With the winter olympics coming i dont want the foreigners and out of staters getting their hopes up. Plus with the atmospheric change happening and climate change not to mention the state wanting to build a nuclear power plant and one of the worlds biggest AI data centers it looks like the days of white fluffy snow are long gone.
What's wrong with nuclear. Its cleaner than fossil fuel generators.
Im not super concerned with it more so than ai data center. But my bigger concern is that they havent added the infrastructure to capture all the running water we are getting from the atmospheric change happening rn. Essentially the water is just running around and not being captured
1) we have some of the best stormwater management on earth 2) industrial water use isn’t the thing we should be focused on. Data centers and power plants don’t “use” nearly as much water as agriculture. Focus on the alfalfa!!
I didn't know Utah had good storm water management, sounds interesting. Any resources for a curious Utahn?
We live in the Great Basin region of the US. What that actually means is there is no outlet for water to flow out of it to an ocean. Any water that lands in the Great Basin ends up in the Great Salt Lake to sit in storage until it evaporates and leaves its mineral content behind. (Why it’s salty). It is a massive massive water detention system that was full in 1983 and has slowly had less and less evaporated water replaced due to more and more water being held or consumed upstream by agriculture and population growth and some drought years sprinkled in here and there. The “Lake Effect Snow” that helped contribute to our greatest snow on earth has been getting diminished as the great salt lake levels get diminished. The lake is now 1/3 the size it is at full pool, thus the lake effect snow is no where near as much as it used to be.
We need to allow more water to flow into the great salt lake to raise the levels and size of the lake to get that massive snow generator working again.
Also, reduced snow in the resorts is just one small problem of the many problems we will have to deal with as the great salt lake dries up.
So what do you think the endgame is?
Will Farmers budge?
Will people JUST QUIT eating?? (SMH) 😔🙄
Will the City of Los Angeles JUST QUIT buying up all the Utah/Colorado/Nevada/Arizona water rights, and buying up ALL those "coal fired kiloWatts" to power their Teslas, Rivians, and various "other" EV's ANYTIME soon???!
The lake has been drying up for thousands of years. It will refill again after the next ice age ends, many thousands of years in the future. Nothing man does changes this geological reality much, if at all.
While true on a scale of millenia, that line of thinking doesn't do much for the humans living right now or even their great grandchildren. Fatalism in the face of environmental disaster is an interesting choice.
Yeah down in southern Utah they keep building for those hundred-year floods. Which are coming pretty often
UDOT just got out of a consent decree with DOJ for egregious Stormwater noncompliance lmao
And…Amazon has developed a closed loop system that recycles and reuses its water.
They’ve adopted it in places but they didn’t develop anything. A dry cooler is 100+ year old technology, it’s the same as the radiator on your car.
Plus, even in the dessert open loop has its place. Evaporative open loop systems use many times less pumping and fan energy than closed loop. And it’s so dry here, you can achieve good cooling even more efficiently with an open loop system than any other.
When we discuss water, the energy required to move and purify the water is as or more important than the actual amount of water consumed to evaporation. An open loop system can utilize water that’s not safe to drink and not good for anything else.
As someone who has spent 15 years of their career in energy engineering for commercial building use, I am so tired of the “water use” narrative. The solution to our local water scarcity problem is unbelievably obvious when you look closely at it, and it’s just that nobody has control to prioritize where our water goes. The biggest user locally is agriculture. I don’t love building data centers here either, but I am concerned with the energy sources way more than the water use.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Fuck those data centers.
They aren't even comparable. You could literally open 10,000 data centers before you'd get into the range of what is used on alfalfa in Utah.
Well, i guess it's a good thing they are converting some of those fields into data centers then.
I have no idea if your math is right, but it doesn’t matter, because what I said wasn’t an attempt to compare them, it was a condemnation of both. Fuck the data centers.
Isn't alfalfa water rights backed by the state constitution?
How do you force these dumbass farmers to not water their crops
You charge the farmers a fair price for the water they use. Right now they have a killer deal at the expense of the public.
And to be clear it’s not that I think the farmers are dumb, or even the problem here. They’re benefiting from a bad system that they are grandfathered into and is profitable for them. If I were a farmer in Utah, I’d see that alfalfa is the most profitable crop to grow in an industry already at risk of collapse without government subsidies and intervention. I’d probably grow alfalfa too, what else do you do, sell your land? Its value will crash if you can’t grow alfalfa with cheap water.
