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California is not in drought

latimes.com

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Re: California is not in drought

#51

Post by musicale »

testfoobar wrote: post #41

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount…

Regardless of what the product is, perhaps California should not be subsidizing water exports.

Re: California is not in drought

#52

Post by s1artibartfast »

testfoobar wrote: post #41

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount…

This is poor logic influenced by the politics of the LA aqueduct and water project.

Nuts are calorie dense, and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie. Food simply requires a lot of water. For example, A 5 oz glass of wine takes 34 gallons. A head of iceberg lettuce takes 16 gallons of water.

You will note that the motherJones article compares almond water things like home use, not other food sources.

Re: California is not in drought

#53

Post by a11r »

The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately become uneconomical. That is the right long term solution to aligning resource usage with available supply.

Re: California is not in drought

#54

Post by rsj_hn »

zbrozek wrote: post #50
rsj_hn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology to prevent wildfires is controlled burns. The Ohlone indians would regularly do controlled burns, reducing the density of trees by 90%. A combination of anti-controlled burn mentality, building expensive homes in forested areas, and an antipathy to "greedy loggers" has turned California into a tinderbox waiting to go off. The state needs to liquidate 90% of its forests ASAP, because reducing carbon emi…

Many CA communities make it hard to cut down trees ("conservationism"), and also don't religiously enforce clearance rules that they do have on the books. The combination means that there's a huge pileup of fuel even in suburban neighborhoods. To those downvoting - this is a town-owned parcel in my neighborhood, just a few miles down the hill from the CZU complex evacuation zone. https://i.imgur.com/PVUoUVg.jpg

Indeed

"Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California. Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres[...] California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire."

https://massivesci.com/articles/megafire-california-climate-...

Re: California is not in drought

#55

Post by ramraj07 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #52
testfoobar wrote: post #41

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount…

This is poor logic influenced by the politics of the LA aqueduct and water project. Nuts are calorie dense, and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie. Food simply requires a lot of water. For example, A 5 oz glass of wine takes 34 gallons. A head of iceberg lettuce takes 16 gallons of water. You will note that the motherJones article compares almond water things like home use, not other food source…

Can you give more sources? First time I see someone refuting that growing almonds is a water shit show

Re: California is not in drought

#56

Post by ramraj07 »

kardianos wrote: post #44
mullingitover wrote: post #43

While the agriculture sector would love cities to go into drought mode and cut back on water usage, let's review a fun fact: agriculture isn't even in the top ten of industries contributing to state GDP[1]. However, agriculture uses 80% of the state's water. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-g...

Do you eat money?

We could all stand to eat fewer almonds though.

Re: California is not in drought

#57

Post by harles »

testfoobar wrote: post #41

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount…

I’m always dumbfounded when almonds are pointed to as poor water usage. It’s an order of magnitude less egregious than meat and dairy on a per serving basis.

Re: California is not in drought

#58

Post by tuatoru »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #52
testfoobar wrote: post #41

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount…

This is poor logic influenced by the politics of the LA aqueduct and water project. Nuts are calorie dense, and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie. Food simply requires a lot of water. For example, A 5 oz glass of wine takes 34 gallons. A head of iceberg lettuce takes 16 gallons of water. You will note that the motherJones article compares almond water things like home use, not other food source…

This is also poor logic. Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring.

A snack size serving of almonds is around 20 of them, representing about 20 gallons. A side dish of lettuce is probably about half of one, 8 gallons.

That said, California's water is probably best used in high value add industries like semiconductor manufacturing.

Re: California is not in drought

#59

Post by xyzzyz »

a11r wrote: post #53

The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately becom…

Agricultural water and municipal drinkable water are two different things. The farm water does not come from the same distribution system as city water. For example, pulling water straight from a river to irrigate farm is agricultural water. Maybe the cost of agricultural water is too low, it probably is at least in some places. However, it is not clear at all that agricultural uses even compete with urban uses. Urban areas take their water from very specific locations, and a farmer using water from some other source does not necessarily result in any less water available in the location the urban water is drawn from. In many (probably most) cases, if farmers won’t use the water, nobody will, because there is no way to get it from where it is to where it is needed.

People tend to think about water distribution similarly to electricity, which is completely wrong. With electricity, there is one all-encompassing grid that everyone uses, and if some people use more of it, there is less of it available for others. Water is not like that: it is as if there were thousands of independent grids that cannot be easily connected, because pumping water over large distances is most often prohibitively expensive.

Re: California is not in drought

#60

Post by tuatoru »

kansface wrote: post #32
npsimons wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beef and dairy use more water, use more land, generate more GHG[0]. Deal with animal agriculture first, then we can talk about the fruits and nuts. [0] - https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths

I'm highly skeptical of this source. What percentage of that water usage for animal agriculture is actually in the form of grass (or rainfall more properly)? What percentage of the land used could be productively farmed by humans for human edible foods? What percentage of the GHGs from animal husbandry are net new? IE, a cow eats some grass, makes some co2 or w/e, which then goes back into new grass.

When I worked for a rural water provider in a relatively wet climate (so the cattle were grass fed), we allowed around 50 litres per day per beef animal and around 120 litres each for dairy cattle.

Cows do drink a fair amount, especially if they're not shaded in the heat. In the case of dairy, there's also a lot of washing water for milking.

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