California has about one year of water left • Hacker News Board

Re: California has about one year of water left

#341

Post by plorkyeran » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

woud420 wrote: post #322

wes-k wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a biased vegan but... 802.7 gallons of water for one pound of beef 187.969 gallons of water for one pound of vegetables Agriculture consumes 2/3rds of California's water, most of which goes to growing and feeding farmed animals. Source: http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=cal/WaterFootprintCalcul... (Used United States for country)

As a biased omnivore, it would probably be a bit more useful to compare the calorie content of 1 lb of beef vs 1 lb of vegetables. I understand the point you're getting at but the bias might be a little bit too strong there.

Some completely arbitrary choices for comparison that may or may not be representative:

90% Lean Beef: 798 calories per pound

80% Lean Beef: 1152 calories per pound

Carrots: 186 calories per pound

Potatoes: 354 calories per pound

Using GP's numbers for gallons/pound:

90% Lean Beef: .994 calories per gallon

80% Lean Beef: 1.435 calories per gallon

Carrots: .990 calories per gallon

Potatoes: 1.883 calories per gallon

Much closer than I was expecting. I was also not expecting numbers on the order of magnitude of one calorie per gallon...

Re: California has about one year of water left

#342

Post by harryh » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #325

harryh wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fresh water isn't particularly rare. I don't understand what the point of your question is.

California's demand for water at current prices greatly exceeds supply. Continuing to farm at current rates will deplete water reserves within a year. That's why I mean by rare.

Ah yes. Well this just indicates that the government regulation of the price is leading to a mispricing. The gov't could simply let the price float just like most other products and then buy it at that rate just like most of the other things it buys.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#343

Post by sandworm » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

dchichkov wrote: post #277

bcherry wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Golf courses account for probably not more than 0.5% of all human water usage in California annually. Human water usage in CA is about 80% agricultural, 20% "urban". "Urban" covers all residential, (non-agricultural) commericial, landscaping, etc. Of the "Urban" usage, about 60% is residential, with indoor usage as the majority. Residential landscaping (lawns, pools, etc) uses at least 3 times as much as all commerci…

Please excuse my ignorance in that area, but what is happening to water after it had been "used" for landscaping? Does it disappear from local ecosystem, like water that went into sewer, or does it stay locally and come back as fog/rain/dew/etc?

It depends on the landscaping and foliage. Basically, a healthy forest-type landscape will retain a good amount of the water. A grass field monoculture, a golf course, will evaporate it all into the air and, depending on how you irrigate, much can be lost before even hitting the ground.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#344

Post by wes-k » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

woud420 wrote: post #322

wes-k wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a biased vegan but... 802.7 gallons of water for one pound of beef 187.969 gallons of water for one pound of vegetables Agriculture consumes 2/3rds of California's water, most of which goes to growing and feeding farmed animals. Source: http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=cal/WaterFootprintCalcul... (Used United States for country)

As a biased omnivore, it would probably be a bit more useful to compare the calorie content of 1 lb of beef vs 1 lb of vegetables. I understand the point you're getting at but the bias might be a little bit too strong there.

Definitely a fair point.

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Animal-products

shows 10.19 litres/calorie beef vs 1.34 liters/calorie vegetables. Which is an even greater distance than the gallons per pound I mentioned. This obvioulsy can't be right. I will argue that theory wise it makes sense that a plant based diet would use less than a diet consisting of eating animals that ate the plant based diet. The animals are expending energy! You could argue that we can feed animals lower water usage plants than we can feed humans, but does that really make a healthy animal for human consumption?

That said, there are other negatives associated with beef production and consumption :).

Also - not all calories are created equal.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#345

Post by emmanueloga_ » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #238

rjett wrote: post #72

Disclaimer: I have no clue if what I'm proposing is realistic or not, but: Perhaps the federal government should step in and gradually step down the level of subsidies given to farmers in California and gradually increase subsidies given to NEW farmers in other, more water rich parts of the country. This would have the effect of moving farms to more sustainable locations in the country. Sure, the types of crops produ…

What would happen if the gov't did nothing? 1. Water would become more scarce in California. Not everyone would get what they need. 2. Price of produce would go up, since there is a smaller supply. 3. We'd start to import more produce (either from outside the country or other states) because the price is the same or lower than the new, higher CA price. 4. Other farmers, who don't grow what CA grows, would start to be…

Let me see if I get this right: if the government doesn't do anything, the beautiful free market will automatically redistribute a scarce resource evenly between all the interested parts. Got it!

