Las Vegas Is Screwed -> The Water Situation Is As Bad As You Can Imagine

[HomeGuy]

> > > Armed with the great information in this thread, we were > > able to garner another 1,000 gallons of water simply by > > lifting the floats in two neighbor's water tanks! > > > > > > Here's the water flow from the newer home construction into > > the third of three 5000 gallon tanks after lifting the float: > > > > > > By way of contrast, here's the flow into the first of five > > 5,000 gallon tanks at another residence after doing the same: > > > > > > Thanks for all your advice, we're coming up with an action plan > > which will (a) inspect all the tanks, (b) test the fire systems, > > and (c) allow us to truck water up the hills when we run out. > > > > Now, that's good news. Perhaps the folks who have > good wells can and will share with others. I think > it's a very wise idea to briefly test the fire > department connections. Best to find a problem > NOW, not during a crisis. > > -- > . > Christopher A. Young > Learn about Jesus > > .

"Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business.

Yet they?re still building, which is stupid.?

There are stupid people in the US?

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked!

============================

Las Vegas Is Screwed; The Water Situation Is As Bad As You Can Imagine

06/30/2014

"It's just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly," warns Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, telling The Telegraph, the situation in Las Vegas is "as bad as you can imagine". After a devastating, 14-year drought drained the reservoir that supplies

90% of the city?s water, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion as Las Vegas population has soared. As Barnett ominously concludes, "unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they?re still building, which is stupid."

As The Telegraph reports, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion.

------------ America?s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.

?The situation is as bad as you can imagine,? said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ?It?s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they?re still building, which is stupid.?

Las Vegas gets just four inches of rain in a good year, and in the first four months of 2014 there was just 0.31 of an inch.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has the task of keeping the city from running dry, has described the effects of the drought as ?every bit as serious as a Hurricane Katrina or a Superstorm Sandy?.

However, Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons.

Lake Mead?s water level is currently at 1,087ft above sea level. There are two pipes, known as ?straws?, that take water from it to Las Vegas. The first extracts water at an elevation of 1,050ft and is likely to be sucking at air, rather than water, soon. The second straw is at

1,000ft. Lake Mead is expected to fall another 20ft towards that critical point by the end of this year.

Beneath the ground a mammoth effort is already under way to complete a new, lower straw which will be able to draw the last of the water from the lake. But it is a painfully slow process as a giant drill the size of two football pitches advances at a rate of one inch per day. That rescue project is costing $817 million and is currently expected to be complete by late 2015, but it is not viewed as a long-term solution.

Las Vegas also wants to build a separate $15.5 billion pipeline that would pump 27 billion gallons of groundwater a year from an aquifer 260 miles away in rural Nevada.

But a judge has refused permission after environmentalists sued on the basis that it would adversely affect 5,500 acres of meadows, 33 miles of trout streams, and 130,000 acres of habitat used by sage grouse, mule deer, elk and pronghorn, an antelope-like creature that is endangered in the region. The court heard that 25 species of Great Basin springsnails would be pushed toward extinction.

----------------

But in the end, it's a fools promise...

---------------- ?It?s a really dumb-headed proposition. It would provide a false sense of security that there?s plenty of water and it would delay the inevitable decisions that have to be taken about water conservation and restricting growth.

"The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It?s not like a tornado or a tsunami. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people from Las Vegas.?

Mr Mrowka cited Lake Las Vegas, a mega-resort where stars including Celine Dion live, as one of the ?most egregious examples? of wasting water.

-----------------

And then there's this...

----------------- One proposal is for landlocked Nevada to pay billions of dollars to build solar-powered desalination plants in the Pacific off Mexico, taking Mexico?s share of Colorado River water in exchange.

But Mr Mrowka said: ?The Colorado is essentially a dying river. Ultimately, Las Vegas and our civilisation in the American South West is going to disappear, like the Indians did before us.?

