Why is no one alarmed about rivers drying up?

Question

The longest river in Italy, the Po is almost bone dry. The Thames in the UK is the same. Then you have the Colorado River that joins to Lake Mead so you can guess how that is. The Kern River where I used to go camping is pretty much a few drops by the time it gets to Bakersfield. We have the technology to desalinate ocean water so why does everyone want to spend money on planes and Billion Dollar aircraft carriers and spending Billions on illegal immigrants instead of enforcing laws instead of letting all of the world in when we have enough problems dealing with our own country's inflation and supply trains. We should put these plants every where on our coasts before we are completely an arid desert.

WindAtMyBack · Accepted Answer

I don't know about the Thames and Po, but California has had a water problem for decades. Everyone KNEW it had a water problem but never did anything about it except make it worse. More people = more water. More agriculture = more water. Pretty simple.

It's been quite a while since I was in California. The last I was there they were talking about building a canal to "steal" water from northern California to send to southern California, specifically the metro LA area.

And Phoenix Az might be even worse, or at least they used to be. I was a forestry major in college in Arizona in the mid 70s. I remember they (the ones trying to find enough water for Phoenix) wanted to strip away the trees twenty feet on both sides of all rivers and streams up in the mountains. Those trees suck up a lot of water and supposedly wiping them out would give a lot of water to Phoenix. It's one of the dumbest ideas I've heard. We're talking almost 50 years ago it was a big problem, and the city just keeps growing and growing into the surrounding desert.

Why the heck would anyone build a big city in the middle of the desert then complain about not having enough water? Why?

MrOracle · Accepted Answer

Obviously we're in a drought, but it's been made exponentially worse by insane water management policies that were established 80 years ago during a time of overabundance, and guaranteed water to various states and entities, and was the basis for other policies which simply aren't sustainable. But no one - on either side of the isle, wants to talk about those agreements because they all make way too much money from the special interests that lobby them to leave things alone.

Desalination isn't a magical solution either - it requires crazy amounts of energy (which means more pollution) and it creates heavy brine (highly concentrated salt water) that destroys the ocean habitats all around the desalination plant, which affects the whole food chain. Desalination is a decent solution for temporary, small-scale water needs, but it doesn't scale up well at all.

What really needs to change are the water management policies, but they'll wait until it's a total disaster and then make even stupider decisions that make it even worse.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

The Colorado River story is one that is under told. Basically all of the states it runs through staked a claim, but the estimate for the average annual flow was intentionally high by something like 10%, to appease everyone, so the states who draw off of it are entitled to non-existent water.

On a good year this is only a small problem, on a dry year, it's a big problem, and with climate change, we've had a lot of dry years lately. Compound this with population growth and it's bad.

The Colorado River once had so much water in her that she carved out this big canyon on Arizona, now she's just a trickle, so little water that she hasn't seen the ocean in years. In fact, many years she doesn't even make it to Mexico, who is also supposed to have water rights but, no water, no rights I guess.

We do need to be a bit more incentive to solve this problem.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Defense contractors give big time donations to elected officials to ensure the money keeps rolling in, not to mention all the other special interests who do the same. They don’t want to divert all that grift to address this water issue. Government won’t act on it until it becomes a crisis and they have no other choice.

Death_To_Stress · Answer

Asking why no one is alarmed assumes that's true. It's not. I'm alarmed, you're alarmed, LOTS of us are alarmed.

Perhaps a better question would be "What can I do to help spread the word and bring attention to this issue I'm worried about?"

For many decades the tobacco Industry and their ad agencies had one goal - to plant false seeds of doubt about any report, study, etc. that explained the inevitable effects of chronic tobacco use. It gave nicotine addicts something to use to help them ignore what they, and everyone else, know is true.

Coat the facts with little "Ya, but..." crumbs for the self-delusional to nibble on.

In the eighties we start to see petroleum companies and their lobbyists hiring the same exact marketing firms from the big tobacco gaslighting campaigns.

Again, provide just enough (1 study out of 1000 or 2% of the scientists disagree) for the self-interested and self-delusional to hold on to.

Fossil fuel company executives and their investors need that crumb of doubt to be on the plate just as badly as the people who feel so hopeless about the climate they'll point to anything to self-sooth.

Ill_made_Knight · Answer

That's one of those things... people are aware of it. Anyone that says they haven't heard about what's going on isn't being entirely honest.
The entities that profit from the current way of life surely don't want to talk about things that might effect their profit margin. The end users are mostly happy not to be told about it because they are afraid that the modern conveniences they enjoy will be compromised in some way if something effective is done.
There are newspaper articles as early as the 19 teens that say scientists are aware of the effects of greenhouse gasses, so there's been a good long while tocome up with a solution, but it seems like humanity is uniquely bad at turning it's attention to things that are bad long term... threaten a society militarily and watch a number of new clever ways to kill people be developed rather quickly.
Announce that we have 100 years to change our entire lifestyle or go extinct?
You see the response to that problemright now.

Exterminatore · Answer

At this point all of us must admit it’s by design. It’s easier to believe that than believe our elected officials didn’t know printing money indiscriminately would lead to massive inflation, or that shutting down entire segments of our economy for an illness that has killed less people than the flu was a good idea, or that making your citizens compete for jobs against foreign nationals is a good idea, or that making our military go woke is profoundly stupid.

See these are adults, many of them educated. They know better. So at what point must we conclude this is all part of an attempt to break America’s back so it can be rebuilt communist style?

