did you know that the colorado river doesn't reach the ocean anymore, and hasn't consistently since the 60sit all gets sucked up for irrigation and municipal water on arizona and mexicothere's just a dry delta in baja california where it once wasa similar fate has actually befallen a bunch of rivers in the southwest
>>2850988Yes im aware.It has destroyed the gulf of California ecosystem that has relied on the Colorado dumping massive amounts if fresh water.
guess we should depopulate the west and admit the eastern us is more ecologically sustainable
>>2850988Fucking depressing man. We need to deport all the mexicans and just shut down any city in the desert that is not capable of existing without water from a mountain range hundreds of miles away.
>>2850988Yes, I believe this was in my geography textbook 20+ years ago
>>2850992Yes, but we should just kill those people off instead of relocating them.
>>2850992>paves roads to mountain peakseast coast is both genetically weak and deeply unsustainable.
>>2851030The west also has several roads to mountain peaks. Are you retarded? Colorado has a 14er with a road to the top and an annual race. There's other 12ers+ as well with roads.
>>2851026>>2851030So many problems would be solved if only americans started killing each other instead.
>>2850996Water shouldn't be transported hundreds of miles in the first place. I don't understand why we do this. So that Californians can fuck up the soil by growing... almonds? They're ruining the environment and permanently destroying any chance of /out/.
>>2850992We should depopulate the entire country. Target population 50 million, 95% White.
>>2851052I think the US is on track to see a population declination this year, due to birth rates.
Are the people that worry about resource scarcity the same people that promote unlimited immigration ?
>>2851477Yes, mostly. There are far right conservationists but it's not a very large movement yet.
>>2851051>I don't understand why we do this.Because some places get extremely low rain water and have no natural lakes or rivers near them? Are you fucking 12 or something?
>>2850988>it all gets sucked up for irrigation and municipal water on arizona and mexicoyou should look into its head waters. tons of water is shipped through the continental divide to the arkansas river where it then goes to the cities of colorado springs and pueblo
>>2850988The largest single user of the Colorado river's water resources is by far California (50%+). There are 20 million people living in southern California that literally do not have a single year-round 250-1,000+ cfs (cubic feet per second water flow) river other than the Colorado river, this is a nightmarishly fucked metric. There are also 3 million Nevadans with the exact same fate (the entire state of Nevada). For comparison, Arizona has 3 such rivers plus the Colorado (4 total), along with 400 perennial streams, and over 2,000 perennial springs, and several extremely massive aquifers but even with this AZ is at parity or slightly overpopulated now as well (7.7 million people, not counting 5 million+ snowbirds in winter in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties alone). In general, in the USA 70-80% of all human water use is dedicated solely to agriculture, even in states that average 50 inches of annual precipitation. The southwestern USA has also been in a longterm drought since the 1990s at least, studies indicate that the longest ever drought in CA and AZ lasted 140-180 years in a row in geophysical record analysis (tree rings, sediment studies). The SW USA was also largely depopulated by native Americans during the little ice age due to severe cold and drought (cold weather usually leads to lower precipitation overall, but also less evaporation which means water lasts longer above ground). The current drought is largely attributed to conditions in the eastern Pacific ocean and Jetstream patterns, it can end or start up again at any time but usually wetter periods also last decades to centuries just like drought period do.
>>2853327Cont.The single biggest reason reservoirs are getting fucked is not solely due to the drought, but actually primarily driven by increased metropolitan and agricultural water usage and made worse by the drought, and agricultural usage is actually decreasing now (meaning the populations are beyond the carrying capacity in both water and food in E Colorado state (CO total water budget is supermajority falling and draining on the west slope), W Texas, low elevation Arizona (about 40% of AZ geographically), all of Nevada, and all of S California. The same is said for literally every state in northern Mexico, 3 of 6 are also beyond the population carrying capacity in both food and water. Another issue is the Colorado river compact was made in an era when there was not as severe of a drought as there is now, so the total allocations to each state and party actually often exceeds the rivers' actual total annual flow and evaporation loss, this further strains the river and Mexico sucks up it's 1.5 MAF and pumps it to fields before it actually reaches Mexico in the actual natural river channel.
>>2850988white devils
>>2851578Hes saying people should just not live where there isn't water. Its kinda of mute argument cause no large scale human settlement on earth exists without massive hydropower setups providing big water reservoirs
>>2853357Maybe stop growing almonds and alfalfa in an arid environment.
