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Comment by johnohara | Hacker News Reader

> The California Energy Commission estimates the sea [Salton Sea] might produce 600k metric tons of lithium carbonate per year.

> The land under the lake is a patchwork of ownership spread across three primary entities: the federal government – mostly the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Land Management, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), and the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians.

Should be interesting over the next 10-20 years as battery production increases and efforts are made to secure reliable sources of lithium.

Hopefully, this results in an actual remediation of one of California's worst environmental disasters and not a repeat of the environmental problems caused by uranium mining on Navajo land in northeast AZ and northwest NM during the Cold War.

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I’m not sure the drying of a man-made lake quite qualifies as an environmental disaster, though the smell certainly isn’t pleasant. But it’s definitely not the largest environmental in California. That would be the destruction of millions of acres of wetlands in the Central Valley from the dry and vanished Tulare Lake northward. Next is the desertifying low Sierra as forests are replaced by chaparral and grasslands somewhat permanently. Third is the desertification of the Owens Valley. Fourth is air pollution which continues to be quite deadly. Fifth is DDT, which is mostly gone but still poses a risk in offshore birds near an undersea dumping ground.

Anyway Salton Sea doesn’t even crack the top five anthropogenic natural disasters in California.

>Fourth is air pollution which continues to be quite deadly

That's part of why the Salton Sea drying up would be so disastrous. For the last 100 years, as water as evaporated it's been refilled with runoff from agricultural waste, a nearby superfund site, and other locations that probably should become superfund sites. All that runoff brings fertilizer, pesticides, etc that just sit at the bottom forever... Until the shoreline recedes, the dusty playa blows off and all that nasty stuff goes back into the air. Even with the current state of the Salton Sea, childhood asthma rates are way higher than elsewhere in the state.

Eh, just wait until the giant pesticide laden sand storms start kicking up and blowing into LA.

Good luck getting a LAX-DAG pressure gradient strong enough to do that.

The way weather is changing, you just might get to see that happen in about 10 years. If it does happen, expect it to occur during the winter time.

How? You push the dust 10000 ft up over the San Jacinto range against the prevailing winds… somehow? You don’t even get a downslope enhancement because the Salton Sea is lower than the Pacific. Or somehow the wind curves through the San Gorgonio Pass and back around to Los Angeles? You and what pressure gradient? I’m a meteorologist, so if you know the dynamics here, please explain.

There isn’t an explanation. It’s a pretty standard doomer trope to claim climate change can cause all sorts of ridiculous weather changes.

In “the day after tomorrow”, the air gets so cold that jet fuel freezes the moment the helicopter flies into the cold air.

The first three minutes of that movie are accurate, because a meltwater did in fact halt the thermohaline circulation and end an interglacial period in the past. Of course the thermo part dominates over the haline part now, and the rest is garbage. Tropical storm dynamics over the Rocky Mountains, gimme a break. But my whole atm dynamics class went to see it in a theater and it was fun times.

Would a strong low be enough to help? Sea level isn't really what you care about right, isn't it pressure? And the pass there is <3000ft. I guess I'm thinking about gap winds like what occasionally happens in the Cascades, though that isn't really the same. https://snoqualmiewx.blogspot.com/2019/03/will-it-happen-aga...

I assumed the dust from the Salton sea drying was more of a risk to Palm Springs and Mexicali, the general basin I suppose. And maybe places to the east like Phoenix? Looking at a map that seems like a stretch though.

The gap is pointed in the wrong direction — it’s a funnel on the west side, but mostly open on the east. So you either need to get particulate matter (ie heavier than air) over a barrier taller than the Appalachians, or the wind from that point needs to be lowest energy source — a strong pressure gradient around that bends from northwest to due west. The first is unlikely because most conditions that cause Santa Ana winds come with a strong inversion layer. The second is less likely due to the synoptic situation — and honestly mesoscale too. The storm tracks driven by the jet stream rarely go far enough south for a strong high pressure to be sitting over Arizona or Sonora. Over Nevada or Utah, you get winds from the Great Basin — the wrong direction. But because Arizona is so hot, the rising air keeps pressure a little lower. Low pressure over the San Gabriels or further north will just pull air through all the canyons and passes — not a very long fetch.

It’s definitely a risk to Palm Springs and El Centro. LA is just a breeze too far.

When you get particulate matter that fine, it needs almost no energy to get lifted up way into the atmosphere. the heavier stuff? No, it won't go very far. Lithium dust? It's less dense than the atmosphere. It can go anywhere with not much effort.

That’s not how this works. You don’t get individual Lithium molecules, you get LiCl or LiNO3 mixed with other salts in in sizes from grams to micrograms. The largest bits will fall out of air suspension first.

You can get lithium compounds that are quite light from a brine lake, and the wind can have more than enough energy to shove it around for miles and miles. I've visited brine plants and done direct ground lithium mining. When mining lithium underground, you need very strict respiratory gear, because lithium particulates (especially from the dried clays around lepidolite and tourmaline) are generally fine enough to get past even HEPA filters.

And at that size, it doesn't take much in the way of a breeze to send it all over the place. You can watch it just from your lighting and respiratory exhaust. It just hangs there for a good while in almost-dead air. 'Falling out' takes dozens of minutes.

LA? Palm Springs and the surrounding low-desert communities is more like it, and they're already well aware of this future.

It's not just that the dust coming off of the lake smells bad—it's toxic. And given the nature of man-made lakes (i.e., being near other man-made things like homes), it means that the drying of the lake has immediate health effects to the surrounding community.

Not to say that the rest of the things you mention aren't ecological disasters as well, but likely none are so immediately hazardous to the surrounding communities.

The environmental DDT you complain about, and the air pollution which you complain about are actually both problems that stand to get worse as the lake dries. As it dries, it and exposes more of these chemicals and particulates that were once buried under water--now able to be carried freely by the wind.

The same thing is happening around Salt Lake City.

Paradise, CA would beg to differ, but point taken. I just think it’s important to consider long-term, delocalized damage in addition to points of obvious damage like the Salton Sea.

> given the nature of man-made lakes (i.e., being near other man-made things like homes)

This lake was man-made by accident (canal wall blew out). It's never been a real population center.

But actually, lots of intentionally created reservoirs aren't population centers either.

It isn't really a man made lake. It's a lake in a watershed that has been substantially altered. The lake wouldn't be there naturally in the form that it started off in after the accident.

But none of the water would be diverted if it was not for human intervention. It would have followed the natural course of things.

I mean, absent humans messing around with the Colorado River, Lake Cahuilla[1] would've eventually refilled, and then dried up, and then refilled like it's done for millennia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla#Chronology

Yes, this is my point exactly.

I'm not optimistic about the outcome of the US government deciding that a valuable resource is inconveniently located on Native American land.

How many treaties with the Native Americans has the government has broken?

Nevermind the number. It is "All of them". This is not bombastic or exaggeration, it is simple truth.

That’s patently false. The reservations are still observed by the government. If all of them were broken the reservations would just be gone.

They aren't allowed to control their mineral rights. Just one of many injustices these sovereign nations are subjected to.

Thank you for using the correct terminology! Sovereign nations… yes.

But they aren't sovereign nations.

This assumes the reservations were the product of treaties.

They aren't.

The reservations were very one sided. Not a treaty!

Prove me wrong. I welcome it.

Eh, I bet we become cozy with North Korea instead[0].

[0]: https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/north-korea-may-have-two-thi...

When you say "we", do you mean China?

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