-----------------

The bottom line - get there now, watch the fountains, drink the water, swim in the lake... and sell your house.

[HomeGuy]

"Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business.

Yet they?re still building, which is stupid.?

There are stupid people in the US?

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked!

============================

Las Vegas Is Screwed; The Water Situation Is As Bad As You Can Imagine

06/30/2014

"It's just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly," warns Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, telling The Telegraph, the situation in Las Vegas is "as bad as you can imagine". After a devastating, 14-year drought drained the reservoir that supplies

90% of the city?s water, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion as Las Vegas population has soared. As Barnett ominously concludes, "unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they?re still building, which is stupid."

As The Telegraph reports, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion.

------------ America?s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.

?The situation is as bad as you can imagine,? said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ?It?s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they?re still building, which is stupid.?

Las Vegas gets just four inches of rain in a good year, and in the first four months of 2014 there was just 0.31 of an inch.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has the task of keeping the city from running dry, has described the effects of the drought as ?every bit as serious as a Hurricane Katrina or a Superstorm Sandy?.

However, Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons.

Lake Mead?s water level is currently at 1,087ft above sea level. There are two pipes, known as ?straws?, that take water from it to Las Vegas. The first extracts water at an elevation of 1,050ft and is likely to be sucking at air, rather than water, soon. The second straw is at

1,000ft. Lake Mead is expected to fall another 20ft towards that critical point by the end of this year.

Beneath the ground a mammoth effort is already under way to complete a new, lower straw which will be able to draw the last of the water from the lake. But it is a painfully slow process as a giant drill the size of two football pitches advances at a rate of one inch per day. That rescue project is costing $817 million and is currently expected to be complete by late 2015, but it is not viewed as a long-term solution.

Las Vegas also wants to build a separate $15.5 billion pipeline that would pump 27 billion gallons of groundwater a year from an aquifer 260 miles away in rural Nevada.

But a judge has refused permission after environmentalists sued on the basis that it would adversely affect 5,500 acres of meadows, 33 miles of trout streams, and 130,000 acres of habitat used by sage grouse, mule deer, elk and pronghorn, an antelope-like creature that is endangered in the region. The court heard that 25 species of Great Basin springsnails would be pushed toward extinction.

----------------

But in the end, it's a fools promise...

---------------- ?It?s a really dumb-headed proposition. It would provide a false sense of security that there?s plenty of water and it would delay the inevitable decisions that have to be taken about water conservation and restricting growth.

"The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It?s not like a tornado or a tsunami. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people from Las Vegas.?

Mr Mrowka cited Lake Las Vegas, a mega-resort where stars including Celine Dion live, as one of the ?most egregious examples? of wasting water.

-----------------

And then there's this...

----------------- One proposal is for landlocked Nevada to pay billions of dollars to build solar-powered desalination plants in the Pacific off Mexico, taking Mexico?s share of Colorado River water in exchange.

But Mr Mrowka said: ?The Colorado is essentially a dying river. Ultimately, Las Vegas and our civilisation in the American South West is going to disappear, like the Indians did before us.?

-----------------

The bottom line - get there now, watch the fountains, drink the water, swim in the lake... and sell your house.

[CRNG]

On Tue, 01 Jul 2014 10:04:20 -0400, HomeGuy wrote in

Maybe the U.S. can form an alliance with Quebec. Then we could invade Canada and give the eastern 2/3 of the country to Quebec to be ruled by Quebec and we would keep the western part. We could then dig a river from western Canada to LV and supply those gamblers with plenty of water. While the river flows south, we could offer illegal Mexicans free boat passage up the river so they can colonize western Canada. The illegals are harder working people than most of the Canadians. (and harder working people than virtually ALL Americans).

[Harry K]

Like this wasn't predicted a long time ago. Build a city in a desert, try to turn it green and then be surprised when you run out of water...

Perhaps they can capture a big iceberg and let it melt in Lake Meade. Tran sport would be just a minor detail to solve.

