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We don't desalinate in California because we're worried about putting salt into the oceans. Yes, brine releases in the ocean is the big concern. So rather than deal with concept that salinity may increase a percent or two over a tiny area, we'd rather pump all the ground dry, route rivers everywhere, and ration the crap out of water - while simultaneously halting farming in some of the most productive land in the US.

An AC said... >They aren't making salt. Just taking the fresh water part away from the salty water. That water will find its way back to the ocean soon enough.As long as it's mixing a bit it won't be any more than a very local problem.

Dude..

https://www.scientificamerican... ...according to Jeffrey Graham of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography's Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, the salty sludge leftover after desalinization for every gallon of freshwater produced, another gallon of doubly concentrated salt water must be disposed of can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems if dumped willy-nilly offshore. For some desalinization operations, says Graham, it is thought that the disappearance of some organisms from discharge areas may be related to the salty outflow. ...

http://pacinst.org/publication...

Key Issues in Seawater Desalination in California: Marine Impacts
Modern reverse-osmosis desalination plants, such as those planned or proposed on the California coast, take in large volumes of seawater â" generally two gallons are withdrawn for every gallon of freshwater produced â" and pass it through fine-pored membranes to separate freshwater from salt. The highly concentrated brine is then typically disposed of back into the ocean.

With the majority of desalination plants extracting water directly through open water intakes in the ocean, there is a direct impact on marine life. Fish and other marine organisms are killed on the intake screens (impingement); organisms small enough to pass through, such as plankton, fish eggs, and larvae, are killed during processing of the salt water (entrainment). The impacts on the marine environment, even for a single desalination plant, may be subject to daily, seasonal, annual, and even decadal variation, and are likely to be species- and site-specific.

Google "do desalinization plants affect local salinity"

For more.

Well then CA shouldn't have a problem with cutting their water usage for alfalfa, irrigate pastures, and corn then, see page 3? Simple fact is that CA shouldn't be raising cattle, or cattle feed but they get the highest dairy subsidies so that it becomes economically viable to raise cattle there instead of in a climate that is better suited to doing so.

YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!

page 4 (PDF warning)

the biggest change they can cite is that in some areas the average water consumption per person went from 170 gallons to 150 gallons... and that's only a in a couple places

Bullshit.

"Two water distributors in San Francisco and one in East Los Angeles recorded the lowest average totals, 46, 46 and 48, respectively. In Santa Cruz, which has some of the toughest conservation measures in the state, residents used an average of 49 gallons per person a day." "on average, Southern California residents used 119 gallons per person a day". http://www.latimes.com/local/c...

"The population of the U.S. has grown by more than 81 million people since 1975, but total water use has declined. As a result, our per-person water use is almost 30% lower than it was 30 years ago" http://pacinst.org/news/397/

California's "TOTAL WATER USE has been DECLINING since 1980"

"Water used for urban and agricultural purposes has generally remained stable, and has even declined at times, even though population has increased." http://www.lao.ca.gov/2008/rsr...

I won't be responding to you again in this thread.

Well that is a reasonable response when you've been making stupid statements that you can't possibly support. I would have suggested keeping your mouth shut after my first reply demonstrated how baseless and ignorant your statements were.

veganstart.org

Oh yeah, that looks like a nice unbiased source. For example, it omits to mention that 2/3rds of the water that goes into animal feed is "green water", i.e. rain and other renewable sources. In other words, animal-based foods require large amounts of water, but it's mostly renewable water. In order to say that getting rid of lifestock would actually help the problem, you'd need to look at how much water would be required for foods to replace meat and dairy entirely, and where that water would need to come from (it doesn't help the problem if you replace lifestock with plants if those plants end up requiring more water from aquifers than the lifestock does).

BTW here's the full report (PDF warning) on water usage in California if anyone is interested in more numbers.

Who do you work for, Exxon Mobil or Shell?

To quote, "A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of these 198 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. ... Researchers found, in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for ALL [emphasis mine] of today's vehicles if they ran on batteries."
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204

"Side note: the Prius is supposedly worse for the environment than a normal gas-powered car because of the costs of building the batteries and motors)..."