>>2851051>Californians ... almondsJews, the family that has the ridiculous water rights for growing almonds is Jewish, and they primarily export their almonds to Israel
>>2851056Don't worry, they'll just import more foreigners. Legally of course!
>>2853485That jew uses more water than the 10.4 MILLION people in L.A. county.Its insane.It takes about a gallon of water to produce ONE (1) almond.
just deport all the mexicans and the problem is gone
>>2856195Kinda hilarious considering almond trees are mediterranean and grow fine without any irrigation
>>2850996Believe it or not, the cities in Arizona aren't the water consumers. Industrial agriculture is 80% of the usage. And most of that is feed crops exported to the middle east. But we should still kill all the golfers and nuke California just to be safe.
>>2851052Whats the other 5%?
>>2856239Hot asian chicks
>>2850992The sad truth is most Americans would gladly destroy the environment to live in California instead of Indiana
>>2856229Plants generally adapt to locales that they have been present in for thousands of years. The exotic fruit and nut trees from the middle east can still grow in California's climate without irrigation, but they will take longer to grow and have much lower yields. Since agriculture is largely focused on profit in the USA, not subsistence, growers obviously go for the quick and easy approach even if it is ecologically devastating in the long run. Ironically however, native plants in Arizona and parts of California as well as parts of Sonora and Baja in Mexico are the most drought adapted plants on Earth, capable of being invasive in the Australian deserts and parts of the Sahara ( SW AZ and S CA are SUNNIER than the Sahara). But these are less desirable and less palatable crops.-Amaranth (especially northern varieties, ie drought hardier)-Arizona grape (possibly hardiest on Earth)-Velvet and Honey Mesquite (hardy, nitrogen fixing, edible legumous trees)-Tepary bean (hardiest on Earth)-Jojoba nut-Pinto bean and relatives-Sweet potato (Ipomoea, ie Morning Glories native to northern Mexico, CA, and AZ which has 12 species)-Jerusalem artichoke (Sunflower family with tubers also see relatives like Smallanthus sonchifolius)-Native squashes (eg Cucurbita foetidissima, found in climates that only get 10 inches of yearly precipitation)-Prickly pear (especially Opuntia Engelmannii prolific delicious and universally hardy to everything, Opuntia fiscus indica less drought hardy but prolific, you can plant a single pad and it will become a 7ft tall cactus in 3 years)-Sonoran desert Wolfberry (Lycium fremontii and Lycium andersonii, edible raw when ripe)-Desert Ironwood (Olneya tesota, requires boiling two times for ideal edibility, but is also one of the hardiest plants on Earth)-Linum lewisii (desert flax/linen)-Thousands of tea flowersAZ and CA have possibly 6,000+ *distinct* native plant species (of 9,500 known native species to date).
>>2856264Also almost forgot the obvious.Native corns (Maricopa, Pima, Blue, O'odham etc there are actually hundreds of native varieties in Arizona alone).
>>2850988Not my problem. Retards shouldn't have decided to live in a desert if they like water so much.
I'm just hoping we figure out how to properly grow beef in a lab, cattle use so much land and water, both for themselves and their feed. Though it's probably hopeless anyway, even if we do figure out lab beef agricultural America runs on cattle, would take generations to phase it out.
>>2857101>I'm just hoping we figure out how to properly grow beef in a lab, cattle use so much land and water, both for themselves and their feedStop believing everything you read on reddit. Cattle is raised on land which is more economical for cattle than it is for crops. Not all land is made equal. There are no food shortages, let alone any caused by cattle, so the entire thing is a retarded hysteria over nothing. In short, kys.
>>2857102more economical? cattle ranching is ridiculously inefficient, it wouldn't function at all without government subsidies. Most of the agricultural land in America is used for cattle grazing, sure much of that land is mostly useless for other farming but it wouldn't be needed for farming, we could just make it public. Half of the remaining agricultural land is used as feed for cattle, that land is obviously usable for other farming, though again it wouldn't actually be needed since we make more than enough food for ourselves regardless. But we could still use that land to export food or make it cheaper, America has enough arable land to feed most of the world if we wanted to. Or we just don't use it and save all that precious water.
