California and Florida now lead the country in climate change risks
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
In both places the reality of the situation was not what was promised:
California with periodic drought, and a general shortage of water in the places people wanted to live. Drought which brings fire, followed by wet years, which bring mud. My entire childhood was punctuated by dry, fire, rain, mud - rinse and repeat, like seasons. Are there more fires now? I dont really know to be honest - particularly with forest fires, its hard to separate that from 100 years of bad forest policy in regards to letting forests that need to burn periodically burn.
Florida with periodic hurricanes which would come thru and wipe down everything built. Are there more hurricanes every year now? I'm not clear on that either - I will say while the frequency seems within norms, the size of them does seem bigger because of how much warmer the gulf is.
Climate change may be making these problems more extreme, but the fact is these problems are not new. Neither state is experiencing weather that is all that much different than in the known historical record - both in the time they've been settled by europeans and from what we know from things like tree ring records.
Until we acknowledge there is no practical way to put the climate change genie back in the bottle, and that we need to switch from trying to decarbonize to making our built environments more resilient and focusing on sustainability, articles like this that tie every change in the climate to anthropogenic climate change, are little more than doomerism.
“Environmental” is 50%, but it’s a bit of an odd measure - per the report [1] it’s for rivers and maintaining habitats. I’d pref to exclude that from the available total. That would make agriculture 80% and urban uses 20%. When you consider many water inefficient agricultural uses, there’s quite a bit of water for consumers that is being sent elsewhere. CA has also consistently failed with other source developments, e.g. desalination, so I’d argue it’s less a fact of life here and more a question of the will to improve.
[1] https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
Would be interesting if someone knowledgeable in this area could comment on water consumption of these vs impact to other food chains, as well as alternatives such as growing it elsewhere and transporting to where livestock that eats it is.
Yes, agricultural dominates usage, but southern california with no agriculture would still have to transfer water from elsewhere (colorado river, sacramento delta etc) in order to sustain the population.
Personally, I’d want desalination in the mix for resiliency/diversification.
I'm personally all for geoengineering solutions, but even that is just a bandaid. We do need to address the core problem here. We are having record high heat almost every day it seems like. Eventually it will get so hot the problems will become extreme, possibly beyond our ability to continue to mass produce food.
One, the people who benefit from fossil fuel consumption are too diffuse to easily tamp down on.
Two, we cannot replace fossil fuels in certain applications.
Three, even all the green technology will need lubrication from something, unless we plan on moving back to whale oil (not exactly a renewable resource), we're stuck with oil based lubrication. Silicone use can be expanded, but it's not a 1:1 replacement for most oil based products. Burnable fuel is still a byproduct of this production.
Four, we cannot replace non lubricant petrochemical production at all, oil will still need to come out of the ground, and we will have fuel as a byproduct of that as well.
Fuel will continue to be available at a minimum as a byproduct of lubricant and petrochemical production, so while I think we can eliminate at least 50% of fossil fuel consumption - I just see no way to get to 100%. Getting to that 50% requires a whole lot more nuclear power than we have been willing to build.
Also it will just keep getting worse and worse if we don't stop releasing CO2.
It most certainly is. The periods of drought are lasting longer and are more intense, and the colder periods aren't as cold and aren't nearly as "wet"
Climate may still be cycling as it did historically, however its happening with more intensity for hotter months and colder months aren't getting as cold. If models are even semi-accurate, the western Sierras may not even get snow packs in the winter at all but the highest elevations
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...
California could power it with nuclear energy; they already have nuclear power plants and they have all of the engineering talent they need to make it happen. They are simply choosing not to solve their problems. In fact they are doing the opposite, they are shutting down their nuclear reactors and exacerbating their water problems by continuing to allow farmers to use all their available water on inefficient crops like almonds.
It's honestly mystifying how a state full of so many smart people and with one-party complete control of politics is unable to solve a basic problem for which they have all the tools. They really don't have any excuses.
Florida, on the other hand, yes they do have a hurricane problem. I don't know what they can do about that.
Writing this from the east coast where we have wild fires, 500 AQI days, *months long of 85+ degree days with high humidity. Pretty sure California got more rain this year than New York.
>Employed by the transcontinental railroads, influential writers like Charles Nordhoff contested eastern notions of Southern California as barren desert where “Anglo-Americans” would inevitably succumb to the “disease” of laziness.
It's 85f right now.
Where I grew up the weather in summer was typically over 85f.
I assume maybe 20-30 years ago the temperature was lower or there were fewer hot days where you're talking about.
I do think it's a concerning sign that instead of addressing the grander issue, the stop-gap solution is to throw more climate control everywhere though.
the linked article itself explains that life was indeed possible without AC, and describes the way it went.
How is this a real comment?
My great-aunt's first husband developed TB, possibly connected with his service in the first World War. Several decades later he hitchhiked from New York to the VA hospital in Tucson for treatment and recuperation (he rallied but died soon after returning to NY). His entire family eventually relocated to Mesa for similar reasons - the daughter developed some sort of lung condition and they felt that the dry air in the Southwest would help.
I grew up in Ohio and go back several times a year. There has been no major change in incidents. Winter is a bit warmer now, and there is more rain/freezing rain than there used to be (from days in the winter when it is too warm for snow). It is becoming less likely that Lake Erie will freeze over, which means more lake effect snow later in the season.
But overall, it's not a state getting hit with massive droughts or natural disasters. Many states are like this.
I wish climate change were scary enough to keep the state from doubling in population every 10-20 years, but alas.
They have been for awhile[0]
[0]: https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=B8...
It is interesting to note these statements from the above publication:
"History indicates that citrus plants have been grown for many years in gardens near the Gulf of Mexico and even as far north as Charleston, South Carolina. Small satsuma plantings were developed in the Gulf states as early as the 1890s but were destroyed by the freezes of 1894-95 and 1899. Plantings resumed until the freeze of 1916-17 struck, killing thousands of acres. By the early 1940s the hardy satsuma had again made a comeback, with some 12,000 acres growing in the Gulf states of Louisiana, Alabama and northern Florida. But freezes in the two decades following World War II mostly eliminated these plantings. Currently the main commercial areas are on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Florida."
Which seems to indicate that the climate was warmer than present in certain portions of the last few centuries. Charleston regularly experiences overnight freezes throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb (crucial months for orange production) in the modern era.
They are still building massive apartment buildings on the waterline, expensive luxury houses on sandbars that are projected to be under water in 50 years, etc.
They are helping global warming put them under water by building heavy buildings on the sand by the beach so that the buildings compress the sand down while the ocean goes up.
Most of Florida is already near ocean water level, which means they are in real danger of having the seawater wash over most of their land and completely destroy all of their sources of drinkable water. To prevent that they should be investing in dykes and barriers, etc., but of course they are not, because they do not believe in climate change.
Also, talking to Floridians, I gather that they have this naive childlike belief that whatever happens, the federal government will bail them out. It is a little ironic because most of them are staunch conservatives that do not believe the federal government should be doing much, and that people should not rely on government in general, but they still believe that the federal government will fix whatever climate emergency comes along.
There is some historical reasoning behind that. The federal government did do a lot to make Florida livable. But the current climate emergency is such a major problem, it is not clear the federal government will have the will to spend the enormous amounts of money necessary, nor whether they will be able to solve the problem even if they could spend the money.
- Redwood City