These things are too obviously stupid to be mistakes, therefore it must be by intent.

NamerOfStars · Answer

Because half the country is still desperately clinging to a model of global warming that's been proven false, and the other half is using that clinging as "evidence" that climate change doesn't exist. Blind party loyalty keeps people from accepting reality an doing what needs to be done. Crazy water management policies are the immediate cause, and it's not unique to the US, either- take a look at the Aral sea now, vs thirty years ago.

Also, desalinization isn't a magic bullet, even if you restore the syllable that was apparently stolen by rappers in the 90's. The energy costs are insane, which just means more pollution; it's not really a large-scale solution.

Losalt · Answer

Desalination plants require huge amounts of energy.
Energy that in the US is still to a large degree created in ways that produces CO2.
That in turn heats up the world in general and the Arctic in particular.
As a result of a reduced temperature differential between the Arctic and warmer areas further south the jet stream isn't flowing as fast anymore, nor as straight.
Leading to disruption in the weather.
Cold weather reaching further south (like Texas), and warm weather further north...
You *could*desalinate the water but it would be counterproductive and worsen the problem.
Likewise with most of your other suggestions for similarly complicated reasons that I'm not going to enter into here simply because this wall of text is long enough already...

jshm2 · Answer

Because they are not drama queens like you.

Desalination is fucking expensive and very inefficient. Also, the problem is not rivers drying up, the problem is the seasonal changes are happening in different cycles from those planned.

Hence water planning is out of whack, with some years there being too much rain and flooding, others there is not enough.

Again, this shit takes billions in funding and decades of planning to get right. It's not a simple case of installing a couple of extra water tanks.

love_conquers_lust · Answer

They say water is worth more than gold in the Southwest. They also said the average rainfall in the US would go up. However, that was in the Midwest, Sothwest, East, Northeast. The Southwest was supposed to dry up.

I was wondering about piping networks or canals for irrigation a lot like the oil pipelines we have sprawling all over the US. So it would be an electrical grid, or the Roman Aquaducts, water on demand. But I haven’t run a back of the envelope calculation. And there would be a big problem with freezing for open channel flow or uninsulated pupe. Civil Engineer would know.

MuddyMole · Answer

They absolutely are. You should see the state of the Dead Sea these days. I think it's pretty common knowledge that it has been receding for decades, but I doubt many people realize just how bad it is.

lightbulb27 · Answer

How are the Great Lakes holding up? Somebody going to want to siphon out of them.

Because it isn’t being talked about… until the rich people have sorted out who owns what…

Michael burry was investing in water…some people know.

Fixable by behavioral change

Anonymous · Answer

We should just go back to taking a horse or bike to work. Good exercise, cleaner, and opens jobs. A stable on every three or four blocks. A stable keeper job, and obviously someone to pick up horse dung for a job. Makes good fertilizer for crops. Demand for horses and hay will go up. Good pay for farmers and farming jobs open more. Biking is good exercise too. The Amish got this down well and hardly ever use a car.

Just use a bus, train, plane, etc. if you really need to. Of course big trucks for delivery and such is going to be hard to say no to.

exitseven · Answer

In the supermarket there is a whole aisle with just bottled water. This has concerned me for a long time. When I grew up we drank out of the sink or garden hose. Water will become an expensive commodity.

Cuminginside · Answer

People take things for granted. Every place should have distillers for their sewer water because that's the cheapest option for distilling water the most expensive is ocean water ask Saudi Arabia ask Israel ask Singapore they will tell you even Hong Kong uses ocean water to flush their toilets there's also a new solar panel that generates water from the air as long as there's 10% or above humidity think on that. Thank you for bringing this up

Bob92220 · Answer

I heard the Democratic party address this problem. The reason rivers are drying up is because of the climate change - the Earth is getting hotter which causes rivers to evaporate. The solution is to lower our carbon footprint. That is why some cities are not allowing anymore new gas stations, only electric car stations.

driven159 · Answer

people should be at least in the west soon there are not going to have electricity and the lakes will be useless they should have started desalination a long time ago and recycle wastewater instead of hoping it would go away or leave it to the next ones in charge

TheoPfeifle · Answer

We're still at the tail end of the most recent ice age. Climate has fluctuated back and forth more than half a dozen times in this planet's ancient (to us) but relatively (compared to the rest of the universe) short history. It's absolutely and absurdly arrogant (bordering on hubris, I'd say) to believe that our feeble species can influence the universe, even on the microscopic (relative to the universe) planetary scale. The will of God (the universe) is indomitable.

CrazyGirl2 · Answer

Sweetie, MILLIONS and MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people are extremely “ALARMED” over rivers drying up? Very few people (less than 10%) do not actually believe in, or are concerned about global warming! I try not to worry about fringe minorities!

LztutuIsCute · Answer

Sadly, the government doesn't care about environment. Recently, in the news it says that they have passed some kind of law to help fight climate change.

Another reason is because it's not a new topic. People are busy looking at "money," "economics," etc.

menina · Answer

Because people are more concerned about money and senseless wars. We have an huge problem that needs to be solved now. If we don't live on Earth, where are we going to live then?

dragoblack · Answer

Because people only look at what goes on with their money, human society, and personal lives.

FilmGuy93 · Answer

A lot of people are hugely alarmed, but what are they going to do? People need water and they’ve never really thought about how they get it before

Why is no one alarmed about rivers drying up?

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