Hay for cattle consumes nearly half the water drawn from Colorado River, study | Hacker News Reader

Hay for cattle consumes nearly half the water drawn from Colorado River, study

latimes.com

40 pointsvoisin9 comments

Hem... A small notes: we do not consume water, we move it, eventually dirtying clean water, since it's an universal solvent.

This means: farmers suck water out of a river, let's say for cattle, they drink and piss locally. IF they are too concentrate they burn the ground due to excess ammonia, otherwise they fertilize ground, ground release the water part filtering it.

Starting to understand the water cycle and the fact ONLY SOME chemicals are really harmful and nature can't filter them cleanly, like PFAS or surfactants, witch happen to be man-made... The rest is a matter of concentration, like any substance: without oxygen we die, with too much oxygen we die as well.

Hem... A small note:

you might not consume water but we do consume water:

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/products-servi...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-hydrogen

Some now, a great deal more in the near future.

IMVHO hydrogen economy is a myth, it will not took off. So the amount of hydrolyzed water on earth is and will be very, very, very, very limited.

It's no myth, currently the deepest investors in actual tangible green hydrogen | ammonia are the bulk resource miners in Australia that move ~ 1.5 billion tonne per annum (total) and ship just under a billion tonne per annum in iron ore alone.

They're already building massive solar farms mine adjacent and transitioning from diesal.

Perhaps you're thinking of hydrogen distributed for tiny cars rather than the use case of hydrogen|ammonia for really big trucks, shipping, and on site power stations for use in 24/7/365 large scale mining applications.

The fossil fuel draws in that sector are significant.

I do think about how expensive and unbuildable on scale fuel-cells are, not counting it's slow ability to change output power that demand batteries in the middle for most usages. Beside that we need way too much energy for hydrolysis.

Yes you can make something that work, like you can in most part of inhabited world build autonomous homes with giant batteries and p.v., but it's so expensive and can't be done for all at a point we can call it a myth.

I have a domestic p.v. + small storage + a limited V2L ability from my BEV to power the main battery inverter just to have a really expensive UPS that last enough to pay back a bit, and well... That's just enough for emergency (car usage, limited to 3kW maximum) or sunny day-to-sunny day autonomy without heating when there is no sunshine. I feel the costs and the limits on the most mature and available tech without to dream monsters like Toyota Mirai.

An old discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/wrv59o/commen...

> In one study, researchers at the University of Arizona examined crop data for seven Western states and estimated that 20% of the region’s total alfalfa production was exported in 2022.

Which means 10% of Colorado River water was exported as alfalfa?

Alfalfa hay exports 2.9Mt ($1bn) with 55% going to China.

https://www.agproud.com/articles/52343-alfalfa-hay-exports-s...

https://fas.usda.gov/data/record-us-fy-2022-agricultural-exp...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/groundwater-us-...

That's good news because soon enough all beef will be grown in the lab and the river water can be used for something more useful.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

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