Tehran, Iran: Nine days to live...?

Killjoy

Killjoy

Propelling The Farce!!
Valued Senior Member
Persians perspire as potable pools perish...

‘We may have to evacuate Tehran’: The catastrophe threatening Iran


At the time of writing, Tehran’s reservoirs are estimated to hold just nine more days of drinking water. If it does not rain soon, president Masoud Pezeshkian has warned, the capital city – home to 10 million people – may have to be evacuated.

The crisis is national and extraordinary. In the northeastern city of Mashhad, the second largest in Iran, reservoirs are down to less than three per cent of capacity. In all, the energy ministry said on Tuesday, 19 of the country’s major dams are on the brink of running dry.

Archaeologists have even warned that the aquifer beneath Persepolis itself has been so thoroughly drained that the ancient city – Darius’s tomb and all – could soon collapse into the ground.

The situation is now “beyond” a crisis, says Kaveh Madani, a former deputy head of Iran’s environment department. Both the “checking account” of rain-filled mountain reservoirs, and the “savings account” of groundwater, which has traditionally got the country through dry years, are exhausted.

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Rationing has already begun. Some universities have already shut off the showers in dormitories. Water authorities are talking about reducing water pressure to zero overnight. And almost inevitably, it is the poorer neighbourhoods who seem to be bearing the brunt of privations.
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Lots of places around the globe are probably going to encounter the full fury of the water crisis in an abrupt manner (including the Western US and the aquifer dependent agriculture of the Great Plains). Not so much in terms of not having been warned beforehand, but doing little about it, with yet more people continuing to migrate heavily to some of those areas.
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Fortunately for the US you're currently blessed with a POTUS that fully supports the idea of climate change, and is working hard to ensure that the US does everything it can to reduce its own harmful impact on the environment. So no doubt the water issues will be top of his agenda. I mean, it can't be that bad, as didn't he release loads of water in California that would be needed by farmers, thinking that it's release would be useful against the wildfires?

Oh. Wait. My bad. Nope. You're screwed. ;)


As for Tehran, I'd heard they may have problems, but not this soon, not this bad. Not good.
 
C C said:
Lots of places around the globe are probably going to encounter the full fury of the water crisis in an abrupt manner (including the Western US and the aquifer dependent agriculture of the Great Plains). Not so much in terms of not having been warned beforehand, but doing little about it, with yet more people continuing to migrate heavily to some of those areas.
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Arizona is next.

I have lived a couple places where aquifer draining is a big issue, and I'm seeing all the telltales of serious collapse in the urban areas of AZ. It's fairly insane, that they are even allowing new construction in places that simply will not have water. Phoenix will be the next Tehran, if they don't get their shit together (and start reclaiming the moisture IN shit, literally).
 
C C said:
Lots of places around the globe are probably going to encounter the full fury of the water crisis in an abrupt manner (including the Western US and the aquifer dependent agriculture of the Great Plains). Not so much in terms of not having been warned beforehand, but doing little about it, with yet more people continuing to migrate heavily to some of those areas.
_
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I keep waiting for them to dredge up the idea of pipelining Great Lakes water to the mid/southwest. IIRC, there's still a compact of sorts in place which does not allow for water to be drained from the lakes to farther away than would be returned by the water table. Who knows how long that might last as the crisis worsens, though.
 
Sarkus said:
Fortunately for the US you're currently blessed with a POTUS that fully supports the idea of climate change, and is working hard to ensure that the US does everything it can to reduce its own harmful impact on the environment. So no doubt the water issues will be top of his agenda. I mean, it can't be that bad, as didn't he release loads of water in California that would be needed by farmers, thinking that it's release would be useful against the wildfires?

Oh. Wait. My bad. Nope. You're screwed. ;)
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You kiddin' ?

Our man's got "probably illegal" comedians to get cancelled, grand ballrooms to wow world leaders to costruct, marble-plated bathrooms that somehow "correspond more correctly to the Lincoln era" to preside over, and imaginary left-wing terror groups to defend the nation... ....himself... ...somebody against !

No time for petty issues like food & water !
 
TheVat said:
Arizona is next.

I have lived a couple places where aquifer draining is a big issue, and I'm seeing all the telltales of serious collapse in the urban areas of AZ. It's fairly insane, that they are even allowing new construction in places that simply will not have water. Phoenix will be the next Tehran, if they don't get their shit together (and start reclaiming the moisture IN shit, literally).
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They should have gotten together with the Free Freak Republic and built desalination plants.
Seems like all that money California sank into their "high speed train to nowhere" might have been spent to resolve their water woes.
 
OTOH, it was also reported back at the end of July that Tehran "could run dry within weeks":
  • “If Tehran survives until the end of September then there is hope for avoiding day zero,” Madani said.
And yet here it is the middle of November and "day zero" just keeps receding like an empty can of diced tomatoes kicked down the road.

So is this prophecy akin to the "banana apocalypse", which has been heralded almost every year for the past decade? Unlike the Cavendish cultivar that continues to be well stocked in stores at a not outlandish price, it just seems hard to believe that the "Great Desolation of Rhages" could fizzle into the same degree of procrastinator.
  • https://www.dw.com/en/irans-drought-a-disaster-in-slow-motion/a-74700581

    "One look at the water consumption pyramid shows that the agriculture sector consumes about 80-90%, the biggest share. As long as other sectors are positioned as priority ... the water saving measures will not be very successful."

