CA drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
> Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources
> Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms.
> Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said.
I feel that whenever people bring up that fact, there's an implicit point that water problems should be solved by reducing agriculture, but doesn't California's agriculture industry produce a huge fraction of the high-value fruit and vegetables that people eat?
What’s not clear to me is whether or not we have to grow our fruits and vegetables in California. Certainly one of the issues is that for huge swaths of our farmland elsewhere we tend to grow mono crops which are often inedible to humans (such as most of our corn). Perhaps we could grow more fruit and edible vegetables there?
> California’s $6 billion almond industry, which produces roughly 80% of the world's almonds.
> California almond production grew from 370 million pounds (nearly 168 million kilograms) in 1995 to a record 3.1 billion pounds (1.4 billion kilograms) in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During that period, land planted with almond trees grew from 756 square miles (1,958 square kilometers) to 2,500 square miles (6,475 square kilometers).
[0]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-d...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545...
I think some context can be helpful here. As a nation, we're happy -- hell, our elites (yes, we on HN) practically begged -- to spend $6.4 trillion dollars over 20 years to have fun foreign adventures in the sand, playing guardian of freedom and feeling real nice about it [1].
$1bn for 7% of the water needs for a major (and growing) US metro area sounds like a bargain to me. For a measly $14bn we'd cover the whole city. Defund the Pentagon, turn it into a WeWork, and let's do fun, neat stuff with our civilization. If we're gonna throw piles of money at things with low ROI, why not throw it at fusion and desalination instead of drone striking children at Pakistani weddings? 100% sincere here, not being cheeky.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on...
The progressive wing is against desalination plants and dams. They say that they are anti environment. They push for conservation.
The problem is that since 80% of the water is used by agriculture all the conservation efforts won't be enough. You can't reapportion the water because of water rights. The agricultural interests won't give up theirs.
Thus you end up doing nothing much and hoping for rainy seasons.
Other longstanding California issues: wildfires, insufficent power generation, bad schools, expensive housing.
Yes absolutely, flooding a huge area for a dam can potentially destroy habitat for both humans and animals and will create greenhouse gases from dying plant matter and such. Agreed. What is the alternative? Burn a bunch of coal? That btw does the same but is not renewable. Look up "Garzweiler 2" in Germany.
Wind is curious. Destroying the view? Really? You care about 30 wind turbines destroying the view more than coal combustion particles in the air killing people slowly and painfully? That said, if you look at the "total possible wind capacity" in Germany for example it is laughable compared to the energy needs. As in the solar potential at max built out capacity ignoring all 'view' concerns is in the low Gigawatthours territory. Energy consumption in Germany is in the hundreds of Terwatthours. As in over 500 TWh, so over 500000 GWh. Installable wind capacity less than 15 GWh with estimates around half of that actually usable due to 'view concerns' and such. Other countries will have better ratios for sure.
Map of general area and power plants
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler#/media/Datei:Rheini...
How the updraft of one such power plant looks from the air
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:FrimmersdorfWolke.JPG
Memories from around 30 years ago have them always soaring there.
This is the case for most developed areas.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-water-st...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/desalination-advances-calif...
I tried to find it quickly but can't. I seem to remember hearing on the radio about some 100 year contract to sell water cheaply from BC or Alberta to CA. So potentially it's one of those scrapped plans or maybe they figured how bad the plan was just buried it. I can easily find propaganda trying to co Vince us that Canada has so much water and that it magically renews itself that it would be stupid not to sell it. Over and over.
Which is in stark contrast to my experience here. We have had less and less snow in recent years. We've had rivers running lower. We've had watering bans and lawns looking like we are in Arizona (yes, an exeggeration to make a point) more often in recent years. This year is an exception with more normal sun/rain cycles returning after a really dry spring (lawns recovered - who cares - some crops not so much, other are doing much better than in recent years)
That's a gasoline price, but don't they typically pump crude through pipelines? So more like $1.50 a gallon, based on my calculations.
I suppose if they built such a pipeline, they'd have to charge a lot more than 2-3 a gallon for the water. Though as a project, it seems less ambitious than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran....
Edit: I wonder if this was the (defunct) North American plan that was being referred to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Pow...
(this is old stuff, what I remember from the radio was pre-pandemic drive to the office radio reporting of recent events at the time)
https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system...
We know that this climate change will cause extreme weather events.
We know that this climate change will have unforeseen consequences that we never imagined.
Then we have you, demanding that we prove that any individual event is purely caused by climate change to imply we should all bury our heads in the sand. This way lies madness and great suffering.
The idiom is "putting words in my mouth". https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/putting+words+in+my+mou...
It would be foolish to expect correct scientific predictions and consensus in all details before it happens.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/02/canadian...
The climatologists are saying warming increases the likelihood of these extreme events. The problem is the models said they shouldn't be happening yet. So maybe something additional is going on.
The issue now is the media is going to report any bad weather as climate related, which is no better than claiming there is no global warming because one experienced a colder winter than normal.
> “Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist"
Also note this article is from January 2014.