If we can pipe oil all over the continent, why not water?
http://www.theodora.com/pipelines/north_america_oil_gas_and_products_pipelines.html
New Orleans is about to get a dump of 8-10 inches of water — again! The Mississippi had two 500 year floods. Texas and Arizona are dying due to drought and wildfires. So, above is a link to a map of the oil pipelines in North America. Is there anyone who can’t see the potential of pumping floodwaters (and only flood waters) into holding tanks and then piping it west to where lakes are nothing but dried up puddles? I am not a meteorologist but I understand that just wetting the land promotes rain due to rising humidity. The pumps in New Orleans can clear the city so it is likely they are capable of the job of moving the water into the lines, they just have to end somewhere where water is needed. If this seems like an expensive idea, check out the Public Radio broadcast on the Texas drought (http://www.npr.org/2011/08/26/139947317/drought-puts-texas-ranchers-and-cattle-at-risk?ft=1&f=1001). We will all be paying for our negligence of this planet, and it may be too late to correct the damage we have done, but we can alleviate some of the effects with a little of that vision thing AND create jobs in the process. Yes, it will cost federal dollars, unless some enterprising businessmen take the lead. That would be better, but I doubt we’ll see it happen. Enterprising businessmen are under the thumbs of big business which, frankly, could not care less about Texas ranchers or wildlife. Maybe Pickens can come up with a plan…after all, natural gas pipelines could do double duty.
September 7, 2011 at 7:58 pm
In a nutshell, the quantities of water that would have to be shipped to seriously alleviate drought conditions exceeds the amount of oil and natural gas that is piped around the country by many orders of magnitude. And you most certainly couldn’t use systems designed for gas and oil for water; from chemistry to temperature to fluid dynamics water and oil are two entirely different things. You are suggesting building an enormous national infrastructure to alleviate local temporary problems on a stopgap basis. The benefits gained would not even begin to approach the costs of such a gargantuan endeavour. That aside, I agree with you in kind if not in particulars, we’d all be safer, richer, and better off if 2/3rds of the military budget and 9/10ths of the Homeland “security” budget was instead spent on infrastructure in the USA, including water distribution and conservation. (I didn’t even get into that, right now our water use in the USA is still wildly wasteful and we need to address that issue at the core before we talk about moving huge amounts of water around at public expense so agribusiness can grow cotton in semi-arid regions.) — Doug
September 7, 2011 at 8:27 pm
I have to disagree on one point, Doug. This is not a TEMPORARY problem. I have been following climate change since 1985 or so and drought, floods, etc. were all expected. Sadly, addressing this over the years would be “bad for the economy” as if having people buying boards for their windows is good, having insurance companies facing bankruptcy is good, having the cost of meat going through the roof is good. We are already seeing the first climate wars in Africa. We’ve been a bit late coming to the table but it’s affecting us now, just wait until NEXT summer.
September 8, 2011 at 2:49 am
I stand corrected, I could have phrased that better. Yes, way too much of our infrastructure was based on the fact that the world had unusually good weather from the forties through the seventies. Since then the world (and the USA) has become increasingly vulnerable to weather issues because of population growth and unrestricted/inappropriate development. That combined with the fact that the world’s weather is very likely to experience change and local extremes is a scary thing, and most nations are woefully unprepared. Hopefully by the time it becomes obvious to everyone that something like a global Marshall Plan is required to adapt to (and mitigate) the Earth’s changing climate … it won’t be too late.
— Doug
September 8, 2011 at 12:49 pm
I don’t want to see the desert bloom, going to be much too hot for growing anything but grain for cattle. I want to see the cattle ranchers stay in business AND the wildlife protected. Just wait, if this was bad, next year will be worse. I suspect the next prime farmland will be in northern Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Manitowoc province.