Helium

Mexico “composts” and processes sewage into “sterile “ fertilizer and water for crops.

Said policy has conveniently coincided with an increase in ecoli and salmonella in food exported to the USA

A better way to deal with solid waste is a composting toilet that naturally heats to high temperatures converting a large amount of waste into a small amount of dry sterile “ash”

No need to contaminate thousands of gallons of water per flush

 

When you're in an appropriate lab, try to arrange for a lungful of argon gas. It has opposite effect of helium and you can have 'epic announcer' basso voice.

 

me too. seems most everyone today buys a prius to save money

 

Human poop has a lot of things that can increase soil organic matter. Also has pathogenic microbial 'fellow travelers' which ought not get another shot at the food chain.

Human pee has most of the nitrogen and phosphorus, which are what crops are looking for in the short term. Separating those two is a subject for current, lively research.

(Howard Hughes flashbacks)

 

Try to find the percentages used on amusement / golf courses my guess is it’s still 1.5-3% regardless of water shortages.

80% on ag in a desert is too much And 10% on novelty-trees (some of which is old oil drillwater now, substituvely the same as frsck water) is still about 100x too much, not to mention there has to be some leftover lead, cadmium and solvent getting in the crop no matter how delicious they say old frackwater is.

Only Climate appropriate crops should be grown commercially, if private citizens want an indoor garden have at it but most of California is the wrong place to grow the nations fruit baskets

The rage against a channel or tunnel from sea/ocean to the solton sea looks more misguided every day.
It would take 1/100 of the work needed to build the Salton vrs the Panama and would allow for stable water levels and a natural concentrator of lithium and calcium for industrial use.

Might also stabilize temperatures slightly and fight some of the drought issues to the east.

The natural heat in the area would likely work well for solar desalination and help with the lithium shortage

 

Viewed from a different angle, at least the water spent on those novelty trees and vines is associated with a fairly significant economic return. But alfalfa, far less:

(This is specific to California, from the second source above)

To put these figures into context, a large majority of my domestic water bill is a fixed period charge for building and maintaining the distribution infrastructure, only a small portion is a usage charge for actual water consumption. But that 'small' consumption portion still amounts to over $1100 / acre-foot (af) in the first tier. (To encourage conservation of a limited resource, higher-use households pay more, with top tier costing over $3000/af.)

Put in the same terms as common household water bills, the value of alfalfa produced under irrigation amounts to $0.40/CCF (per hundred cubic feet, one common utility measure) or $0.54 / thousand-gallons (the other common measure). How do those gross agricultural revenues stack up against what you pay for that same amount of water? My cheapest tier is $2.64/CCF, and we usually go part way into the next tier up.

(Of course, household and agricultural water are not directly comparable. The former requires filtering and treatment, and more energy for pressurization for delivery.)

Livestock gotta eat, so some alfalfa is certainly justified for local consumption. But much of California's alfalfa is exported overseas. Alfalfa has been described as 'water in a solidified / condensed form'. I.e. alfalfa purchasers are effectively consuming someone else's water supply, not their own local supply. Do we really want to consume that much of a limited regional resource for export at such a low sales prices per unit of scare-resource input?

PS. I don't mean to denigrate alfalfa itself. It is wonderful stuff, dad's farm grows some of it. But it is from a dryland no-irrigation method, local rainfall and snowmelt only, no water pumped from an aquifer or stolen from a far-away hydrologic basin to be brought in by canal, and it is all consumed on-site. Shipping distance (before it is on the hoof) is under 4000 feet. But lacking artificial watering, we don't have a lot of it.

 

I bow to @fuzzy1 for monetizing those water uses!

We really ought to float away from helium, and address (delicious!) meat in context of water and nitrogen externalities. Many whoop-de-do journals are already doing so. Sell meat at prices fairly including externalities? OMFG that would trouble political money flows. But it kinda makes sense as 8 billion humans grow to 10 billion. On a planet with a resource base not magically increasing.