The problem is that it should never be this cheap to pump water into a crop and effectively export it.
We could subsidize a water efficient crop, but if I were in charge and had unlimited money, I’d subsidize importing of crops from other states in the country where the water use is reasonable, like the Midwest. Then all that farmland that has no business being worked would get bought up by the state government become a part of our parks system or become housing.
This is never going to happen, and I think we’re doomed purely because the power lies with people incentivized to keep the status quo. But that’s what I’d want.
Found the informed person in the thread… alfalfa!!!
I have some experience with stormwater management, can you please tell me about the programs and projects you have in Utah that makes it some of the best stormwater management on earth.
I get your concern, but you obviously have no idea how a nuclear plant operated and how they are built. Source? Im in ee, and deal with nuclear power infrastructure on a daily basis
Yea the nuclear plant im ok with. Keyword “ok” bc im not super educated on it but we as a civilization have been dealing with nuclear power for quite some time now, so i give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s more so our lack of infrastructure, the ai data center and the water being used for alfalfa that concerns me
Yeah, water for ai isn't our concern haha. But I get your concerns! A lot of people not in the field have many of the same concerns, but yeah, agriculture in Utah is DEFINITELY BY FAR, our largest consumption of water and it ain't even close
“They haven’t added the infrastructure to capture all the running water we are getting….” What are you saying here? I’m confused. Because last I checked, there is no running water. That’s part of the problem.
The construction of three mile island had many corners cut. This led to a near meltdown. Fukushima and chernobyl also were cheaply designed. Nuclear is fine. Greed is what makes nuclear unsafe.
Chernobyl and three mile island I can agree, Fukushima was hit by a fucking tsunami after a 9.0 earthquake, not much you can really do when your hit with the fourth largest earthquake in recorded history and the flood after lol.
All the water will go to the data center, they require massive amounts of water for cooling. If we are getting the world’s largest data center in a drought prone state that is just stupid as shit. We the people will be asked to sacrifice our usage so the data center can thrive, mark my words this will not be any good for the state.
Yeah idk where these data centers are getting water. They make us conserve!
Data centers, crypto mining all suck energy we do not have to give. Utah's legislator operates on a no fucks given agenda. Suck the lake dry, Kill the air quality. Yet, they will praise uncontrolled growth and the upcoming Olympic games.
Utah could be perfect location for large scale solar collection and converting power. Nuclear power still has too many risks to build it within proximity of a large populated area.
Stop fear mongering, nuclear is not high risk.
Because "Fuck it! The Lard's gonna fix it soon anyways. Any day, now..."
Nuclear energy is simply the most expensive way to generate electricity (new construction). Georgia's Vogtle Units 3 and 4 (online since 2023) cost $35 billion for 2.4 gigawatts, which is roughly $14,500 per kilowatt. Utility-scale solar costs $800 to $1,200 per kilowatt. Large nuclear power plants can cost ten times more to build than renewable alternatives and these projects almost always run over budget and over on schedule. Nothing wrong with nukes, they are just ungodly expensive. Renewables (including hydro and geothermal), plus storage is cheap by comparison.
Not do that the cost analysis for life span nuclear is way cheaper in the long run.
Look at Lazard's LCOE (lifetime). Nukes are still more expensive
That's for the old tech the new tech is far less expensive and takes 1/4 of the time to construct and uses 1/4 the land. Solar and wind take capable power generation not usual and does not factor power loss for age either by year 10 on solar they produce 60-75% of their rated power generation by year 20 they are at end of life and produce 30-60% of rated power. Right out of the gate solar is only 90% rated power generation and that's on the high end. In reality it's 80% which is why they suggest 20% extra panels for home solar.
