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California is not in drought

latimes.com

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Re: California is not in drought

#121

Post by rsj_hn »

btilly wrote: post #119
rsj_hn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 oth…

Well, yes, water doesn't respect state boundaries so I'm not claiming that California is a closed system, nor am I claiming the majority of water used in agriculture evaporates rather than going into the water table. But just as water evaporates in CA and lands on Colorado, so water evaporates in the pacific and lands on California, and we get ground water and river water back from Colorado. So are you claiming there is some systematic net movement of water out of California and into other states/countries? That would require presenting an entirely different set of facts than has been presented here.

Re: California is not in drought

#122

Post by daveevad »

colechristensen wrote: post #111
s1artibartfast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ephemera…

> In Iowa we drain the land by putting porous pipes a few feet down which are interlinked and drain into the rivers.

That is a fascinating. How extensive and interlinked are those pipes?

Re: California is not in drought

#123

Post by WillPostForFood »

tuatoru wrote: post #58
s1artibartfast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring.

Honestly not sure if you are joking or just being glib? Nuts are extremely calorie dense.

Almonds - 165 calories per oz

Iceberg - 4 calories per oz

Romaine - 5 calories per oz

Re: California is not in drought

#124

Post by eigen »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #100
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…

Yeah, I’ve only read part of that book but it’s quite good. There’s also a long PBS documentary based on it that came out in the ‘90s (maybe ‘95?) available on YouTube.

4 hour version.

https://youtu.be/PR2BSGQt2DU

Re: California is not in drought

#125

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: California is not in drought

#126

Post by CameronNemo »

chrisco255 wrote: post #15
ummonk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with the people. The majority of the water is used for agriculture, which supplies the nation and even the world with water-hungry food.

It's both. Yes a lot of fruits, veggies and nuts are grown in California but the nation's staple crops (corn, wheat, and soy) and livestock are grown in many other states. That is to say, we should be building desalination plants in California. Israel figured out a way to do this economically already. It's high time for CA to follow suit.

How do you plan to power desal plants? LADWP is still importing coal fueled electricity from Utah. Not to mention all of the petroleum and natural gas plants scattered around California.

Before we have desalination, we need more renewable energy.

Re: California is not in drought

#127

Post by missedthecue »

xyzzyz wrote: post #59
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. Urba…

It's worth noting that in addition to what you said, Californian farms also recycle fracking waste water, something residential systems do not.

Re: California is not in drought

#128

Post by njarboe »

rsj_hn wrote: post #79
njarboe wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 4.4 million acres burned in 2020 and 1.7 million in 2018, so were a third of the way to that 20 million already.

> Well, 4.4 million acres burned in 2020 and 1.7 million in 2018, so were a third of the way to that 20 million already. Unfortunately this article was written in Sept 2020 so I think (but don't know) that those are baked in. But in the big picture, yes, nature will eventually burn what needs to be burned. However the hope is for controlled burns, not burns that destroy lives and property. The Camp Fire in 2018 alone…

The article states: "In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire."

So the data the article is using is from before the 2020 fire season. Only 15.4 million acres to go.

Re: California is not in drought

#129

Post by missedthecue »

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.

A cow grown in Wyoming or Michigan, where they have more water than they know what to do with is less of a problem than water intensive plants grown in California, where people paint their lawns because it's illegal to water them.

Re: California is not in drought

#130

Post by MarkSweep »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #101
UncleOxidant wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South Bay area where Silicon Valley is has some of the best of that best soil. Deep loamy soil that really doesn't need much or any preparation and in that climate you can grow just about anything. I'm a gardener and I always try go grow a garden wherever I've lived, when I lived in the south Bay the soil was just the best I've seen anywhere by a long ways - it was so easy to dig and it was quite rich. That's why…

That industry led to lots of chemical dumping in the area, so watch out.

I’ve heard people say it makes chilis extra spicy.
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