In any case, 2), 3), 4) doesn't seem to produce any beautiful fix for 1) in your list, apart from maybe stabilizing produce prices.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#346

Post by MattHeard » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

My back-of-the-napkin calculation tells me that watering an acre of alfalfa uses the same amount of water as having a nine-month shower with an inefficient flow.

If a Pigovean tax of 1c/gallon was applied to California, an 8-minute shower would cost about 20-40c more while an acre of alfalfa would cost an extra $20,0000.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#347

Post by kyrra » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

pnut wrote: post #284

CWuestefeld wrote: post #56

I just moved to Austin, TX 1.5 years ago. We've got our own severe drought here, and I wonder what's going to happen in the long term. Was it a mistake to move here? At least in TX, there are a couple of ways in which it's clear we're doing it to ourselves. First, we can't keep the reservoirs full because a significant amount of water flow is earmarked for rice farmers down at the mouth of the river. That's right: ri…

Not related to water per se, but I've lived in Austin for over 6 years now, and can confidently say it was a mistake to move here for me. Where do you go when you want to get out of town? Big Bend? New Orleans? Sure, 8 hours later... And beyond that, what? So much cultural desolation, for hundreds of miles. May as well be in a moon colony. Texas, where dreams go to die. Of course, these are my personal feelings, so d…

3 other large cities within a 3 hour drive (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio). The Gulf coast is also around 3 hours away. Not close, but it's something.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#348

Post by seanflyon » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #50

treehau5 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until new farms capitalize on the opportunity to capture the market in places where there's an abundance of water.

Only on HackerNews are people silly enough to think you have the scalability of virtual infrastructure in the physical world. Farms measure lead times in years . EDIT: I help my uncle manage a farm in Florida. The startup times are seriously ridiculous.

I don't see any indication that treehau5 thinks farm-related infrastructure is as easily scalable as tech-sector infrastructure nor did treehau5 suggest it would not take years.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#349

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:22 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #325

harryh wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fresh water isn't particularly rare. I don't understand what the point of your question is.

California's demand for water at current prices greatly exceeds supply. Continuing to farm at current rates will deplete water reserves within a year. That's why I mean by rare.

The fact that demand exceeds supply when water is basically free doesn't mean it's rare or would be unaffordable if priced correctly. There are tons of affordable things where demand would exceed supply if you priced it at ~0.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#350

Post by civilian » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:36 PM UTC

ffn wrote: post #274

bradleyjg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other places in the world where these crops can be grown. People in those countries will be more than happy to trade us almonds, rice, bananas and the like in exchange for things we are great at producing like software and music. It's a win-win.

I like to remind you that we, as mere lowly humans, require food grown on a farm to survive a lot more so than we need software or music. If we collapse our agricultural backbone and just willy-nilly decide to depend upon a foreign nation for food, then be prepared to fight a lot more "oil wars" (except for human fuel and not just car fuel). Furthermore, we'd be putting our trust into the governments and politicians…

You wrote some jingoist 19th-century bullshit. You're ready to fight in World War 1.

The idea that we need to protect strategic resources is outdated. We continue to do so, at our own detriment. Our sugar costs something like 5x what it costs in the rest of the world, because we place tariffs to keep it from coming in from the Caribbean. We are DESTROYING WEALTH CREATION with this market engineering. It is a tax that we see no benefit from and that is paid to no one.

Increased trade between countries increases stability. Some of my college classmates thought that we were due for a war with China just b/c they're the other huge power. What horseshit--- our mutual trade requires our politicians to play nice and not take any Crassian steps towards war.

If the US actually needed to make sure that we produced all of our strategic resources by ourselves then our economy would be tanked because we wouldn't be taking advantage of factories in BRIC. Do you think we make all the hard drives we would need to sustain a war against the rest of the world?