131–140 of 249 posts
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someone has to protect our poor farmers, everyone loves farmers.
food shortage leads to revolution. The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket.
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food shortage leads to revolution. The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket.
>The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket. or may be that our national bread basket is turning into a desert? One needs 3 components - soil, sun and water. We're loosing the 3rd component : http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_27070897/california-dr... "The last three years of drought were the most severe that California has experienced in at least 1,200 years" Everybody can…
I have a lot of fun pondering the effects of a longer term drought. Will populations shift north to Oregon and Washington? Will desalination technologies advance to significantly reduce the cost?
New desalination technologies may also provide the key, such as the RO/PRO so-called "reverse osmosis" approach[2]. The Israelis have a giant plant "Sorek"[3] that is purifying seawater on a large scale and using advanced technology to reduce the energy cost and improve efficiency. So there's some hope for this approach to providing purified water on a large scale.
1. http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-large...
2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150217144246.ht...
3. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megasca...
Fascinating read. Recommended.
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Certainly for California. But what about New York for example? Have a look: http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air-... // Can't find numbers for Germany, but I can tell you that I don't know anybody who has AC at home. (I'm not a hippie.) // You know how examples work, right? The data is pretty clear: More than 60% of households in the USA have AC.
The humidity gets you. Germany isn't nearly as humid as New York in the summer.
Too little too late. Here's things Jerry could have done but didn't. - Ban the export of bottled water from California. If the drought is as bad as they say we shouldn't be shipping any of it out of state. Sorry Arrowhead. - Introduce tax breaks for installing water efficient appliances. - Introduce tax breaks for the removal of sprinkler systems and replacing plants with ones that require less water. - Introduce a m…
Both of these contract systems are full of outright fraud and mendacity and you can certainly call into question the moral foundation of the contracts, but under our system of laws these contracts are fundamentally untouchable.
Too little too late. Here's things Jerry could have done but didn't. - Ban the export of bottled water from California. If the drought is as bad as they say we shouldn't be shipping any of it out of state. Sorry Arrowhead. - Introduce tax breaks for installing water efficient appliances. - Introduce tax breaks for the removal of sprinkler systems and replacing plants with ones that require less water. - Introduce a m…
Wait, they just imposed water restrictions? Wouldn't have that made sense to start like... near the beginning of all of this?
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Many farmers are getting no [0] water this year and are relying on ground water to keep trees alive or not planting seasonal crops. Others get a very small fraction of their typical allotment [1]. California water rights are complicated... [0] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article11355200... [1] http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/in_focus/california_drought/...
The trees they're trying to keep alive have ridiculously high water consumption, almonds for instance consume 10s of litres of water for each _individual_ almond. They need to stop growing trees like that in a desert, which is what they're doing. The wells they are digging are tapping into the underlying aquifers that are the last resort, so they are in fact getting _free_ water while complaining about the cost. In e…
While the southern San Joaquin Valley does indeed get very little rainfall, the mountains that drain in to it normally get plenty of water.
Tulare Lake, once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, was right in the middle of the driest parts of Kern and Tulare counties.
The lake has even reappeared following a period of unusually high precipitation and as recent as 1997.