Harry K

Harry K

[bob haller]

there have been proposals to build a water pipeline from the great lakes to nevada.

Lake meads straws arent a killer issue:) put a barge in lake meade equipped with pumps to pump the lake water into the first straw that goes dry.

those global warming deniers are going to get a wake up call. the current areas being flooded are americas bread basket

[badgolferman]

But what about the hookers?

[Guv Bob]

I'm not too worried about Vegas. The days of being the only gambling & entertainment center are over. Vegas got started during prohibition when gambling was also illegal, and Hoover Dam construction provided thousands of workers from out of town. All that has changed now.

Next after the water problem, will be the electrical power issue.

If someone wants to gamble, there are hundreds of Indian casinos just as good as Vegas. And there are the omnipresent lottery vendors in every town now.

However, it's good place in the early spring and late fall for outdoors types. This is a good place to visit -- location of the original oasis:

[Guv Bob]

Welll.. like the hooker said, you've got a good point there.

[CRNG]

On Tue, 1 Jul 2014 10:43:25 -0700 (PDT), bob haller wrote in

What does drought & flooding have to do with the theory of global warming? Cycles of drought/flooding have been going on for thousands of years.

As for climate change, that is quack science used by big-government tax and spend politicians and special interest groups to justify massive new taxes and government control (think gas cans, light bulbs and carbon taxes). Indeed, many of the UN-IPCC input data assumptions used in the Global Warming Climate Change computer models are egregiously unrealistic, e.g. CO2 uptake via the global ocean/air interface, effects of solar activity, very limited data sampling, sub-surface ocean current movement changes, chronic underestimate of methane effects, variability of volcanic ash and CO2 ejection, methane overestimation, etc. There are many others. As the developers of computer models like to say: "Garbage in, garbage out".

The IPCC previous report, in 2007, was so grotesquely flawed that the leading scientific body in the United States, the InterAcademy Council, decided that an investigation was warranted. The IAC duly reported in 2010, and concluded that there were "significant shortcomings in each major step of [the] IPCC?s assessment process", and that "significant improvements" were needed. It also chastised the IPCC for claiming to have "high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence".

Indeed, A peer-reviewed climate change study released in Sept 2013 by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change finds the threat of man-made global warming to be not only greatly exaggerated but so small as to be "embedded within the background variability of the natural climate system" and not dangerous.

Want more? How about: ?The dysfunctional nature of the climate sciences is nothing short of a scandal. Science is too important for our society to be misused in the way it has been done within the Climate Science Community.? The global warming establishment ?has actively suppressed research results presented by researchers that do not comply with the dogma of the IPCC.? -- Swedish Climatologist Dr. Hans Jelbring of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at Stockholm University.

Last, but not least, is additional dissonance added to the debate regarding the many beneficial aspects of warming, regardless or who or what is causing it.

A new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), written by an international collection of scientists and published by the conservative Heartland Institute, claims just that, declaring that humanity's impact on climate is not causing substantial harm to the Earth.

For info about big-media bias on this issue, read "LA Times bans letters from climate skeptics"

[nestork]

My understanding is that the City of Riyadh smack dab in the middle of Saudi Arabia gets it's water from the Red Sea. There's a 48 inch diameter pipe line that carries salt water from the Red Sea to a desalination facility in Riyadh. They desalinate the water and use it for cooking, cleaning and drinking.

When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, one of the things they needed was fresh water, and they used desalinated water from the Gulf of Mexico.

[philoÂÂ]

The first time I went to Las Vegas...probably 1964 or so, it was 117F.

gee, that's odd, I don't recall ever going back to that hell hole again.

[bob haller]

Heres MY opinion of global warming:)

If its truly being made worse by humans we better do what we can to minize it.

Since the costs to relocate all the people along the coasts that might get flooded will kill our economy.

There are currently islands in the oceans disappearing because the ocean level has risen.