I am a fan of nuclear, but we need to look at the facts today. Legacy nukes are cheap to run (LCOE of $40 to $50) and we need to keep them around as long as they are safe, but new heavy nukes are unaffordable. And are too far out to help with the current energy crunch. SMRs (your "new tech") hold promise, but none are providing commercial power. And they are realistically five to ten years away from meaningful deployment. Solar, wind and batteries are the cheapest solution today and the price of the equipment is dropping double digits each year. There is no way that SMRs can compete with renewables in five to ten years, when they are available. My real rub in all this is that the utilities and the fossil fuel lobby keep pointing to the future about nuclear and use it as a justification to keep coal burning today. Sort of a "cure for cancer is just around the corner, so I can keep smoking" approach. Merry Christmas
They are building one right now in Wyoming. Planned operational in 2030. New tech not SMR but a sodium cooled fast reactor Natrium at 354-500 megawatts daily. This is being combined with a molten salt energy storage system as well. This build started early this year 5 year build so 1/4 the construction time along with 1/4 the waste but still produces just about a much power.
https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024-_vf.pdf
why is everyone so down with nuclear all the sudden? it takes decades and tons of money to build infrastructure.... Renewables are cheaper than ever but we just stopped talking about them as if solar and wind just isn't viable wtf
Why are you down ON nuclear? Nuclear produces way more energy than renewables - 24/7. Nuclear is the safest form of energy production.
Our existing nuclear plants are woefully outdated old tech and yet they just keep producing. Nixon’s project independence (1973) called for 1000 nuclear plants by the year 2000, but the public was (is) irrationally afraid of nuclear power.
If that plan had succeeded we’d be living in a completely different world right now. Nuclear is the only answer to climate change. Oil and gas industries oppose nuclear and support renewables. If climate change is a real concern for you it’s irresponsible to be down on nuclear power.
We are headed toward peak oil, sooner or later we will be converting to nuclear power. It is inevitable. We should start now.
Preach
Just to be a bit pedantic. Nuclear is actually the second safest form. Solar is a tiny bit safer. But nuclear is by far the best option for a variety of reasons.
Nuclear is great but takes incredibly long to get up and running, we're looking at up to 10+ year timelines from announcement of a plant to it actually being up and running
Renewables like Solar and Wind are much faster to implement and have become very economically competitive with fossil fuels in many contexts
The correct approach is to do both--only doing nuclear is not nearly quick enough to actually address climate change at the pace that it needs to be addressed
Nuclear is NOT the only solution. Renewables are cheaper than ever and could be implemented fast, but conservative politics have successfully painted them in a bad light. Nuclear would take decades to build, hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure, required waste management needs, etc. Renewables are such an easy win- china clearly shows the success, and rapid developments in batteries and general renewable energy tech demonstrates scalability at a cheap price. It is irresponsible to write-off solutions that are cheap, quickly implemented, and could even provide a bridge between our current state and the decades-long building process of nuclear revamps. Renewables could be implemented tomorrow. Nuclear cannot.
Could nuclear be an answer? absolutely- nuclear energy is fantastic. But its fucking ridiculous for us to sit araound and go "aw man, how can we fix the climate crisis that worsens year over year....? Ah I know! Let's build nuclear that will be up and running in 2060 and costs a SHIT load of money... I'm sure the wasted time won't change much!" We have solutions that could be implemented in the meantime, but our leaders- and apparently you guys- continually choose to write them off.
Nuclear is quite literally the most practical answer. Renewable energy has its place but it is not as sustainable as people would have you believe it takes a huge amount of materials and rare earth minerals to create and sustain them and is not easily recycled especially in the case of solar. We need to be doing both though but we should have started on nuclear decades ago. China is way ahead of us on both fronts currently.
Not to mention A LOT of oil to sustain it.
100%, i agree. But we didn't start nuclear decades ago and the climate crises is here waving in our faces. So, I'm not going to be gung-ho on nuclear without renewables unless someone can find a way to make it cost-effective and quick to build- both impossibilities and why I'm trying to raise a hand and say "hey guys, we have potential solutions if you can just get on board with renewables while we take the time to go play catch-up on the stuff we didn't do years and years ago"
You are 100% correct. Those who claim the answer is nuclear without renewables are either unaware of the current realities surrounding construction timelines of nuclear, or they're just not particularly serious about addressing climate change. The correct plan of action is to do both renewables and nuclear, with a heavier focus on renewables in the short term unless something changes that allows nuclear to be implemented faster.
Timeliness for nuclear have gone down to a couple years. They are building one in Wyoming that will be operational 2027 i believe and they started it last year.
