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California is not in drought

latimes.com

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Re: California is not in drought

#111

Post by colechristensen »

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.

Many crops around the world receive zero irrigation, the only water they get comes from rain. Much of the cereal grains (not all, but still much) are grown without irrigation.

In Iowa we drain the land by putting porous pipes a few feet down which are interlinked and drain into the rivers. If we didn’t, the water table comes up all the way to the surface and much of the land would be ephemeral ponds for significant portions of the year.

Re: California is not in drought

#112

Post by colechristensen »

harles wrote: post #57
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.

It matters where that water comes from. A lot of meat and dairy come from places where water is in abundance and comes mostly or entirely from rain. I grew up on a farm where irrigation was something you saw on TV and would have to drive hundreds of miles to see any at all. We had pipes in the ground to drain water into the river. Most of our crop made its way to animal feed and involved not a drop of water that wasnt rain.

Re: California is not in drought

#113

Post by colechristensen »

dqv wrote: post #65
kemiller wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water and land that they use isn't necessarily useful for other crops. Marginal pasture land can't be magically turned into cropland but almond orchards can.

Sure but the 77.3 million acres to grow the plants we eat pales in comparison to the 781 million acres we use for animal agriculture.[0] Why turn almond orchards into cropland when we can just use less of the land we use for animal production and turn that into cropland? I highly doubt all 781 million acres can only be used for animal grazing. [0]: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/bloomberg-illustrates-how-...

Because those grazing lands don’t support crops. They support a little bit of grass and in their natural state had herds of animals not too different from cattle grazing on them.

People don’t seem to grok this.

On land with little rain you can raise animals where you give a huge expanse per animal. They eat grass and fertilize and participate in the ecosystem.

If you wanted to do anything else with the land you would have to irrigate nearly every drop of water and many places you can’t actually do that at all.

There aren’t just easy equivalents like you’re trying to pose.

Re: California is not in drought

#115

Post by trimbo »

eweise wrote: post #107
trimbo wrote: post #95

1000 word opinion piece and not one mention of the Delta Smelt? The author is right though, this climate is the norm. A better way to put it is that California has always been in drought. So when politicians say "drought", they actually mean "deficit". There's more than enough rain and snowpack, but we're not collecting enough of it to meet demand. We could collect more--at great expense--or use less. As i mentioned…

Maybe no mention of delta smelt because Sonoma doesn't get its water from the delta.

I was wrong, I glossed over the "migrating fish" reference here:

> But Central Valley lawmakers are hopping mad that the governor didn’t declare drought statewide, because they want the rules bent to allow the opposite — more water from reservoirs to grow their crops, less for urban residents and migrating fish.

Re: California is not in drought

#116

Post by spaced-out »

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?

You would have a point if we were talking about farmers growing staples to feed the local community, but we're not. We're talking about farms that are growing luxury crops (such as grapes, pistachios, almonds) for export. It's perfectly reasonable to ask if this is wise to export water intensive luxury crops in a state that's experiencing shortages.

Re: California is not in drought

#117

Post by nitwit005 »

refurb wrote: post #67
mullingitover wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California isn't big on dietary staple agricultural goods. The five biggest ag businesses are dairy, grapes, almonds, cattle, pistachios, and strawberries, none of which we really need to grow here. They're luxury foods generally. There's not that much that's grown here that couldn't be grown elsewhere.

Exactly. We could all eat drought resistant oats for each meal with a shot of essential vitamins and minerals. Very efficient and green!

Truly, how would we survive if wine and almonds were a bit more expensive. An unlivable horror.

Re: California is not in drought

#118

Post by refurb »

anjel wrote: post #102
okareaman wrote: post #7

Desalination of seawater will be the norm in the future and people then will wonder how we ever got by without it

Does Desalination remove DDT and its breakdown products? https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-04-26/ddt-was...

Yea

Re: California is not in drought

#119

Post by btilly »

rsj_hn wrote: post #92
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...

> However, agriculture uses 80% of the state's water. This is what economists sometimes call a stock-flow inconsistent argument. Water, like money, circulates, and to stick your finger on one part of that chain and insist that something is being used by X and thus not available for Y does more to obfuscate than enlighten. Some of the water "spent" on agriculture then evaporates into the air and ends up as snowfall wh…

You may be overestimating the effects of circulation of water.

It is true that water that evaporates is likely to someday fall somewhere as rain or snow. However agriculture is going to spread a lot of water during summer. At that point it evaporates very efficiency. But unfortunately during summer it is unlikely that anywhere in California will have the conditions for rain, so that water is going to fall in some other place. Normally Colorado, from which it is unlikely to go back into California.

So from the point of California, water used in agriculture is gone. Not to be seen again any time soon.

Re: California is not in drought

#120

Post by zbrozek »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #105
zbrozek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I live in SoCal and the park backing up my house has giant piles of dead wood everywhere. It basically looks like your picture but everything is brown and 1/3 of the fuel is dead trees. The Woolsey fire went right around our city - mountains on 3 sides of it, and all 3 of them were on fire at one point. Been thinking of trying to organize something to clear out some of that crap. I know our neighbors take it upon the…

The area in that photo turns brown in the fall. It's a few hundred feet from my house. I moved into my place late in 2019. Spring 2020 was creating a defensible space around the house - trimming trees, removing ground cover ivy near the house, etc. This spring is more about clearing the brush and trying to disconnect the ground from the canopy on the whole parcel. Some folks walking through the neighborhood called the town to complain that I was removing native plants. Town came by and ultimately decided I was within my right to clean up, but it was a hassle I didn't need.

Given the close calls I'm really surprised that there isn't a strong rallying around removing fuel.

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