Emphasis on "supposedly", since the Prius "report" was done by an shell organization hiding behind a POBox, and was totally debunked.
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius_redux.pdf

In fact, since the report was done, we now know the Prius numbers are even better than those determined in 2008. Further, old Prius batteries are not simply thrown away or even recycled. Many go on to supplement power plants and other systems during peak power loads, supplanting other batteries that would have had to have been purpose built for that use.

Rare earth issues do exist, which is why a team at Boston's Northeastern University, among others, have been working on substitutes and replacements.

And on. Your anti-green energy talking points are out of date, misleading, and, in some cases, appear to be total fabrications.

Who do you work for, Exxon Mobil or Shell?

To quote, "A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of these 198 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. ... Researchers found, in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for ALL [emphasis mine] of today's vehicles if they ran on batteries."
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204

"Side note: the Prius is supposedly worse for the environment than a normal gas-powered car because of the costs of building the batteries and motors)..."

Emphasis on "supposedly", since the Prius "report" was done by an shell organization hiding behind a POBox, and was totally debunked.
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius_redux.pdf

In fact, since the report was done, we now know the Prius numbers are even better than those determined in 2008. Further, old Prius batteries are not simply thrown away or even recycled. Many go on to supplement power plants and other systems during peak power loads, supplanting other batteries that would have had to have been purpose built for that use.

Rare earth issues do exist, which is why a team at Boston's Northeastern University, among others, have been working on substitutes and replacements.

And on. Your anti-green energy talking points are out of date, misleading, and, in some cases, appear to be total fabrications.

Here, these should do the job:

http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

http://web.archive.org/web/20070714131759/http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Transportation/T07-01_DustToDust.pdf

... they're still better over the lifetime of the vehicle. MIT: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]

You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]

“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]

Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.

Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]

Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:

Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan

That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got

The vast majority of CO2 emissions from cars come from driving them, not manufacturing them.
See for instance page 4 of this report:
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

Sure thing; as if there wasn't an avalanche of research that anyone with 5 minutes couldn't Google up for consumption. *rolls eyes*

Laury Miller and Bruce Douglas "On the rate and causes of twentieth century sea-level rise" Douglas has several seminal papers on the subject.
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level -- if you want the raw data itself
Scientific reticence and sea level rise
The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast

60+ references on Current Sea Level Rise @ Wikipedia (yeah, it's wikipedia; take the article with a pillar of salt and read the referenced papers and articles instead.. durrr)

With respect to the original gp post, the PSMSL dataset "defined the following criteria for selecting records from the PSMSL which were long, reliable, and avoided large vertical geologic changes:"

      1. Each record should be at least 60 years in length
      2. Not be located at collisional plate boundaries
      3. At least 80% complete
      4. Show reasonable agreement at low frequencies with nearby gauges sampling the same water mass
      5. Not be located in regions subject to large post-glacial rebound

So, yah, I think the scientists took into account the obvious issues asked about by the gp: "Is the sea level rising? Or are plate tectonics lowering the land level in relation to the sea?".

Need more? Or is that enough to keep you busy reading for a little while?

The amount of energy and resources and toxic chemicals involved in the car manufacturing process FAR outweighs any "statement" you make with a hybrid.

Not true, no matter how worked up you get.

If you drive a 50mpg Prius, over 120,000 miles you'll consume 3 TONS less gasoline and put 10 TONS less CO2 in the air compared with a 35mpg car (here's the math). The gas savings are more than the car weighs! And producing,spilling, refining, and distributing that gasoline is itself resource-intensive and highly polluting. There's no credible evidence that manufacturing a car is on a pound-for-pound basis more polluting than the oil business. Instead, all reputable lifecycle studies (footnoted here) conclude 75-90% of the pollution from a car occurs in its operation.

Also this doesn't consider the follow-on effect of replacing your car. If you replaced your old car before it fell apart and it got decent mpg, then it's going to wind up in the hands of someone who can finally junk her gas guzzler.

