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Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

latimes.com

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Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#21

Post by bragr »

Victerius wrote: post #13
burlesona wrote: post #6

California is next to the ocean, so if we really wanted to secure the water supply we have technological answers available. Nuclear desalination has been used at scale across the globe for decades, and it's not hard to imagine a less centralized solution powered by solar or wind. https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclea...

The state needs to start overruling the local NIMBYs and build the desal plants the rest of the state needs. And the regulators need to chill out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...

It's not really the NIMBYs, it's the Coastal Commission which has a singular mission to protect the coasts no matter the larger big picture issues that keeps killing desal plants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Coastal_Commissio...

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#22

Post by DowsingSpoon »

thghtihadanacct wrote: post #2

Aridification? I thought the place started out as a desert.

Well, you were wrong. Much of the area is California chaparral and woodlands, not deserts. The Mojave and Sonoran deserts are at the far South end of the state.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#23

Post by xvedejas »

thghtihadanacct wrote: post #2

Aridification? I thought the place started out as a desert.

It depends what your criteria are, but most of the LA basin would not be considered to have a "desert" climate, instead a Mediterranean climate. A good amount is intermediate and considered "semi-arid". To get to a proper desert climate, you do have to go just outside the urban area, over the mountains into the rain shadow where you'll find the Mojave desert.

The border between "Mediterranean" and "Semi-Arid" is (according to Köppen) set by a threshold of precipitation based on potential evapotranspiration, which depends on things like average temperature. Once you have that threshold, precipitation at below 50% is considered "Desert", 50-100% is considered "Semi-Arid", and beyond would be other classifications (like Mediterranean in the LA case).

Maybe this sounds arbitrary but it shows that most of LA gets at least double the rainfall that a desert would, according to the most common climate classification scheme.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#24

Post by skybrian »

agomez314 wrote: post #3

entire regions being deserted is not a new thing (see mayan civilization). it's possible we'll see the cities of southern California (San Diego, Los Angeles) as remnants of an ancient culture in a few hundred years, left intact by the scorching heat and desert.

San Diego seems to be doing pretty well at water management. The naysayers weren't able to block the desalination plant and they are doing other things too.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#25

Post by exhilaration »

mistrial9 wrote: post #7

Los Angeles area with 13 million inhabitants, is the economic powerhouse of California overall. Gov. Arnold S. famously had staff meetings in LA, less so in the official capital city of Sacramento (gold era). San Diego county is unique to the area as a border to Mexico. San Diego County is largely separate from the others with heavy Federal presence. The multi-county region including LA County there is known as SCAG…

I'm curious about why SCAG has failed to plan for this disaster while the much smaller San Diego county has managed to get a desalination plant up and running https://nyti.ms/3yuTUz4 From what I can tell this is the only desal plant on the West Coast which seems crazy.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#27

Post by tomc1985 »

Victerius wrote: post #13
burlesona wrote: post #6

California is next to the ocean, so if we really wanted to secure the water supply we have technological answers available. Nuclear desalination has been used at scale across the globe for decades, and it's not hard to imagine a less centralized solution powered by solar or wind. https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclea...

The state needs to start overruling the local NIMBYs and build the desal plants the rest of the state needs. And the regulators need to chill out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...

San Diego got its desal plant in the husk of an old coal plant, and it has been the GREATEST thing. We are much closer to water independence than anyone else in the state and not having to listen about constant drought nagging has been FANTASTIC

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#28

Post by beambot »

Quick Google stats: There are 13M households in California. Average household consumes 0.5-1.0 acre-feet of water per year. It costs $419 per acre-foot for desalination. California has a discretionary budget surplus of $49B.

Thus: It would cost $2.7B-$5.4B per year to provide desalination-based water to all Californians. With the current budget surplus, we could provide 100% of California's living water needs for 10-20+ years exclusively from desalination. We should be building now.

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#29

Post by imperialdrive »

draw_down wrote: post #14

I have a friend who grew up and has lived in socal for most of their life. When I mentioned the reporting on extreme drought for this year, they just responded “oh they say that every year”. So I wonder how reflective that is of the mentality of area residents, even if superficially it could appear otherwise.

I've observed much of same. (Not sure why you got downvoted.)

Re: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric

#30

Post by nullc »

bragr wrote: post #21
Victerius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state needs to start overruling the local NIMBYs and build the desal plants the rest of the state needs. And the regulators need to chill out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...

It's not really the NIMBYs, it's the Coastal Commission which has a singular mission to protect the coasts no matter the larger big picture issues that keeps killing desal plants. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Coastal_Commissio...

> keeps killing desal plants.

and diablo canyon nuclear plant, too.

Desal could be run in a less energy efficient manner that reduced the salinity of the discharge water, but my understanding is that as far as the coastal commission is concerned no amount is acceptable.

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