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BizWest Energy Summit:
Water and Energy Ready To Tango (But Not To Tangle)
Patty Limerick Center of the American West July 18, 2019
PATRICIA LIMERICK DIRECTOR CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
PATRICIA LIMERICK DIRECTOR CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
KEYNOTE SPEAKER The Nexus of Water and Energy PATRICIA LIMERICK DIRECTOR CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER BizWest Energy Summit: Water and Energy Ready To Tango (But Not To Tangle) Patty Limerick Center of
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Trigger Warning!
The next slide has way too much text (but that will not characterize the whole presentation).
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The Cognitively Validated Method of Effective Communication: ABT
- In the last century, the custom of specialization has reshaped the world of
human knowledge AND brought into being distinctive and separate spheres of expertise, terminology, and professional skill; AND, as a result, humanity has benefitted tremendously from the capacities that arose from this specialization,
- BUT specialization has also fragmented and divided knowledge, and held back
the enterprise of bringing people together to share their findings and to design solutions to complex problems,
- THEREFORE, the time has come to invite people in possession of different
territories of knowledge to come together and, maybe with the help of a small but peppy team of translators, interpreters, and message carriers, to share their talents, skills, insights, and wisdom with each other.
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Hermes and Iris
Two Lightly Dressed Greek Gods to Enlist in Our Cause
Surely the Hands-Down Winner Of the Prize for the Oddest Slide Ever Shown at a Water and/or Energy Conference But, really, a little supernatural help with message-carrying between the water experts and the energy experts could come in handy.
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Surprisingly Congenial Gatherings of Entities Who May Not Seem Initially Compatible
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An Urgent Reason to Team Up
The situation is dire, but not too late for life- saving intervention. To paraphrase Monty Python: “Expertise is not quite dead yet.”
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- I. Some Principal Points of Intersection
Where Expertise in Water and Expertise in Energy Cannot Avoid Converging
1. Water essential to many forms of energy production and electricity generation. 2. Pumped water storage to offset the variability of wind and solar. 3. Hydraulic fracturing’s complex configuration of water and energy (water quantity, risk to groundwater, injection or treatment of flowback). 4. Hydroelectricity as renewable energy. 5. Drought, wildlands fire, and the potential problems of transmission lines. 6. Farms as sites where energy and water converge (Combines! Pumps! Leases! Royalties!). 7. Other equally essential matters that should appear in this list?
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- 1. Energy Production: Water, Water
(Nearly) Everywhere (and still plenty of drops to drink)
A pleasant opportunity for audience participation: What would you nominate as the most central and significant intersection of water and energy?
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- 2. Pumped Water Storage: Landscape
as “Battery”
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- 3a. “Fracking Uses A Vast Amount of
Water”? Not exactly . . .
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- 3b. A Nexus of Strong Feeling, and
Over-Stated Certainty on All Sides
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- 3b. The Impossible Quest for a
Graphic without an Attitude
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- 3c. Injection: A Sub-Optimal and Possibly Unnecessary Way
to Deal with Wastewater
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- 3c. Seismicity in Oklahoma
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- 3c. A Spirit-Lifting Local Practitioner in
Water Treatment
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- 4. Hydroelectric Power as Renewable
(but Not Universally Loved) Energy
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- 5. A Point for Vigilance: Electrical
Power Lines and Ignition
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- 6. Agriculture: Already the Middle
Ground of Water and Energy?
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Agriculture: Middle Ground of Water and Energy?
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- II. Fruitful Occasions for Comparing
Notes (maybe starting off with a round of venting)
Matters of vexation and frustration shared by water professionals and energy professionals, and thereby subjects for helpful brainstorming and solution-finding.
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- A. Coping with a Transition from
One Era to the Next
The Era of Improbable Comfort Made Possible by a Taken-for-Granted but Truly Astonishing Infrastructure, now showing signs of winding down.
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- A. Everyday Invitations to Inattention
and Complacency
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- A. An Essential Step in the Transition:
Reducing the Disconnect between Production and Consumption
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- B. Going to Work in a Swirl of Intense Cultural, Political,
Social, and Psychological Forces
Public discussion of both energy and water has a way of getting pulled into zones of drama and exaggeration, and devising a route back to evidence-based deliberation requires a lot of ingenuity and creativity.
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- B. Drama and Darkness in Water
Management
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- B. Documentaries Designed to
Promote Agitation
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- B. Villains Who, Contrary to Some Popular
Perceptions, Actually Do Not Work in Water Management or Energy Production
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- C. The Undertapped Rewards of
Acknowledging Uncertainty, and Even Humility
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- D. A National Aversion to Maintenance
It has become crucially important to persuade the public of the value—really, the heroism—of maintenance. Rather than a tedious and boring burden that descends after the celebration of completed construction, maintenance is a down-to-earth gift to ourselves and to posterity.
A question worth an experimental run: How might things improve if we put more weight on the very down-to-earth idea of “durability,” and proportionately less weight on the much more abstract term ‘sustainability”?
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Dedication Ceremonies Would Have Been A Good Time to Mention “Maintenance”
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Conclusion: The Opportunity of 2019: ISSUES OF
INFRASTRUCTURE WHERE NO ONE CAN MISS THEM
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Convening as Strenuous—but Essential—Public Service
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India: Troubles that Make Our Circumstances Look Very Enviable
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Capetown on the Edge of “Day Zero,” 2018
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TIME TO MOBILIZE WESTERN INSPIRATION “You know not what you can do until you have tried.”
Sir William Drummond Stewart to Alfred Jacob Miller
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The Bedrock Question: How to Anticipate Unforeseen Outcomes and Unintended Consequences, with More Resilience than Paralysis?
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A Vantage Point Above the Maze
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An Omnipresent, but Doubtful Quotation
“Whiskey Is for Drinking and Water Is For Fighting Over”: Mark Twain’s Doubtful Career Achievement as a Water Policy Analyst Water is fated to produce conflicts, contests, and even wars because it is so important to every enterprise and undertaking and to human life.
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