 'm
| not talking predictions, but actual measurements). So
| it's not completely stupid to wonder if our species (on
| top of the countless others that have already and will
| disappear in the next few decades) will disappear
| entirely.
|
| And again: all that I wrote above is the _optimistic_
| prediction from our current models. And from what we
| measure, it 's actually coming faster, harder and
| stronger.
|
| You can rationalise as much as you want: if you are not
| alarmed, you are either uninformed or irrational.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Anybody saying "destroy the planet" is being silly, but the
| average temperature over the last half a billion years is
| entirely irrelevant to the survival of modern civilization,
| or even modern biodiversity.
|
| How do you know most people are willing to make the trade?
| People don't have a choice. This stuff is driven by systems
| vastly larger than the individual. Nobody can decide to opt
| out of progress so they can also opt out of climate change.
| Even if I could opt for a zero-emissions lifestyle, climate
| change would continue with no detectable difference.
| bitwize wrote:
| The three P's: powerdown, permaculture, population control.
|
| If we do not achieve them, they will be done for us, far less
| pleasantly.
| jondwillis wrote:
| Why powerdown? How do you propose humane population control?
| I get permaculture though ;)
| einpoklum wrote:
| > How do you propose humane population control?
|
| Actually, in many (most?) countries this is already
| happening, for better or for worse. It's just a limited
| subset of areas/countries that have quick population
| growth. This has different causes and the possible
| solutions are politically, socially, religiously and
| economically complex. Or rather, getting to a situation
| where a solution is applied is complex more than the actual
| solution.
| ipython wrote:
| Agreed. That's why I'm glad the new administration is
| prioritizing establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve, for when
| the shit _really_ hits the fan.
|
| (/s if you couldn't tell)
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| You can desalinate water with money though.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| only if "with money" means "with immunity from cost-
| effectiveness considerations," which is to say: no you can't.
| Not until we have way, way more abundant energy.
|
| Meanwhile the EROI of petrochemicals continues to fall.
| egberts1 wrote:
| We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by sprawling
| urban areas either.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by
| sprawling urban areas either.
|
| I hear this a lot and trust it is a widespread occurrence. Here
| (gulf-coast FL), farms are commonly non-viable when sold to
| developers. Our tree-based crops seem especially prone to farm-
| busting economics, diseases and weather.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| This is a negligible effect in comparison to those described in
| the article.
| thrance wrote:
| It's a "big" topic here in France, a law recently passed that
| prohibits mayors from increasing the total artificial surface
| in their municipalities. I have seen many right-wing
| politicians wanting to get rid of it.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Whats interesting to me is climate change has been shown to
| actually increase total annual rainfall on land[1], but I guess
| this means that its those areas where farming was once feasible
| and where people now live are becoming more arid?
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-
| indica...
| scythe wrote:
| The issue is that the increased temperatures increase
| evaporation at the same time that they increase precipitation,
| and in many places, the net effect on water availability is
| expected to be negative.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> but I guess this means that its those areas where farming
| was once feasible and where people now live are becoming more
| arid?_
|
| Yep, it's an agricultural catch 22. Arid regions where people
| live are generally formed by mountains absorbing rainfall. When
| that water washes down, it carries nutrients and forms very
| agriculturally productive alluvial plains like in the Nile
| delta (although the reason for that desertification is Hadley
| cell circulation, not mountains, iirc). It's both why Egyptian
| civilization was so successful and why so many artifacts
| survived as long as they were stored away from the delta. The
| longer the region has been arid, the thicker the layer of
| usable nutrients and some areas like California are also on top
| of ancient oceans with thick layers of fossilized organisms
| providing calcium carbonate and phosphorus. These regions also
| tend to have favorable temperatures that support multiple
| growing seasons per year and without plentiful water, there are
| far fewer other plant species to compete with.
|
| In wetter regions, that water instead washes most of the
| nutrients into the ocean to the point where areas like the
| Amazon are so nutrient poor that organisms evolve unique
| adaptation like pitcher plants and the whole ecosystem depends
| on intercontinental dust that's carried all the way from the
| Sahara (the Bodele Depression especially) [1]. Farming is still
| plenty feasible in wetter areas (Brazil and the PNW have plenty
| of agriculture for example and it's the whole basis for rice
| farming) but it's nowhere near as productive
|
| [1] https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-
| sat...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Just wanted to say that was a fascinating read thank you.
| conartist6 wrote:
| It's ok, humans don't need water.
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