Lab-grown meat is now a smaller fraction than whoop-de-do modern cars (we all love them here). But it clickbaits like crazy. It also faces serious upscaling limitations.

Fungal and insect meat-like products might upscale better. Hmmm. Y'all ever eat insects? I have - they're ... OK, but they ain't no damn steak.

A sustainable 10-billion world might feature eating delicious steaks - once a month? What an insult! So politically assailable! Yet no better 10-billion plan is immediately obvious.

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Fun facts for Prius Chat: On Earth there are 0.16 cars per person and 0.16 cows per person. How would you like that to change in future (if at all) and how should such changes be brought about?

 

If I was not obvious above, the larger water use by alfalfa (cow food) in California has much lower payoff than novel trees. If we focus on novel trees, we miss the more important cow thing.

Just trying to be clear, because I want people disagreeing with me to be on firm footing.

 

$1500/acre vrs $5000/acre which is less of a difference than I would expect.

Alfalfa is rarely moved far within the country because any cost of shipping isn’t worth it, point of use only but only in California can it make sense to ship 3000miles overseas

The reason half of alfalfa is exported is the same boneheaded reason we export massive numbers of junk cars, recyclables, etc

Free return freight

The government could intervene in these cases to put up walls so we don’t export things overseas that we should keep here but there is no willpower, we are short steel and repairables but screw the domestic population sending them out anyway

 

"Free return freight" Ding ding ding. Global maritime intermodal container shipping is paid for (driven by) Asia to US and Euro 'value' exports. Those containers must return for cycle, so on return trip they contain ... grains, waste paper, probably some of that mentioned above, and whatever else can make a dime.

Asymmetric market flows drive weirdness here in ways that seem not to have been carefully examined.

And yes, alfalfa for cows is shipped wet so it is heavy and cannot go very far. Orange juice is shipped as concentrate because removing water at source and adding it back in at destination is cheaper than trucking water. Many commodity transfers are 'distorted' by water. So, yeah, we suck at evaluating commodity flows. And that is even without considering externailities.

I completely favor throwing sense at this system. If it means no more California pistachios in China, they will be replaced from Iran and that carries its own problems. But yeah, let's first make large marine intermodal transport flows rational. Other minor matters may resolve themselves.

 

Potted plants

 

You've forgotten the radium and other very heavy elements.

Is that the same rage to is against desalination plants?

 

Here is an American invention that can help California immediately with their water and agricultural problem- it is called Tree-T-Pee.

Treetpee installation.. - YouTube

 

I think I saw this on Shark Tank.

 

i wonder why they weren't using drip prior to the tee pee

 

We used to burry permeable hose running by the “plants” much less evaporation if nothing else.

Those tree tpee seem like a variation on a very old idea

We used to wrap the base stems with paper during burying and slice a hole in the plastic “pot” then flip upside down to put around the young plant

His idea is purpose built and easier but same idea.

 

There are many research studies on drip irrigation vs. water use efficiency. My small searching effort did not find any for combined effects with plastic devices like this. If they have not been done, they ought to be.

 

For annual crops, an analogous system is burying things that impede the drainage of soil water
Buried clay pot irrigation: a little known but very efficient traditional method of irrigation - ScienceDirect
I mentioned something similar in 'Environmental News' #1108 or just look at this
FARM SHOW Magazine - The BEST stories about Made-It-Myself Shop Inventions, Farming and Gardening Tips, Time-saving Tricks & the Best Farm Shop Hacks, DIY Farm Projects, Tips on Boosting your farm income, time-saving farming advice, farming tractors and Agriculture equipment reviews
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The overall theme is to put whatever amount of water in more efficient contact with plant roots. If we agree that Calif (for example) will continue as a leading agricultural producer, and that below average rain and snow inputs are the new normal, then such efforts should continue and expand.
I would certainly expect UC Davis or other agricultural powerhouse universities to quantify cost/benefits.

 

I would estimate California could grow massive quantities of hemp hearts and desert chia without irrigation.

With more labor and less water…