Solar and wind are great but fluctuate a lot. We still don’t have a good large-scale storage solution. Nuclear can take the place of fossil fuels.
This is nonsense. Just got back from Norway which is 100% net zero. Yes the entire electrical grid & most cars run on net zero energy. One of the friends we stayed with is an engineer at Abel. They’re currently developing The Dogger Bank Wind Farm which will power several million UK homes. The US is getting left in the dust. Each year renewables get cheaper & cheaper…
Also… Coal! Fucking Coal! Are you kidding me? A glass bottle of CO2 gets considerably warmer than a bottle of air when left in sunlight. They’ve literally known this for 150 years. I’m not sure what the confusion is… “Oh but model it…” blah blah blah. The level of basic historical, scientific knowledge & critical thinking skills in this country are mind bogglingly pathetic. (Sorry not you, just the climate change deniers)
Norway primarily uses hydroelectric, which is not viable in all areas or countries. wind farms are bad for bird populations and mostly designed to supplement energy not comply replace another more efficient use
Oh this is a great example of how Americans bury their heads in the sand with respect to the engineering. I listed a few with respect to the science but your example really ties the room together. Try harder
How is Utah supposed to create hydroelectric energy?
If you go to low on CO2 you start killing all plant life on the planet.
Which by the way the boreal Forrest alone consumes almost all CO2 produced by humans every single day.
Using Norway as an example is pretty hilarious. The United States utilizes the same percentage of wind for energy production and 39x as much from solar. Norway is able to produce almost 90% of its energy via hydro so it is comparing apples to oranges. I don't disagree that we need to move away from fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. People just need to really understand all the inputs and variables to the overall equation.
I wasn’t saying we should adopt the exact same methodology. Didn’t even read your full response. You’re DAF.
It requires water. Snow comes from water evaporation from a really big lake. Used to be the Great Salt Lake.
Now it's the Good Salt Lake.
In 2030 it will be the OK Salt Lake.
We'll be the OKst Snow On Earth.
nuclear plants cycle the water they use.
Not forever. They need a steady supply.
Some advanced nuclear reactors do not require water for cooling.
The coal plants we use now also use water. Almost all power generation is just boiling water to spin turbines.
all the water that is boiled, and spins the turbine, goes through a condensation process and then is sent back to the boiler. It's a closed loop system.
Water usage. There's a reason Hanford is next to the Columbia River.
They take up a ton of water which is not something Utah has a lot to spare and their expensive. They usually increase the cost for electricity once they go online. It’s also primarily for a data center that takes up even more water and also increase the price of electricity. Nuclear also is a consumable based power generation scheme. The material needs to be mined, refine using expensive centrifuges, and moved to and from location in special ways. Plus constant maintenance and inspections to ensure it remains safe and functioning. This makes it expensive and is still less eco friendly than other generation methods. As labor, fuel, water, refined material increase in demand, and/or supply get reduced, the cost to operate a plant will it will only ever get more expensive. Nuclear is great if you want an abundance of consistent electricity not really for cheap or even really clean electricity. For the amount of money being used the state could subsidize solar and wind for all Utah households and it would pay itself off before the plant is even operational and we would almost immediately see a reduction on the load to grid and price of electricity. They doing nuclear because it can produce a lot of sustained consistent power and is more profitable to the companies.
While small nuclear does create nuclear waste that we basically have no way to get rid of. Eventually it adds up
Over the lifespan of a nuclear power plant the waste can be contained on 1 acre of land old tech, with the new tech it can be contained on a quarter acre.
Yeah but it’s a permanent thing. Maybe over your lifespan it’s only that much but the generations to come will always have to deal with it
No that's over the lifespan of the reactor which in the US is 40-60 years as of right now it is not a forever thing. The waste might be but it's only a quarter acre. With some newer tech already in use in other countries that waste is even further reduced and is far less radioactive and becomes safe much faster.
There’s a reason Europe is moving away from nuclear just as the US decides it’s a good idea
Weird France is bringing up 6 new reactors, Poland is building 24, Sweden is moving away from renewables to just fossil free which means hydro and nuclear, the UK is also going more nuclear.
They are building SMR plants(small modular reactors) and nearly every single country in Europe is planning on being totally nuclear powered in 50 years.
