To keep it on topic, I asked it to show me how to replenish Lake Mead, but it just showed me a lake full of water. If AI won’t rescue us from ourselves, then who will?
Another body has, err…surfaced.
They need to get CSI back on the air.
So does this mean that all of this precious drinking water has had microbits of dead people this whole time?
“It’s the spleen that makes it good!”
Other places are in worse shape:
I’d like to hope that all those people dependent on magical infinite water mining will leave off living in a fucking desert. Or they could all be given a burro, a pickaxe and shovel, an old felt hat, and a sack of cornmeal and learn how to live within the ecosystem’s constraints instead of using the planet as their toilet.
But I’m not angry or anything.
Las Vegas gets a lot of criticism for water usage, but they’re actually very big on water conservation. “The community used 26 billion gallons less water in 2021 than in 2002, despite a population increase of about 750,000 residents during that time. This represents a 48 percent decline in the community’s per capita water use since 2002.”
Yep.
And pee. Don’t forget pee. You don’t think water skiers are going to run to shore to pee? HA!
Every bit of water on the planet, with the possible exception of water in very deep sealed aquifers, must have had some contact with dead people, and dead other beings, by now.
Oh yes – and with the waste products of thousands if not millions of species.
And that, folks, is where almost all life comes from, us included: from the nutrients therein. Sterility is sterile.
Good for them, but cities shouldn’t exist in deserts if they must live beyond the limits of the water there. The whole idea of “sustainability” is one that humans are going to have to either get behind or die.
Of course. Also all kinds of other stuff like animal excrement and dead animals and assorted human-generated trash. Any open air reservoir will always have that kind of stuff in it. Virtually all of it gets filtered out before it gets into the municipal water systems, though.
“I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.”
– W.C. Fields
While I do agree that other cities are not doing the right thing, the point is that Las Vegas showed what should be done.
“Shouldn’t”? But they do. Cities exist where they do because during their history the right combination of factors led them to be successful. For cities in the desert southwest, there has been enough water to sustain them, and then some - they grow cotton and hay in AZ because there has been enough water for that, too. But right now they got this drought going on, and there is just enough water for now to keep things going, except the cotton and hay - those farmers are going to suffer.
But the point is cities exist where they do because it has worked, so far. I think there is reasonable discussion on how cities in all regions are going to have to adapt to climate change, but it’s non-sense to say they “shouldn’t” exist. That’s like saying New Orleans shouldn’t exist because part of it is below sea level. Or New York shouldn’t exist because it’s now in the path of tropical storms. If it does not work any longer, the city will start to die - and that has happened when the wrong combination of factors starts killing it (Detroit). We’re a long way from that for LV and other cities in the drylands.
On the other hand, Detroit is adjacent to a large source of fresh water, so perhaps it will grow over time as water becomes scarce elsewhere?
Sorry, I spent a lifetime in California and have seen first hand what happens when humans mine water and pretend it comes from a magical endless source.
There’s such a long list of things that humans do that they shouldn’t, including building cities that should never have been built, that I can no longer even think about it.
They may be doing something wonderful - but isn’t some additional info needed to conclude so? Namely, how much they were using before, and how their current use compares to other cities. A 48% decline doesn’t. mean that much if (# based on no facts) in 2002 they were using 2x as much water as other similarly sized cities.
My understanding is that LV is very forward in the use of grey water.
I have no problem with this analysis, but question the resources that should be expended to allow them continue and even grow given changing factors. Federal funds to bail out NO after a hurricane. Or any reason LV and others in the desert ought to pay anything other than “market rate” for water.
The big challenge in LV is that the guests / tourists / visitors constitute a sizeable percentage of the consuming “population”. Depending on whether you (or any statistical agency) choose the permanent residents or the few-day “residents”, or the sum, in the denominator, you’ll get very different per capita numbers.
When I lived there in the 1980s the locals were part of the solution and the visitors were massively the problem. They were also the only thing that kept our lights on. So keeping them happy mattered. Lots. And they lurved them some big green golf courses and fountains.
Google ‘all water is dinosaur pee’ for a variety of delightful articles.
Several years ago, I was sitting on my porch reading a book (my apartment building is next to a creek) and some grade-school aged kids walked by, and one of them, who was probably 10 years old at the most, said, “Did you know that we drink recycled toilet water? We learned that in school today!” The other kids all went, “EWWWWW!” and I pointed at the creek and said, “Yes, I did know that, and the dinosaurs drank some of that water, too.”
In the last couple of weeks, the Southwest has experienced monsoon rains, and for now, Lake Mead’s level has largely stabilized, because they aren’t having to let as much out for the people downstream.
In the meantime, a fourth body has been found at Lake Mead.
Fourth set of human remains found at Lake Mead as drought drops water levels : NPR.
Some scientists are predicting that instead of more drought there could be a megaflood one of these years.