California declared drought free for first time in seven years • Hacker News Board

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#231

Post by hanniabu » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 5:46 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #230

hanniabu wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property size should be irrelevant. It should just be based off usage.

So you’re saying you want to give discounts to people who choose small houses with no years just because they have no yard? I can get behind that. That would encourage people to buy small properties which solves both the water and real estate problems.

Property type is irrelevant too, no reason to over complicated it. Just pay for his much water you're using, doesn't matter the purpose, use, location, property code, etc.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#232

Post by cgs » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 10:03 AM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #192

dror wrote: post #174

John Steinbeck, "East of Eden", 1952. "There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out mise…

I always think about this passage when I read about California droughts. I wonder if this is actually true and what causes it.

Apocalyptic Planet by Craig Childs goes into depth on why this happens. We are living in pretty favorable conditions at the moment.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#233

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 10:26 AM UTC

jshen wrote: post #228

cbnotfromthere wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California never had a market for water / water rights, so your extreme left imagination is left without data to back it up. At all.

In the late 19th century rich people in LA bought many properties upstream of Owens valley, on the Owen’s river, and diverted the water to LA leaving farmers in Owens valley without the water they historically had and needed for their farms.

Diverting water from farmers != causing the poor to die of thirst. That latter scenario of yours was just ridiculous.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#234

Post by linuxftw » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #120

jcranmer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building more water storage doesn't address the fundamental problem that California uses more water than is actually provided by nature (on average).

I came here to just say 'drought' implies abnormal lack of rainfall. For California the issue is there is nothing abnormal about years of little rainfall. There is a comment from Charles Bowden the rings to true to me. Talking about the Civilization in the Arizona Desert; the desert will win eventually because you can't take what it doesn't have. With California the real question is how much damage will we do while l…

Seems California has a 'people problem' and the population is past the carrying capacity.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#235

Post by jshen » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #233

jshen wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the late 19th century rich people in LA bought many properties upstream of Owens valley, on the Owen’s river, and diverted the water to LA leaving farmers in Owens valley without the water they historically had and needed for their farms.

Diverting water from farmers != causing the poor to die of thirst. That latter scenario of yours was just ridiculous.

the idea that "leave it to the market" will solve all problems is ridiculous as is shown by the historical example I gave.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#236

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #235

pfdietz wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diverting water from farmers != causing the poor to die of thirst. That latter scenario of yours was just ridiculous.

the idea that "leave it to the market" will solve all problems is ridiculous as is shown by the historical example I gave.

The idea that the only market is a robber-baron friendly totally unregulated one is an absurd strawman.

The water issues in California could be addressed by trading (say) half the water currently going to agriculture. Everyone would be better off, including those poor you pretend to care about.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#237

Post by jshen » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #236

jshen wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea that "leave it to the market" will solve all problems is ridiculous as is shown by the historical example I gave.

The idea that the only market is a robber-baron friendly totally unregulated one is an absurd strawman. The water issues in California could be addressed by trading (say) half the water currently going to agriculture. Everyone would be better off, including those poor you pretend to care about.

It’s not a straw man, that’s exactly what a whole lot of people on here believe is the one true way.

So your idea is that the government will decide and enforce that roughly half the water is not allowed for agriculture?

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#238

Post by OrgNet » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:51 AM UTC

cjensen wrote: post #87

OrgNet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it legal to get rain barrels and other types of rain collection systems?

Yes. They are not as useful as you might hope since California's dry season lasts six months, so they will go empty when you need them the most.

I guess it depends on how much water you collect....

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#239

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #197

derekdahmer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of empty government land on the California Coast. The main reason there aren't more desal plants is because ejecting the leftover brine into the ocean is an environmental concern.

And it’s expensive. You pump a ton of energy into a system to get water. Water is so cheap you can pour it on the ground.

Water's a lot less cheap in actual deserts (like in Nevada and Arizona). Places with massive water surpluses (like what California could have) tend to end up selling their surpluses to places with water deficits, raking in cash that can go into all sorts of things that California wants to buy (like, say, high-speed rail connections between all the major cities).

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#240

Post by jshen » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #207

jshen wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get a first owner for water?

Are you being intentionally obtuse? I just described two ways. There's Right of first use, Riparian rights, and my pet illustrative example of treating it as a publicly held asset to be sold... There's other ways beyond those three, but the first two are how ownership is assigned in the US today.

riparian rights is what led to the CA water wars where the wealthy from LA bought land up stream of the farmers in the owen's valley. It didn't solve the problem we're talking about regarding rich people buying up the water.

I have no idea how first use could work for water, would be happy to read more if you link me to something about it. A quick googling returned nothing.

The last one requires a lot more specifics to talk about meaningfully, but I'll bet that most of the free marketers wouldn't consider it a free market.