>>2857105Its not ridiculously inefficient if you do it in factory farms, but people constantly bitch about factory farms because the argument isn't about making them efficient, its about whining that people refuse to give up beefsteak. You want more efficient beef production? Give up on making people give up beef production (They won't) and instead focus on making it more efficient so we can have cheaper fucking steak.
>>2857105shit I was being conservative. looks like about 1/4 of farmland is "food we eat", 1/2 is "livestock feed" and 1/4 is "feed exports". ridiculous
>>2850988Divert the river upstream from Arizona and then introduce beavers a year later
>>2857180apparently logging and hunting really fucked with the beaver population in many eastern forests and I think dams used to be a lot more common and chopping down all the trees and hunting down beavers for pelts decimated their population and really wrecked the ecosystem esp. at higher elevations in forested areas
>>2857183You are 100% correct. I kill animals but not beavers. Mustelids have better pelts anyways. Beavers are heroes. Beavers reverse desertification. And they are smart. Just catch and relocate them, they know what to do. Diverting the Colorado River and then introducing beavers would be a benefit but the world is retarded and evil.
>>2857187anti beaver sentiments make me deeply angry I wish the great logging had never happened
>>2857188Me too. You can see the scars everywhere. This world is so unjust and cruel. Look at what mining companies are doing right now to the mountains surrounding Dawson City, Yukon. Whole mountains being removed.
>>2857198the paper and mining companies own far too much land in the eastern hills they are destroying the watershed of the south fork cherry river and I think the coal doesn't even get used in America it's this weird backwards scheme where strip mining in appalachia is used to produce metallurgical grade coal for alloy making in China because they do a lot of metal production in China but apparently don't have the right kind of coal (or maybe not enough of it) where they are. the government could step in and protect the land but nooooso most of the land even scenic highlands is just roped off so timber and mining companies can rape it
>>2851030>American>anti-carPick one(1)
>>2857199I was thinking to sabotage or something... Since the companies are evil greedy bastards
>>2857198aw shit man not the random mile in the middle of no-where tundra, think of the pine trees!!
>>2857292Satellite view
>>2850988Yeah. Fuck mexico in the culo.Anything fucked up about destroying natural ecosystems and pretending it's > Le Bioreserve, gringo see?> we're not fucking shit up like we're in downtown Bangladesh, now give us money
>>2857293Okay but why are you like this, I could find you a dozen places that are more scarred
>noooo you don't understand, we can't use our superior regulations and methods to mine this two mile spot in the middle of nowhere, we have to force third world countries with less regulations and safety to mine it for us
>>2857105A state wildlife sanctuary borders my western property line. A cattle ranch is down the road. I drive past the cattle ranch multiple times a week. I honestly do not think cattle ranching is inefficient. The cows are loose on hundreds of acres eating grass. The grass grows with the naturally occurring sun and rain. Once or twice a year the rancher takes fat mature cattle to market and buys small yearlings. I am sure he has to give the cows antibiotics. The ranchers I pass at the local feed & seed do not seem stressed out to me. They do not seem to think they are caught up in some horribly inefficient machine.
>>2851578Your two dimensional comprehension of the post you're replying too is truly remarkable.>>2853357You're very retarded.Electricity is orders of magnitude easier to distribute than water and most megacities on earth are literally ON rivers you idiot.
>>2857909Man you ARE retarded.unless your in literally india you don't pump water directly from rivers you dam and make reservoirs.
>>2857911>NO YOUwow, I was thinking you had 100 IQ but 80 is more accurate.Tell me more about some nonsensical tangent that has nothing to do with what I said while highlighting your own intellectual short comings. Re read what I posted and try again. I can't tell if you're ESL or simply incapable of coherent thoughts.
>>2851550>if you're not a mentally-crippled infinity immigrants cultist you're far right!