This statement is just a flat out lie.
Nuclear energy is great, less affect on the climate than most anything else out there.
I'd rather have nuclear than coal or natural gas power, for sure.
Utah's power generation is crippled across the board right now. We worship the great promise of nuclear power plants that are, as far as we've seen, vaporware. Even once they're running, nuclear is debatably more expensive, but I'd like to see it done all the same (cheaper than LNG). All the while, Spencer Cox denies renewables due to bullshit lobbying from coal, almost entirely. Yet, he'll cry foul at cancelled renewable projects in Nevada to get brownie points.
It’s only debatably more expensive because nuclear takes care of 100% of the waste products while coal and gas just send their pollution up a stack. If anyone actually “billed” plants considering the full environmental and health issues associated the costs would not be close.
Yeah, nuclear plants are very upfront about their disposal and decommissioning costs. Both of which have been reduced significantly over the years. The LCOE includes those costs, wherein nuclear is still cost-competitive with peak-demand rates of gas. But still, nothing other than (now grossly illegal) conventional coal is as cheap as solar, wind, and hydro where available.
The power plant im not very concerned about. Its the ai center bc they wanna use the great salt lake to help water it.
Is that real? Using the great salt lake sounds like a terrible idea. Unless they want to replace their pipes every week.
Someone is conflating the water that ends up in the lake with the lake itself.
The water cooling for data centers is a closed loop system. The water doesn't just vanish into thin air.
Then why mention the nuclear plant? Nuclear is cleaner and more efficient than wind or solar.
Decisions like these are what make me so sad, I love Utah with all my heart but I've greatly been considering moving back to Poland with how things are nowadays.
*The greatest springtime in December.
Ski racing events scheduled for Deer Valley just got moved to Lake Placid. Lack of snow could be a trend moving forward. The state throwing more money at cloud seeding is worthless. In the end Mother nature wins.
Yeah, cloud seeding from what I've seen only increases snowfall by around 2-3%. It's essentially meaningless on a rapidly warming planet and can only work well when there are existing clouds capable of dropping snow.
Good - it’s time for some reckoning
Agriculture is ~75% of ALL of the states water usage.
We need to require farmers to use more efficient methods like drip tape as opposed to flood irrigation. The Great Salt Lake is in a horrible position and if we keep diverting all that water from the rivers, it's the Aral Sea 2.0. Then, kiss that lake effect goodbye
Lake effect wouldn’t matter this year. It’s just plain too warm to snow. Biggest storm could come through and it would be rain, maybe slush at the resorts.
Also require farmers to grow crops better suited to our climate, AKA not alfalfa
“Grandpa, what is snow?”
Al water usage and water usage in general is SUPER complicated but water unlike power doesn’t just disappear. In Utah we worry about water being used for alfalfa because most of that water is going to be “lost” as evaporation. With AI data centers and power plants most of this water does not evaporate and ends up as waste water. It’s not to say it’s not a valid concern just might not be as doomer as it sounds.
Hokkaido Japan is the one with the greatest snow on earth tbh
Imma add it to my list of places to visit. Thanks🙏🏻
Yea they get the most snow in the world and it’s dry and powdery.
And they are currently struggling with snow right now too. It’s been a weird year for most places.
They don't really take advantage of it in terms of ski resorts, but yeah, they have the most snow and it has essentially the same powdery effect as ours.
Yea their mountains aren’t as big unfortunately. But the ski resorts try to make up for it in width. Niseko for example is pretty big. And tbh when you get fresh powder almost daily it’s kinda amazing.
OP, there's some assumptions about the nuclear projects happening in Utah. The plants planned here use a closed loop water system and uses the earth or air heat exchangers as a heat sinks rather than ejecting steam.
Yea im not super concerned with the power plant. Its mostly the ai data center and the lack of infrastructure that the state has failed to build to capture the running water. Not to mention they wanna use the great salt lake to help water the ai center. Plus theres the fact that most of the water we have is used to make alfalfa.
The data center can use a closed loop system too.
Alfalfa is the enemy of the GSL.