It's a fact that one significant way you can help the environment is to increase the fuel efficiency of the car fleet by acquiring a more fuel-efficient car. There are others — there's always some way to be greener still, ranging from driving less to killing yourself.

Ah yes - the Dust to Dust report by marketing agency CNW. Debunked in many places, one of them here: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

The debunking needs a debunking, not because the "Dust to Dust" report isn't based on false assumptions, but because it makes unfounded statements. Nobody is really clear on what recycling of hybrids will really be like en masse because their recycling has only just begun. However it is simply true that it takes more energy to produce or recycle a hybrid than a vehicle without the electric motive system, and they get no better mileage than a TDI. They have nominally better emissions than a modern turbodiesel, but it takes more energy to produce gasoline than diesel in the first place, and energy spent at a refinery produces industrial waste, mostly atmospheric pollution. We don't count the amount of energy IN the fuel because we didn't have to store it there, but it takes something like 40% less energy to make diesel fuel than it does to make gasoline. A certain amount of both are produced in the cracking process but different processes can be used to produce different proportions of various grades of petroleum.

I *would* expect a diesel Hummer to last vastly more miles than a Prius. But since none of these companies will really give us the figures, we are all basically left making shit up.

Ah yes - the Dust to Dust report by marketing agency CNW. Debunked in many places, one of them here: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

Ooops, sorry. The wiki page for the prius suggested this PDF report but I didn't want to link to a PDF :-(

The CNW study has also been covered here at /..

It takes vastly more energy to produce a new car than the car will ever consume.

And the numbers I've seen indicate that a car uses 5-8 times the energy in lifetime use than for creating it. And I at least have something to mention about a source, rather than making stuff up: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

Even the more far-out wacky environmental groups are agreed on this - it makes no economic or ecological sense to keep churning out new cars that are only a tiny bit cleaner than the old cars they replace, taking ten times as much energy to produce.

Uh, no. The wacky environmental groups want CAFE (or its equivelent) raised by 50% (and in GPM, not MPG 50% terms). And they know that trashing a car and replacing it with a more efficient one pays for itself well within the life of the car. At some point that won't be true, but we aren't there yet.

You're probably paying attention to the CNW "junk science".

To quote from http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf:

Another example of an unusual assumption and choice of data is the reported distribution of energy across the different phases of vehicle life. The CNW results suggest that the majority of energy is consumed during the production of the vehicle. These results are at odds with every other study weâ(TM)ve seen on the energy life-cycle costs of automobiles. Other studies independently conclude that the vast majority of energy is consumed during âoevehicle operations,â with lesser quantities used during materials acquisition, fabrication, and vehicle disposal. For example:

â A report produced by a British research firm concluded that more than 90% of all energy used in the motor industry went to vehicle operation; less than 10% went to manufacturing and production.

â The British auto industry trade group estimated in their 2006 sustainability report that life cycle CO2 emissions â" a strong proxy for energy â" are allocated 10% to manufacturing; 85% to use; and 5% to disposal.

â The Center for Sustainable Systems of the University of Michigan, which pioneered and refined the tool of life-cycle assessment, conducted a joint project with Chrysler, Ford,General Motors, the Aluminum Association, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the American Plastics Council. They analyzed the life-cycle energy costs of the 6 systems, subsystems, and 644 discrete parts and components composed of 73 different materials comprising a typical North American mid-sized car and concluded that more than 85% of all energy is the result of using the car, not making, assembling, repairing, or disposing of it.

â A comprehensive energy life-cycle analysis of a Volkswagen Golf Mark 3 concluded that 73% of total energy is consumed during the use and disposal phases, 11% in materials production, 8% in vehicle manufacturing, and 8% in fuels manufacturing.

â The MIT study, âoeOn the Road in 2020,â reported on a comprehensive energy life-cycle analysis and found that 80% to 90% of all energy was used in the operation stage; 7% to 12% in the materials production stage, and the remainder in vehicle assembly, distribution, and disposal.

