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California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

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Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#121

Post by jeffbee »

jet_32951 wrote: post #116
ericbarrett wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never take any complaint about residential water use in California seriously while there are flooded rice paddies in Sacramento: https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies

Yes. Last time I checked, water used for rice growing amounted to 8% of all water use in California, and all household / urban use was also 8%. It is madness to grow rice in a desert, but that is California water "management".

Nobody grows rice in a desert. The rice-growing areas of California are naturally inundated. We spent billions of dollars un-flooding Glenn, Butte, and Tehama counties. Rice fields are flooded in the winter when they would have been flooded anyway, then drained in the early spring, then flooded again during peak runoff season in the late spring. They don't "use" water in a way that could be reduced to help anyone else.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#122

Post by Fricken »

neltnerb wrote: post #104
johnchristopher wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the most extreme scenario, can the US create new agricultural fields in other states, cutting down forests if needed ? The weather will change but surely the US will still have arable land enough to feed its citizens (even if they have to forget some kind of crops (pistachio, etc.) aside) ?

As climate bands move, which areas become suitable change as well. I don't think it's obvious yet exactly where, if anywhere, makes sense since the place you move it to might be untenable ten years later at this rate. Of course such moves would heavily entrench large agricultural companies who have the resources to build speculative farms. I'm personally expecting that farmers will adapt to local conditions and grow…

Well, th skies have looked progressively more like Bladerunner 2049 up here in Alberta for 4 summers running. We had some crops fail due to heat earlier in the season, and more are failing due to dryness now. So don't look at us.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#123

Post by lhorie »

frazbin wrote: post #74

Real quick thing about the water in California: it's important because it is used to make food, which is exported from the state's central plains to the rest of the country. Your mental model should not include the direct water use of humans.. this is and always has been about the economics of food production. So if people leave California, it will be because they can't get jobs in agriculture.. people would be comin…

It's not even just California either. The Ogallala aquifer that underlies the Midwest corn belt is also running low. That's 90% of national corn production and affects basically everything that uses corn starch or HFCS.

Unsustainable agriculture will get ugly.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#124

Post by rtkwe »

akiselev wrote: post #75
pixl97 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 things. One is you want to keep the rivers flowing in the first place. If you impound too much water, you don't have rivers, you have dry creeks and all the wildlife in them dies. The big one is water rights. The water is not the states to impound in the first place in many cases. If I have particular water rights, and you block them, I can sue you out of existence under existing laws, laws that are going to be ver…

> One is you want to keep the rivers flowing in the first place. If you impound too much water, you don't have rivers, you have dry creeks and all the wildlife in them dies. That's only if we build massive dammed reservoirs that try to serve dense populations from a single source like Hetch Hetchy supplying the Bay Area. A system of smaller reservoirs dotted across the state would serve the same function without the…

Generally that snowmelt either goes into existing streams or penetrates into groundwater though. It's not workable to just capture every drop of snow even if we could from and engineering and water rights standpoint, that water is already feeding environments that would dry out and pose more fire risk without that water.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#125

Post by sampo »

johnchristopher wrote: post #92
scrumbledober wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not just pistachios and almonds, it's a full 1/3 of the country's vegetables and 2/3 of the country's fruits and nuts. California's water problems are everyone's water problems.

In the most extreme scenario, can the US create new agricultural fields in other states, cutting down forests if needed ? The weather will change but surely the US will still have arable land enough to feed its citizens (even if they have to forget some kind of crops (pistachio, etc.) aside) ?

> can the US create new agricultural fields in other states

Even California could. California could have much more irrigated agricultural land, if they completed Stage II of the original 1957 California Water Plan.

I guess before 1970s, there was not much political controversy in building reservoirs and harnessing rivers and directing the water flow though agriculture. Then in the 1970s and after, some people started to see intrinsic value in rivers in their natural state, and opposing further water projects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project...

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#126

Post by cronix »

thethethethe wrote: post #108
johnchristopher wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the most extreme scenario, can the US create new agricultural fields in other states, cutting down forests if needed ? The weather will change but surely the US will still have arable land enough to feed its citizens (even if they have to forget some kind of crops (pistachio, etc.) aside) ?

Sure, but nothing will fully replace the productivity of the California central valley, which has some of the most fertile soil in the world. The Willamette valley up in Oregon is incredibly fertile as well, though it is currently too cold to grow lettuce and strawberries year round. That will change in the coming years but the Willamette valley is about the third the size. Additionally, the Pacific northwest is drou…

They're even lower now. A few months ago, the federal gov't cut off a lot of farmers in S. Oregon from water that they use for crops. To save fish.

> Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from water they have used for decades.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/10/us/klamath-oregon-drought-wat...

People go to bed with water and wake up to dry wells. Since the farmers can't use the traditional water source in the area, they are digging their wells deeper and deeper in order to water their crops. Something a lot of regular people can't afford to do, so as the farmers drop the water table searching and searching for that continually drying up water, others are going without.

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/07/29/southern-oregon-wells...

Bad things seem to be coming.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#127

Post by azinman2 »

Back in 2015, another drought year, the head of the water board gave a really interesting talk to the MIT Bay Area club: http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/mitcnc/videos/31839-califo...

In it she said that California didn’t have as much a water problem as a water capture and storage problem. All of the capture and storage was built during wet years and if we could capture storm runoff even in places like LA we’d be in a far better situation. It was a really interesting talk I recommend to anyone living in CA.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#128

Post by NonContro »

eplanit wrote: post #11

These droughts were anticipated, but here in California preparing for climate change means preaching at others, and setting up a carbon exchange. Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979. It's impossible to take California seriously about much of anything, but especially not regarding the environment: "In 1979, California’s population was a little more than 23 million. Today, it is more than 39 million. Y…

California's population would be shrinking (due to inter-state emigration), if not for international immigration: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/californias-stalled-...

Securing the southern border and deporting all irregular migrants should also be a priority from an environmental standpoint.

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#129

Post by scythe »

epistasis wrote: post #44
eplanit wrote: post #11

These droughts were anticipated, but here in California preparing for climate change means preaching at others, and setting up a carbon exchange. Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979. It's impossible to take California seriously about much of anything, but especially not regarding the environment: "In 1979, California’s population was a little more than 23 million. Today, it is more than 39 million. Y…

This isn't a very complete picture of what's going on with water in California. Even as population has almost doubled, and as agricultural output increases, we have decreased our water usage: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ There's a lot to be said for simply not wasting lots of water. If California stopped growing alfalfa, a low value product that is the largest agricultural use of water, w…

Alfalfa is a legume that improves soil [1]. Therefore, it cannot simply be dropped; it would have to be replaced by something.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfalfa#Ecology

Re: California's dry season is turning into a permanent state of being

#130

Post by gregors »

hh3k0 wrote: post #13
joelbluminator wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound likely. You will be able to settle tens of millions of refugees in Greenland, Siberia etc. Former frozen wasteland will become habitable. I don't think Europe or the U.S will volunteer to absorb tens of millions of refugees if there are other solutions.

> I don't think Europe or the U.S will volunteer to absorb tens of millions of refugees if there are other solutions. Who said anything about volunteering? Europe couldn't stop ~1 million people from entering in 2015, so what makes you think they can stop 50 to 100 times that number? > Greenland, Siberia etc. Former frozen wasteland will become habitable "Billions of Acres of Cropland Lie Within a New Frontier. So Do…

"Wir shaffen das" => "We will make it!" - Angela Merkel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wir_schaffen_das

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