Well these tech billionaires have the money to do it. So i guess we will have to wait and see sadly
Frankly, I hope we lose the Olympics because of a lack of snow. We don't deserve it, we don't act as a diverse group of people. The majority political party in this state are opposed to a immigrants and foreigners. They've embraced a tyrant. Not only would I be offended that Trump was coming to Utah, because he would obviously, but I'd worry about people being deported or arrested.
This was my exact reaction when they decided to pull Sundance FF out of Utah lol
“we don’t act as a diverse group of people”
So? How on earth is that a bad thing? It’s far better to be united than to be fragmented.
Opposed to illegal immigrants, fixed that for ya.
How long have you lived in Utah?
28 yrs since 97’
Same, and this is the worst “winter” I’ve ever seen, there isn’t any damn snow….
Then you know the seasons ebb and flow as far as winters go. It’s not all doom and gloom yet.
Thats valid but this is the worst ive seen it. I live in the city so its like hit or miss on whether the city will get snow but looking at the mountains its just the worst ive seen them
By the numbers, this Is the third worst snow year in recorded history. If this holds until January 3rd it will be the worst.
Luckily we have 20-30" of snow forecasted for the upper cottonwoods this weekend.
lol
We're experiencing the warmest winter in 151 years here in Salt Lake City. This isn't *just* about it being abnormally dry, which has precedent. This is about it being abnormally dry and outrageously, stupendously warm beyond precedent and likely outside the bounds of statistical probability without anthropogenic warming in the global climatic system.
Idk I've lived here for almost 60 years.
And winter used to be winter from sept/oct until mar/april sometimes even May we had snow. I walked to and from school in it and shoveled it almost every day.
And winters have been becoming warmer, and the snow part has been shrinking.
The last decade or so Christmas hasn't really had snow. A couple of those years it rained on Christmas.
This year it's 60 so I guess we go with the flow!
I mean I'm practically half your age and remember constantly worrying about whether or not it would snow on Halloween and fuck up trick or treating.
You're totally right we'll just let it goooooooo! Let it goooooo! Where is all the fuckin snoooowwwwwwww
I’ve lived here for 25 years. I have never seen a winter this bad. The ski resorts are never struggling for snow this hard by Christmas. I’ve seen our share of dry winters, but I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this warm before.
I've been here about 25 years as well. This year is particularly bad. The jet stream is far north, the solar flares are crazier and frequenting at a higher pace than I can recall from memory. I don't claim to know everything, nor do I believe humans don't have an effect on it.
What I've seen from solar cycles, polarity flipping, and pairing that with what I have seen in my time, it is an anomaly that has to be playing into the weather cycles we are experiencing. I'm hopeful we go back to our normal weather cycles in future years without experiencing a rubber band effect of extreme weather here.
Lord knows we need an extreme event to refill our reservoirs, but I hope that happens without destruction to our infrastructure and with no loss of life or casualties in the process.
Flooding in California, major flooding in Washington state, in years past, major flooding and terrible weather events affecting the north east. I hope Utah doesn't follow suit.
It's funny how climate deniers inch towards the truth, depending on how strong their cognitive dissonance is. I thought the whole thing was a hoax? But now it does exist but it's natural? It's always a guessing game with y'all
Went to the airport and was expecting crowds well it wasn't crowded in the late morning and all you have to do is look outside and see that there just isn't snow for good skiing.
Yea i gets ya. Luckily i didnt get a season pass this year but my friends got one and i can tell theyre disappointed
Best snow on earth is not a quantity measurement it’s a quality measurement! We still have the best snow on earth but that said we are totally fucked!
Utah should plant more trees and work to build forests across the valley. It cools the earth and more trees bring in more moisture.
Global warming and our greedy politicians taking the water for their alfalfa farms are issues more people need to think about.
waaaiiiiiiiillllllll
The Great Salt Lake is drying up and blowing all kinds of crap all over the Wasatch front. Lake effect is diminishing and less and less water is coming down the Bear River and feeding into the Great Salt Lake. Bear River water is sucked up by Idaho alfalfa as much as Utah’s.
Our snow pack is completely dependent on the health of that current dust bowl. If we don’t get better regulations on farming usage, at some point it may become too late. How many miles away from shore line are the infamous Bangerter Pumps now?