Plus clean air is good for everyone.

Big business will get concerned about global warming when the wall street workers get their 5 grand a pair shoes wet trying to go to work.

I am 57 years old, it appears the rate of nasty weather both flooding, storms and drought is increasing..

[gregz]

That's about as hot as it got one year I lived in the ca high desert. Don't visit Vegas in the summer.

Greg

[philoÂÂ]

Pretty much the same for Phoenix

[trader_4]

Are you sick of hearing about the "severe weather" every night on the major network's news? Thank God for Tivo, so I can skip through it. Every time there is a tornado or some hail anywhere, it's the #2 story for 5 mins on the nightly news, even if the only damage is a few broken windows. The new thing is, they aren't content now with just bloviating on the common weather, now they have to drag in some hack meterologist to give a forecast for tomorrow too.

Meanwhile there is real news of major importance, that goes unreported.

[trader_4]

ntertainment center are over. Vegas got started during prohibition when g ambling was also illegal, and Hoover Dam construction provided thousands of workers from out of town. All that has changed now.

good as Vegas. And there are the omnipresent lottery vendors in every town now.

LOL. Sure Vegas has more competition, but comparing LV to an Indian Casino or lottery machine is like saying Cleveland is just as good as Paris.

[trader_4]

I agree. But the essential part there is the "If". My position for the last ten years has been that we should take cost effective, reasonable measures, that reduce CO2. Things like better insulation for houses, using fuels that emit less CO2 where the cost is close, higher efficieny lighting, HVAC, etc.

Right now, the global temperature hasn't gone up for over a decade. That's one reason why the proponents now call it global climate change. If temperature breaks out of the current sideways range on the upside, then I'd be in favor of more measures.

The economy shrank at a 2% rate in the first quarter. I'd be more worried about what the costs of reducing CO2 are going to do to the economy today, as opposed to what might happen 100 years from now.

And what happens when you raise the costs for American industry, while other countries, like China and India continue to use cheap coal? What will that do to jobs and the US economy, that is still struggling

5 years into the OBama recovery?

CO2 dirty. It's naturally ocurring and not harmful in any way at the concentrations we're talking about.

There have been long cycles throughout history. Hurricanes, for example were strong and frequent in the 30s, 40s. We've gone through many decades where they were less of a problem. You had the drought and dust bowl of the 30s, which then corrected itself.

[Pete C.]

Desalination technology, primarily reverse osmosis has matured and become less expensive. In the NV desert there is certainly enough solar energy available to power a large desalination plant. The issue of course is getting sea water into such a landlocked location to be desalinated. I expect unless we find a way to stop the ridiculous growth all over the US, this issue is going to have to be addressed most everywhere. There is no water shortage in the world, just a shortage of potable water and in the future we're just going to have to make the abundant sea water potable ourselves.

[trader_4]

A lot of our problems would be solved by slowing population growth. Unfortunately, some big ones would be made worse, ie the pyramid scheme of social security. It's interesting that AFAIK, it has never come up for any kind of debate. It's not mentioned, period. And as far as population growth, right now you have illegals flooding across the border, many in this country on the left like it and want totally open borders.

[HomeGuy]

Ask any christian (of any stripe) if there is a limit to how many people can live on the earth, and they'll tell you no.

Because God wants perpetual human growth.

Because every time we seem to reach a breaking point, we create technology that gets us to the next plateau.

The future of planet earth is that eventually there will be 2 living organisms. Humans, and lakes of green slime that we pump our waste into and that in turn we harvest to eat. The simplest of ecosystems, one where the maximal amount of bio-available carbon atoms are devoted to human life, giving the highest possible number of living humans on planet earth. No other organisms will exist. Where there are no lakes of green slime, there will be stark concrete, metal and plastic blocks of human habitation, stretching for miles. Not a single other plant or animal will exist.

We are inching toward that future, one rain forest, one wood lot, one new condo development or commercial plaza at a time.