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Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

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Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#131

Post by ehnto »

deaddodo wrote: post #79
DannyBee wrote: post #18

It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…

> Meanwhile, they continue to push nonsense to help. The amount of water used by residences doing "outdoor watering" is miniscule. Agriculture is over 80% of the water use in california. If they were going to completely run out of water in a week, and all outdoor watering by residences would stop, it would buy you less than a day. This is definitely true and something I try to point out to people all the time. The Ca…

That's not really the whole story though, because water supplies are not a centrally stored resource shared amongst all consumers. It's a fairly distributed system with lots of different reserves feeding different consumers.

For example, small towns may pull their drinking water from a dam or other reserve that is of limited supply, where the agriculture in the area is not affecting the same water, being pulled from rivers or bores or a separate reserve.

That is to say, drought measures should really be applied town by town.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#132

Post by potiuper »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #78
onphonenow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. You can look at this from an economics standpoint as well. We have run out of FREE water. If all water use in CA cost anywhere close to residential water rates ($8 / 100 cubic feet) there would be no shortage. Even a small tax of $0.01 per gallon would be a start in this space. We have exploded population and if you look at water projects (that actually deal with supply) have not done the same over 50 years or w…

> in a desert Why do so many people choose to live in a desert? It makes very little economic sense. Feels like it will be destined for failure no matter what silicon valley tries to pay its grunts. Any expectation of having enough water for such a low price is laughably absurd. The population of this state is literally asking for these conditions - they are choosing to live there.

Desert is more sensible place for urban humans than using productive land for buildings and roads.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#133

Post by SamBam »

emptyfile wrote: post #42
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA water use is 50% environment, 40% agriculture, 10% residential. Maybe we should focus on reducing that 50%? It was nice and all when we had plenty of water to waste but it’s time to revisit those policies. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

Is this a joke comment? Or is this really what the average American thinks?

"Deforestation is terrible thing. 10% of the forests are being cut down each year. We should reduce that number."

"Yeah, but what about the 90% of forests being kept for 'environmental purposes?' We should get the low-hanging fruit and reduce that number first!"

"...what?"

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#134

Post by rory »

Spooky23 wrote: post #30
DannyBee wrote: post #18

It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…

Well, what are we going to do? California and Arizona wiped most of the US produce business off the map. Between the destruction of Ukraine, the western us droughts and the impending exhaustion of much of the Ogallala Aquifer, looks like many chickens are coming home to roost in the coming years.

The worst culprits (in terms of volume + heavy water usage) are almonds, pistachios, and walnuts. No one is going to starve because nuts become rare and expensive, so let's start there.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#136

Post by jupp0r »

While this is not great at all, it will mainly impact agriculture. Coastal cities, where a majority of the population lives and where most economic value is created will always have the option to desalinize seawater, which currently costs ~ $4/(1000 gal) in the town where I’m living [1].

It also doesn’t mean that people won’t have anything to eat because agriculture fails completely. It will mostly mean that extremely water hungry produce like almonds, dates etc will have to be replaced by crops that only use a fraction of water. It’s disappointing that there isn’t more regulation to force this transition (and more general common sense practices like forcing farmers to install water meters).

People being told to not water their lawns and installing low flow shower heads is really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things (but might be necessary in a local water shortage).

[1] https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system...

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#137

Post by stevenwoo »

yalogin wrote: post #56
exabrial wrote: post #41

Here's a novel idea: Don't live in the desert. Don't grow baby spinach in the desert. Let water prices rise to the extremes they need to discourage people from doing stupid stuff with essentially free water.

Who is going to tell middle California that they need to pay a lot higher to grow crops? The politicians sure won’t. The government is already an enemy in those parts.

When one drives on I-5 or 99 through central California, there are billboards every 10-20 miles telling people that big government is trying to stop farming by restricting water rights. There is a constant messaging campaign (for the 20+ years I have lived in California) and the signs all look the same, and it's the opposite of what you are writing.

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#138

Post by maratc »

DannyBee wrote: post #18

It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…

Israel has successfully reused its wastewater for agriculture. Turns out crops like the recycled wastewater just as much as drinking water.

More than 90% of wastewater is reused in Israel. The second-place holder reuses less than 25%. United States’ rate is less than 10%. [0]

[0] https://www.fluencecorp.com/israel-leads-world-in-water-recy...

Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

#139

Post by hedora »

izzydata wrote: post #53

It amazes me that this isn't considered a full blown emergency. This feels as bad as a nuke slowly descending onto a city of millions. Yet everyone continues to consume water like nothing is happening. The time for extreme water rationing and banning of certain industries in the desert is years ago. If I lived anywhere near there I would have been desperately trying to sell my property before it became worthless.

This causes two problems for California residents:

1) Forest fires. This is not solvable without addressing climate change, which Washington DC keeps blocking.

2) Dire food shortages, and price hikes. California is expensive, and raw food ingredients are a smaller fraction of household budgets than in othet places. This is going to hit poorer countries and poorer states much harder.

There's almost nowhere to move to avoid either of these problems. Here's a map for of which parts of the US are likely to be uninhabitable soon. California is less screwed than most of the US. In fact the California coasts are some of the more heavily populated areas that'll be OK moving forward.

https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/

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