Yep, it will never snow in Utah again. Had a good run boys
the trend i've been noticing, personally, is that our heavy snowfall has been getting pushed later and later in the year. if you remember last year, we were getting blizzard-like conditions in ogden as late as march or even april. the seasons are lagging behind when they would typically arrive. when they do arrive, they hit harder and more unexpectedly.
as far as i know nuclear does not contribute to CO2 emissions, like, at all. the only pollution worry is the nuclear waste, which is taken care of in the safest manner humanity knows possible at the current moment. AI data centers are a bad deal, but i don't think it's like they're sucking water off the tap that would have gone to the mountains as snow instead. it's an incredibly complex and complicated issue.
due to the tourism income the mountains bring in, i'm sure our government is well aware that they should be treading carefully around our environment, or risk losing a potent revenue stream. god knows if any of them are smart enough or humble enough to get their heads out of their asses to do anything about it, though.
https://preview.redd.it/x33ez6ldvn9g1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35c02809490f6066e761c0c6a9298c44b3a5350f
Wildflowers that normally bloom in April Christmas afternoon above capital hill. Pretty sure our goose is cooked. We can thank those ai centers in eagle mountain and the disappearance of the great salt lake.
Damn. Not to mention the smog we’ve gotten these past couple of days
Not just smog smog with arsenic dust particles and other carcinogens
i give it 10 years before the ski resorts are all closed. But snow will generally be happening on a lot less of the globe than it was and glaciers will disapear everywhere but the arctic and the antarctic.
But in short get used to it, because its never going back.
People can still float in the great Salt Lake
so don't give up hope
Yea the biggest thing going on rn is theyre still in beginning stages and talking it over to some extent. So we wont fully know till it actually happens
The best snow (ski quality) comes after Christmas.
Well I 100% guarantee we'll have snow the year of the Olympics, we'll seed so much moisture our streets will be flooding. Come back and let me know in a few years how my prediction was
Cloud seeing adds only a paltry amount of water to the atmosphere and really just enhances existing clouds capable of snowing, versus creating them out of nowhere. We're talking like a 2-3% increase in snow from seeding, that's it.
Well that's mostly wrong. Sorry but I know a decent amount about seeding and it actually slows moisture carrying clouds over the selected land, and makes clouds more dense with water, allowing for a higher chance of rain. And sorry again, but you liked the moisture we got this later summer, early fall? 10% of that (on the conservative end) was from seeding, can't be throwing around bs stats like "you'll be lucky to get 2%". That's completely made up and I'm glad you're not running the geographic land surveying and agriculture in Utah lol. If you'd like I can get really in depth with ya on how silver iodide works in the atmosphere. Let me know if you want a breakdown
Actually, you're wrong. Cloud motion and speed is controlled by winds at multiple atmospheric levels and cloud seeding cannot alter wind speed, storm translation, or steering flow.
Additionally, cloud seeding does not "make clouds more dense with water" as you say, it merely converts existing liquid water into ice crystals, which then precipitate out of said cloud.
And I'm not sure why I'm arguing with someone who posts on r/ufo but here we are. Merry Christmas! Lol.
I hope youre right. I actually like the snow. Might as well pay a couple of witches or just go to the Witch Community in Sandy UT and see if they can break the curse or make more snow happen lol
I mean we are already the #1 seeder of moisture in the world, id expect that year, we'll triple our seeding process
Yeah, but if it’s well above freezing in the mountains, all that precipitation will end up as mud rather than snow.
The church will pray harder that year.
Several years ago. Thanks Herbert
Data center need potable clean water in comparison to alfalfa and nuclear power which do not. This strains our municipal water systems further.
we had the best season of my life two years ago. This is the worst (so far).
From my very basic understanding climate change will cause these unpredictable swings because of the weakened polar vortex and slower jet stream. For the short term this means more variability in our winters with boom and bust cycles. Long term… a lot worse. Great snow isn’t dead because of one bad season. Our great snow isn’t gone—climate isn’t a light switch. We will continue having good and bad cycles with less predictable winters overall. Sometimes that dice roll will be in our favor. Often times it won’t.
It's really hard to blame climate change for this year. The entire west coast is warmer than normal and east is colder than normal. Some years are just weird.