>>2851051Colorado water is not used for growing almonds. The bulk of tree nuts are grown in the Central Valley. There is no way for political, cost, and geographical reasons that they'll ever ship water over to the Central Valley. The agricultural use of Colorado river water is used for the Imperial Valley both in the US and Mexico as well as farms that border the river basins CA, NV, AZ, CO, and the Indian Nations. That irrigation water is actual reused as it some of it drains back on the river. The problem is that the salinity increases the further downstream you go. That resulted in the Mexican crop yields dropping and they in turn pressured the US to finally installed what was at the time the largest desalination plant in the world. As for those who think the Mexicans should "leave", you'll pay double the fresh fruits and veggies with lower quality from the US during the winters.Note that alfalfa which is horribly water hungry was being grown in Arizona for export to Saudia Arabia horse farms because of corporate tax breaks. Almonds at least can be exported around world (w/ the exception of Iran?)Corporate farming and DC politics is what's driving most this as well as the fact that maintaining a desert civilization is prone to fail in the long-term. A somewhat outdated and very opinionated book called the "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisterstown gives a pretty good rundown about the whole sordid saga of water use in the American West. The cast of characters in that book especially Floyd Dominy, who ran the Bureau of Reclamation and was a genius level Machiavellian getting what he wanted. The book could be made into an epic (the past attempts were lacking).tl;dr- it's complicated. There are no simple answers.
>>2850992In reality humans never should have played God. If they wanted to live in the desert they should have taken notes from the red skins. Now we're burning off even more water to cool AI centers.
>>2857110>OMG CATTLE PASTURE IS HALF OUR COUNTRY REEEEEEE ITS OVER NATURE IS RUINED>doesn't actually know what pasture looks like
>>2858815Yea maybe the summer grazing permits in the mountains for a couple months but most ranchland in the country looks like this.It is also ruined nature, even in those nice looking meadows. Cow patties everywhere. Native grasses and flowers replaced by invasive grasses. Erosion problems because of overgrazing that turn nice meadows into bare ravines. Trampled earth and mud pits.
>>2858815>shows a picture of a dairy cow in spring> thinks cattle grazing is great for the local environmentUnless ranchers make a huge effort, which most dont, cattle grazing is not great for the local, native range and habitat.
>>2858826>>2858829>muh native plants>nooooo its not hecking le indigenous (muh favorite buzzword) noooo the hecking invasives!>I know what to do! Let's turn it all into basedbean and corn monoculture to stop the evil cow ranching!>wtf where did all the birds and bugs go!!?!?
>>2858838>retardo reeeeee2 wrongs dont make a right skippy.
>>2858839There is no going back to your perfect pure world with only your native species and noble savages. It never even existed in the first place.If my choices are to have a "degraded" but functional ecosystem or no ecosystem at all, I would rather the former.
>>2858841>thinks over grazed rangeland is a functional ecosystem>then rees about noble savages as a strawmanwew lad.
>>2858815Yes Anon, cattle are one of the worst ways to use land. It wastes water and destroys the land itself. Go look up "desertification"
>>2858838We dont care about native plants for the principle but because invasives bring problems. Cheatgrass brings huge fire danger.
>>2858845It is a functional ecosystem because it can still support other species.>>2858853You need megafauna to trample vegetation and create a diverse mosiac of microhabitats. >>2858857Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem.
>>2858865>it can still support other speciesbut it can't. >have to be fed hay all winter
>>2858865>create a diverse mosiac of microhabitats.>cheat grasspick one.Cheatgrass is a monoculture.
>>2858883>megafauna eats all their food source>they starve and die>reach an equilibrium>>2858884>suppress small naturally occurring fires because muh smoky bear>certain plants take over due to lack of fire>gigantic devastating fire breaks out
>>2850988
>>2858853The cattle ranches around me have been in the same family for one hundred years. There are thousands of ranches all over America that have been in operation for over 100 years. When does this "desertification" you speak of occur ?
>>2858865>because fire is natural we shouldnt stop it from burning towns down and peopleThe relevant point was that cheatgrass poses a fire risk to human life and property far greater than normal
>>2858887no dipshit. Cheat grass doesnt take over because fire is supressed, its takes over because grazing cattle doesnt mimic the foraging patterns of bison.
>>2858923Okay so reintroduce bison lmaoNo shit cattle aren;t a perfect stand in for millions of bison migrating across the continent but its better than nothing at all. Personally I want bison and wolves and cougars and bears all over the USA. that is how you fix the ecosystem. Whether or not a plant might be "invasive" should be the least of our worries
>>2858930people are tryinghttps://americanprairie.org/
>>2850992I mean you could just not live in the desert, and if you do don't spray water everywhere trying to green a desert, also California wastes a bunch of water on its' agriculture, fuck almonds no one even likes them they eat them because it's "superfood."