â A 2006 study from Argonne National Laboratory concluded that around 75% of all hybrid and internal combustion vehicle energy use comes from the operation of the vehicle. The rest comes mostly from producing the fuels and the manufacture and disposal of the vehicle and its materials.

Actually, what that study showed is that if you get 200,000 miles out of a Prius and a Hummer, they'll have similar energy costs.

Wrong. The study made a number of flawed assumptions, as highlighted in the link, such as that the lifetime mileage of a Prius is 109,000 miles, while the Hummer H3 gets 207,000 and the H1 379,000 miles. So yes, if your Prius craps out in 1/3 the time of the H1, you're going to get a worse overall energy cost. On the other hand, Vancouver cab companies have already clocked over 200,000 miles on Priuses without even replacing the batteries, so they don't seem particularly fragile. And there's no particular evidence that any brand of Hummer is going to last that long either. So yes, if you start with biased assumptions, you will find the Prius has similar energy costs.

Actually, what that study showed is that if you get 200,000 miles out of a Prius and a Hummer, they'll have similar energy costs.

Actually, what the study showed was that if you wrote a report with complete bullshit absurdities you could convince some people that a gigantic vehicle that gets 14 MPG average would have better or equivalent energy consumption to a small vehicle that gets 46 MPG.

Some people tried to analyse what little information was available about the report and found absurdities such as the Hummer H3 rated at 207,000 miles in its lifetime and the Prius at only 109,000 miles. While still others ran known models that are used to measure life cycle energy consumption and even when using the absurdities from the Dust to Dust report they still could not produce the ridiculous energy consumption numbers from the report.

The fact is that more than 80% of an automobiles life cycle energy is consumed in the operation of the vehicle. That bit of information makes it virtually impossible for a vehicle that consumes more than 3x the operating energy of a smaller car to some how use less or the same amount of energy as the small car over their life cycles.

As far as new versus old, just as its a no brainer that a small fuel efficient car will consume less total energy than a monster SUV its also obvious that buying a new car will not magically reduce total energy consumption. However, since we know autos have a life cycle there will be a need for many new vehicles so it may not be a bad idea to use some of our no brainer knowledge to have a positive impact on our energy consumption.

I didn't really buy it when I first saw that story. It appears there's been enough time for someone to look it over and see that it wasn't completely on the level.

From:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9750840-1.html

Direct Link:

http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

Lest we think politicians are benevolent in this regard: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science /case_studies/selective_use_climate_update.pdf _

Article 3 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change specifies that all greenhouse gas emissions analyses are to use 1990 as the base year.

http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/staff_board/adviso ry.htm

"Advisory Board

Ms. Nancy Ramsey, President, Morningstar Imports, a small Sausalito-based company. Independent analyst on disarmament, security issues, and international telecommunications. Ms. Ramsey is also a Legislative Director for Senator John Kerry (D - Massachusetts). "

Shills, did you say?

What, California or Colorado?

The submitter and both linked articles are all from the same source...

P.S. -- this may also be helpful:
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science /blog/index.php

Please reconfirm your "facts" on desalination. There is not a lot of info online, but I managed to scrape up a few costs.

• In the Sept 14, 1999 Trinidad Express, they refer to two bids at US$0.536 and US$0.736 per m3 of industrial water (water for drinking is a tiny proportion of what we actually use)
• In Cyprus in 2000, desalination unit costs were 0.997 USD (0.54 Cyprus pound, which is divided into cents, not pence)

FYI, Peter Gleick is the President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, which "strives to improve policy through science-based research and dialogue with action-oriented groups from the international to local level"They claim to be non-partisan, but he appears to have a radical green bias. Let's look at what else Gleick says about desalination:

But desalination cannot yet be considered a reasonable solution to domestic water shortages in most regions, even wealthy ones. Whether it will eventually become sufficiently cheap for large-scale use remains uncertain.( Gleick, 2000)

kuro5hin had a better article on Lomborg a while ago. The Economist just had another one as well. And of course, you should read Lomborgs response to SciAm , which is posted in it's entirety on Patrick Moore's website. SciAm threatened legal action if Lomborg included their article in his line-by-line response, although they felt free to include Lomborg's response on their website with more SciAm comments - hypocrisy worthy of RIAA or MPAA. So, Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace posted Lomborgs response to SciAm, with the following comment:

