On Aug 6, 11:28 am, BJ Conner wrote:
On Aug 6, 8:43 am, "Wolfgang" wrote:



"Halfordian Golfer" wrote in message

roups.com...

On Aug 3, 4:13 pm, jeff wrote:
[snip]
when it comes to engineering principles, i'm stump dumb.
[snip]

Yet, despite all of our advances, they're still trying to figure out
how people accomplished engineering marvels from long, long ago.

Well, if by "trying to figure out" you mean that in some instances no one
knows precisely which methods from a finite and well-understood list of
possibilities were used, then, yeah. Yawn.

It's stunning to me that we don't have something as basic as
irrigation completely solved.

The Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Babylonians, the Chinese, the Khmer,
the Incas, the Mayas, the Aztecs, the Hope, the Zuni, the Pueblos, numerous
other North American, South American, African and Asian peoples, hell, even
the Romans, the Greeks, and a boatload of others had it pretty well figured
out hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years ago.

But, see, none of them was trying to siphon vast quantities of water uphill
to the tune of a mile or so half way across a continent. Which is not to
say that moving water from Lake Michigan, or some other source that can't
spare it, to some place that doesn't need it, for no discernible purpose, is
beyond the limits of modern engineering. Oh no, it could certainly be done.
The real question is.......just how much money do you have in your checking
account?

Let's take a look at the arithmetic, shall we?

So, how much water do we need? Well, assuming we're just going to irrigate
eastern Colorado (not much point in irrigating mountain tops, right?), let's
draw a north-south line through downtown Denver and consider just whatever
lies to the east of that line. Using the handy dandy polygon drawing tool
On DeLorme's "Street Atlas USA" software, I see that comes out to about
43,156 square miles. We'll just round that down to 43,000 for ease of
calculation, o.k.? Alright then, how much water do we need on that area?
There doesn't seem to be any universal agreement, but sources I've checked
put the average annual rainfall in this region at somewhere between 12 and
20 inches. Let's use the lower end of that range and assume we need to
double it......that puts us in the range found in much of the best cropland
in the country and should give us the capability of growing just about
anything we need to. This is also a very convenient figure as it means we
will need exactly one acre foot per acre, which is to say, 43,560 cubic
feet per acre or, at 7.481 gallons per cubic foot, 325,827 gallons per acre.
Remembering that a square mile equals exactly 640 acres, we find that we
will need exactly 288,558,310 gallons per square mile. 288,558,310 gallons
per square mile times 43,000 square miles comes out to 8,968,007,347,200
gallons of water......per year (assuming, of course, that we're not talking
a one shot deal here).

That's a lot of water. Where do we get it from? Lake Michigan just won't
do. Hm.......well, the single largest easily renewable source of fresh
water in the U.S. (periodic floods are unreliable.....it would be hard to
justify constructing expense installations, to which we will return shortly,
in places that might have enough water to be useful only every tenth or
hundredth year) is the Mississippi River. I found a source that says the
output of the Mississippi averages about 593,000 gallons per second.
That's a lot of water, too! As a matter of fact, that's about
1,306,637,158,175.51 gallons per day. We'd only have to pump the
Mississippi dry for about 6.83 days per year! Who's going to get upset over
that......right?

Now, HOW do we get it there? Pipeline.....obviously. O.k., then what's it
going to cost? Hard to say, but it's a long trip.....roughly 1,100 miles
from New Orleans to Denver. Let's be optimistic and say 1 cent per gallon
(excluding start up costs like acquiring right of way, building the
pipeline, the pumping stations, and a few power plants to make it all
work......a couple hundred billion dollars all told, I'd guess. Yeah, I
know what you're thinking......you're thinking we could dispense with the
power plants by installing 46,464 wind powered generators every 250 feet on
each side of the pipeline......but THAT would cause an environmental
catastrophe of staggering proportions!). That would mean an annual expense
of $89,680,073,472.00. Of course, that's wholesale, which is to say that's
what the water utilities would pay for it. I think it's safe to assume they
would double that in selling to consumers. O.k., so that's $179,360,146,944
per year.

Not bad. I think we can afford that. Of course, I could be off by a bit in
some of my estimations and assumptions. I suppose it COULD cost as much as
10 cents per gallon to siphon water that far up a mile high slope. Then
too, I think that simply ignoring the initial capital investment may not be
the wisest of all possible courses. On the bright side, recent experience
has shown that New Orleans (and the rest of the Mississippi delta) won't be
much missed.

Dumbass.

Wolfgang
who must admit that these wonderful philosophical discussions are pretty
much the highlight of his day.

Water in thes quanities is discussed in Acre-feet not gallons.
Here's a good link to a radio program that discussed the declining
birthrates of western countries (US and Europe).http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/20...725_a_main.asp
What is says is that soom China will have 75 millon men who will never
get married because there will not be enough women.
Some of the 75 will invade Russia to take resources but that will be
easy because ther won't be any Russians left.
We could hire 25 million cheap to come over and dig the trench to get
the water from the Yukon to Phoenix. They did good on the railroads,
canals and syphons should be a piece of cake for them. But then again
it may not be necessary there won't be many of us left either.

Well just follow Australia's lead...

http://www.johnston-independent.com/water.html

Your pal,

Halfordian Golfer
A cash flow runs through it.