    [...] Environmental experts have long been trying to convince the Iranian officials that the country can no longer sustain a growth in population or be fully self-reliant in food production. The authorities responded by systematically eliminating them from the decision-making process and replacing them by people who are more ideologically suitable.
 
Killjoy said:
They should have gotten together with the Free Freak Republic and built desalination plants.
Seems like all that money California sank into their "high speed train to nowhere" might have been spent to resolve their water woes.
Click to expand...
Reportedly pumping water over mountains gets pricey. My guess is places like Phoenix will use their abundant solar to power condensers and/or distill sewage. Building codes will mandate gray water systems, etc. It will be expensive AF and that will be the thing that actually halts the growth.

I live where it's semiarid (~18 inches/yr) and most people who aren't wealthy have joined a trend towards not watering lawns. Some years we just let them fade and go dormant from July on. Whatever species can handle that approach eventually dominate.
 
C C said:
OTOH, it was also reported back at the end of July that Tehran "could run dry within weeks":
  • “If Tehran survives until the end of September then there is hope for avoiding day zero,” Madani said.
And yet here it is the middle of November and "day zero" just keeps receding like an empty can of diced tomatoes kicked down the road.

So is this prophecy akin to the "banana apocalypse", which has been heralded almost every year for the past decade? Unlike the Cavendish cultivar that continues to be well stocked in stores at a not outlandish price, it just seems hard to believe that the "Great Desolation of Rhages" could fizzle into the same degree of procrastinator.
  • https://www.dw.com/en/irans-drought-a-disaster-in-slow-motion/a-74700581

    "One look at the water consumption pyramid shows that the agriculture sector consumes about 80-90%, the biggest share. As long as other sectors are positioned as priority ... the water saving measures will not be very successful."

    [...] Environmental experts have long been trying to convince the Iranian officials that the country can no longer sustain a growth in population or be fully self-reliant in food production. The authorities responded by systematically eliminating them from the decision-making process and replacing them by people who are more ideologically suitable.
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Guess we'll see in about a week !
 
TheVat said:
Reportedly pumping water over mountains gets pricey. My guess is places like Phoenix will use their abundant solar to power condensers and/or distill sewage. Building codes will mandate gray water systems, etc. It will be expensive AF and that will be the thing that actually halts the growth.

I live where it's semiarid (~18 inches/yr) and most people who aren't wealthy have joined a trend towards not watering lawns. Some years we just let them fade and go dormant from July on. Whatever species can handle that approach eventually dominate.
Click to expand...
They're pumping Colorado river water thru mountains now. It's a peachy keen setup.
MWDSCa - How we get our water

I wonder if solar power would be enough to run such a thing.

I myself live in the "Western Extents" of the Soviet Socialist Republik of New York, a hop, skip and a jump from Lake Erie. This summer the region was pronounced in "serious drought" conditions due to receiving about half the year's average rainfall, and I gotta say - it's almost as though nobody noticed. One local village that drew water from an underground source had a shortage severe enough that they trucked in water to refill it. If we ever run dry here, though, I imagine it means everybody else is pretty much dead.
 
Killjoy said:
I keep waiting for them to dredge up the idea of pipelining Great Lakes water to the mid/southwest. IIRC, there's still a compact of sorts in place which does not allow for water to be drained from the lakes to farther away than would be returned by the water table. Who knows how long that might last as the crisis worsens, though.
Click to expand...
There was a suggestion floated to bring Columbia River water to So Cal/
 
Killjoy said:
They're pumping Colorado river water thru mountains now. It's a peachy keen setup.
MWDSCa - How we get our water

I wonder if solar power would be enough to run such a thing.

I myself live in the "Western Extents" of the Soviet Socialist Republik of New York, a hop, skip and a jump from Lake Erie. This summer the region was pronounced in "serious drought" conditions due to receiving about half the year's average rainfall, and I gotta say - it's almost as though nobody noticed. One local village that drew water from an underground source had a shortage severe enough that they trucked in water to refill it. If we ever run dry here, though, I imagine it means everybody else is pretty much dead.
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AFAICT, Cali's game now is to better trap all those atmospheric river monsoons, find places to store the floodwater. And probably just outright ban residential landscaping that needs watering.

Some mag, Atlantic maybe, had a piece a few years ago on how Duluth MN was the best place to survive global warming. Lake Superior is the third largest volume of fresh water in the world. And it moderates Duluth winters so they're milder than the rest of MN, while the summers remain cool.
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
There was a suggestion floated to bring Columbia River water to So Cal/
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From an ecological carrying capacity perspective it makes more sense to recognize a lot of SoCal is desert and move people up to the lush Willamette Valley. That would be horrible for Oregon - they already felt they were suffering from "Californication" in the sixties. Imagine a monstrous urban corridor with ten million people from Portland down to Eugene, and along the Columbia from Astoria to The Dalles....yikes. (I used to live in Corvallis)
 
TheVat said:
From an ecological carrying capacity perspective it makes more sense to recognize a lot of SoCal is desert and move people up to the lush Willamette Valley. That would be horrible for Oregon - they already felt they were suffering from "Californication" in the sixties. Imagine a monstrous urban corridor with ten million people from Portland down to Eugene, and along the Columbia from Astoria to The Dalles....yikes. (I used to live in Corvallis)
Click to expand...

It does make more sense to move people to where the necessary resources are. Another solution for SoCal could be massive desalination powered by solar.
 
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