"Scientific American did not give Lomborg any opportunity to respond to his critics, even though they gave him a copy of the editorial before it went to press. They said they would give Lomborg one page in a future edition to reply to 11 pages of full-on attack. Lomborg's response was to publish the text of the Scientific American article on his own website and to intersperse it with a detailed response to every point raised by his critics. Scientific American then threatened to sue Lomborg over copyright. In response to my complaint Scientific American wrote "This is an infringement of our copyright and interferes with our business of selling the article." Does Scientific American really think that they will lose readership because Lomborg has posted a response to a publication that is already off the newsstands? I believe they acted out of political motivation and are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts to defend himself. And I don't blame Lomborg for giving in to such a huge organization when threatened with legal action. (If you go to Lomborg's website www.lomborg.com and look under Critiques you will find he has removed the offending text, thus gutting the effectiveness of his response.)

" I think we should defy Scientific American's blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg. Anyone who reads his response to the Scientific American attack will have to agree that it is thoughtful and thorough. Here is a link to the entire response complete with Lomborg's comments."

People like you will eventually make me buy Lomborg's book, just so I can bitchslap you properly.

dschl

If you think hunting is barbaric, you should visit a chicken farm someday

Please reconfirm your "facts" on desalination. There is not a lot of info online, but I managed to scrape up a few costs.

• In the Sept 14, 1999 Trinidad Express, they refer to two bids at US$0.536 and US$0.736 per m3 of industrial water (water for drinking is a tiny proportion of what we actually use)
• In Cyprus in 2000, desalination unit costs were 0.997 USD (0.54 Cyprus pound, which is divided into cents, not pence)

FYI, Peter Gleick is the President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, which "strives to improve policy through science-based research and dialogue with action-oriented groups from the international to local level"They claim to be non-partisan, but he appears to have a radical green bias. Let's look at what else Gleick says about desalination:

But desalination cannot yet be considered a reasonable solution to domestic water shortages in most regions, even wealthy ones. Whether it will eventually become sufficiently cheap for large-scale use remains uncertain.( Gleick, 2000)

kuro5hin had a better article on Lomborg a while ago. The Economist just had another one as well. And of course, you should read Lomborgs response to SciAm , which is posted in it's entirety on Patrick Moore's website. SciAm threatened legal action if Lomborg included their article in his line-by-line response, although they felt free to include Lomborg's response on their website with more SciAm comments - hypocrisy worthy of RIAA or MPAA. So, Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace posted Lomborgs response to SciAm, with the following comment:

"Scientific American did not give Lomborg any opportunity to respond to his critics, even though they gave him a copy of the editorial before it went to press. They said they would give Lomborg one page in a future edition to reply to 11 pages of full-on attack. Lomborg's response was to publish the text of the Scientific American article on his own website and to intersperse it with a detailed response to every point raised by his critics. Scientific American then threatened to sue Lomborg over copyright. In response to my complaint Scientific American wrote "This is an infringement of our copyright and interferes with our business of selling the article." Does Scientific American really think that they will lose readership because Lomborg has posted a response to a publication that is already off the newsstands? I believe they acted out of political motivation and are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts to defend himself. And I don't blame Lomborg for giving in to such a huge organization when threatened with legal action. (If you go to Lomborg's website www.lomborg.com and look under Critiques you will find he has removed the offending text, thus gutting the effectiveness of his response.)

" I think we should defy Scientific American's blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg. Anyone who reads his response to the Scientific American attack will have to agree that it is thoughtful and thorough. Here is a link to the entire response complete with Lomborg's comments."

People like you will eventually make me buy Lomborg's book, just so I can bitchslap you properly.

dschl

If you think hunting is barbaric, you should visit a chicken farm someday