Is climate change causing some of it? Maybe. But people love to blame climate change when in reality climate change has only been a degree or so difference in the last couple decades. It's about .36 degrees up per each decade. Which is certainly significant but not enough to blame lack of snowfall.
Basically, we might have snow. We might not. Weather likes to play its own game.
I remember like 3 years ago we got the 50 year record high snowfall where I'm at.
Last time i was in maine it was like 24 below. The east is likely warmer than normal too.
Almost like the weather is cyclical and has been doing this forever!
Talking about the warmer temps this year (or recent years past) is usually just a segue into some political rant just under the surface.
I remember like, what maybe 13 years ago or so we didn’t get snow in my town. It was freezing temperatures but we didn’t get any snow that year.
Absolutely! But there is a difference between microcycles and macrocycles. This particular cycle may not have anything to do with larger-scale trends that demonstrate anthropogenic climate change.
It’s cyclical. This happened to the alps last year
Watch it hella snow tomorrow💀
That would be awesome
Dude, sorry to inform you but that was a marketing Slogan from a guy that never skied Japan! Also, Utah powder is light with less moisture content but do you know what that equates to in November, December and January when the base cover is Thin? More core shots because the Limestone and granite doesn’t get covered enough!
Nowadays, we have snow from end of January through end of May instead of years ago, which was end of November through end of March.
What snow
When I was 18 I golfed in provo Utah on Christmas Eve. Now 35+ years later I did it again. In between that time record snow fall, Olympics, record warmth, early snow years, late snow years. It all goes in cycles. I believe just 3 years ago we had record snow. No need to go extreme. It will be back
What foreigners lol.
The ones that would be traveling for the Olympics. Try to keep up.
In 2034, hahahahahahha. I've lived here my whole life. When I was 2 the snow was over my head right now. As a teen it still snowed on Halloween. I don't think my two 2 year olds are going to see more than an inch at a time unless we move. Climate change has ramped up past what they expected and we are screwed. Also if we actually get back to people wanting to come to the us by 2034 I'd be surprised
I can assure you, if you stay in Utah, you're children will see snow deeper than 1"
Storms seem to be becoming more extreme. We will still get deep snow, but maybe not as often.
Your right, I was being hyperbolic. But another anecdote, the business I'm in would slow down from November to Feb for the first 15 years I did it. Low temps, wet weather etc. We have been up 10-30 percent yearly for the past 6 years due to winters just not hitting.
I love this story
I don’t think they’ve fully started cloud seeding yet
They have been seeding ahead of storm systems, but statistically cloud seeding does not yield guaranteed results.
Make it colder outside
Yes in 2002
If anything we should have been bringing more nuclear online for the last 40 years instead of continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Have you been to Hokkaido in a bad snow year?
No but bc it reminds of Goku i wanna see it now lol
I mean, considering it was mid-60s today…
I got the impression people from here didn't like people from out of state or foreigners.
I've heard that from several folks and with the lack of diversity it sounded true enough.
This is a weather pattern, not climate. It happens. ( yes, I know climate change is real).
Were having a weird winter, its as warm today here as las vegas and Los Angeles. They’re having normal temps were not.
Its a bit weird but it’s going to snow eventually, well it already has it snowed for 8 hours back in November one weekend at my house.
It baffles me that we aren't funneling water from the Snake /Columbia river and diverting a responsible amount to Utah
You never had it… You just thought you did. Wyoming is snow totals king. Go to Targhee.
Yeah bro the power plants and data centers are totally stopping it from snowing.
While we can do better with clean energy, no. 4 600" seasons in my 14years here since college in VT. And that was after that infamous '11 winter. A couple above 700" and 1 at 900". That's insane. 99% of resorts in the world would be losing their minds over one 600" in that time frame.
Spring is in 8 weeks, it's always snowing when the tulips start to bloom.
Meh it will hit and all the whiners will whine about traffic in the canyons.
What does an AI data center have to do with “white fluffy snow being long gone?” I don’t see the correlation.
Nuclear is objectively by every metric possible the best energy source.
We just had one of the snowiest, and the snowiest winters 2 times in a row. My god you guys winter started less than 1 week ago.
We just had the wettest October in our history, and this isnt even our worst snow pack by far.
In 2002 they considered canceling the Olympics until an insane 5 day storm saved the day.
It happens every few years.