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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

#101

Post by deaddodo »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95
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…

> It will happen either way, mind you, the only question is whether it destroys the ability of everyone else to live there at all. With how expensive California is - desalination will not make it uninhabitable for the average person. It will be cost prohibitive to desalinate a gallon of water to grow one pistachio, though.

> With how expensive California is - desalination will not make it uninhabitable for the average person.

Which is exactly why they have a dozen or so desalination plants in operation, with a couple dozen more set to be spun up in the coming decades.

> It will be cost prohibitive to desalinate a gallon of water to grow one pistachio, though.

This is it, which is why ag and other industries lobby so hard for "water rights" for commercial use; to offload the bill to the taxpayers.

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

#102

Post by pilom »

bombcar wrote: post #23
bluGill wrote: post #20

In Iowa we have the opposite problem too much rain. We are in the last week to plant corn before seeing reduced yields.

We need the transcontinental pipeline to push water to where it needs to be. Or agriculture needs to move to where the water is.

A pipeline like this is so naive I can't figure out if the op is serious or not. The cost alone would bankrupt multiple states. For example the Central Arizona Pipeline goes from lake Mead to Tucson. That's it. It cost on the order of $10 billion and provides barely enough water to cover the needs of the cities and farmers along it. Doing a pipeline from Iowa over the continental divide and into the Colorado River basin that was big enough to matter would cost hundreds of billions to a trillion dollars.

Forcing water intensive ag to move by actually charging a reasonable rate for water is a far more sensible answer. Just requires political capital.

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

#103

Post by blululu »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #55
pjc50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which species and ecosystems are you proposing eliminating? ("environmental use" really means "leave it in the river"; reducing environmental use to zero means making rivers never reach the sea because you've extracted 100% of the water.)

Which species are you claiming would go extinct and does your list cover 100% of those on the environmental list? Perhaps there's room somewhere between the two extremes?

Unclear if anything would go extinct but most of that water drains into Humboldt Bay. There are several robust salmon and trout fisheries which would almost certainly take a beating. These steams support river otters whose numbers have never really recovered from Russian and American fur trappers and those streams support an enormous number of migratory and local bird, fish and amphibian species. Unclear what might go extinct and what would merely take a beating but it is pretty clear from similar projects in the PNW that the ecological consequences would be significant. A visit to Humboldt might change your thoughts on the topic. It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Not only does it boast the tallest trees on the planet but it is one of the few places in America that I would describe as wild and free. The scars of clear cutting from the 60s are still visible but the land is still alive in a way that it just isn’t in a lot of the State. Characterizing the issue as one between two extremes is a straw man. The rivers of Northern California are already heavily engineered. The current levels were established after the environmental consequences of that engineering was deemed unsuitable for the communities in the region. The Central Valley has effectively engineered its rivers out of existence and it is still not enough. It will never be enough. There is only one extreme in question here.

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

#104

Post by matthewdgreen »

ece wrote: post #100
deaddodo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the population in California doesn't live in a desert. They live in chaparral, temperate coniferous forest and mountainous biomes/climates. It's a moot point regardless as the California Water Plan is probably one of the most extensive in the world, beaten likely only by Israel. There is plenty of water for the populace and supporting services; and most of the populated desert regions (the IE par…

Why aren't there MPG-like standards for farming, and if we had such standards, how much water would be saved? Maybe there are irrigation standards and I just don't know.

If you charged for water and also let farmers sell excess there would be incentive to improve efficiency. But politically this is untenable.

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

#105

Post by rory »

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.

How did you make the jump from "Residents use 3-5% of the water supply" to "any expectation of having enough water to reside in this place is absurd"?

Do you think the water table is not enough to support 5% of current usage levels?

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

#106

Post by rocqua »

neverartful wrote: post #52
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…

At what point should desalination plants be considered for agriculture irrigation in California?

If California agriculture is already untenable at 1c a gallon (as per this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31235312) then its probably not going to be very viable to support agriculture with desalination plants.

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

#107

Post by pengaru »

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.

It's nice living where there aren't any mosquitoes or humidity.

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

#108

Post by Sharlin »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #29
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…

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/

“We’re facing a looming environmental disaster. Why not try to fix it by causing another environmental disaster?”

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

#109

Post by mistrial9 »

Sharlin wrote: post #98
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within the already small residential slice, regulations are weird. When my parents lived in the LA area, they had a large swimming pool and an irrigated lawn but were required to have ultra low flush toilets. The amount of water saved by those toilets (which often required multiple flushes to empty the bowl of waste) paled in comparison with the government approved swimming pool and sprinkler systems.

Lawns in general are a truly horrendous idea. Lawns in a literal desert are probably one of the worst ideas that have ever became popular.

golf

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

#110

Post by eesmith »

t-3 wrote: post #25
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons, Humans have lived in the basin where I live for at least 4000 years, and many parts of it are filled with thousands of bits of their pottery as evidence of their presence. I suspect that the Tewa/Pueblo people in general would be a little troubled by the idea that they "left almost no history" behin…

Artifacts are not history, they are items. The names, languages, and cultures of many native groups are completely unknown due to genocide and forced integration. I said that they lacked the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, not that they didn't exist or have civilization, which I know they did - but they died out due to drought. Much of the time, they lacked resources for widespread acce…

So if I understand you right, Namibia lacks the "trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization" because many San live as hunter-gatherers?

The link you gave describes people who live on the margin; "peripheral members of the Puebloan culture". Not "most of the native groups", which is the phrase yous used earlier.

Yes, many modern people don't have a sense of the pre-Spanish history of the Southwest. How is their ignorance relevant?

> Artifacts are not history

PaulDavisThe1st wrote "I suspect that the Tewa/Pueblo people in general would be a little troubled by the idea that they "left almost no history" behind."

The current buildings of Taos Pueblo, as an example, started about 1,000 years ago. And they have a detailed oral history.

This history helps understand the physical evidence. I'll quote from https://orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/societies-amer... :

] Consultation and collaboration with Pueblo people and scholars has changed the way that archaeologists think about migration away from Mesa Verde. Now, based on Tewa oral history, researchers understand that Mesa Verde people simply moved farther east, towards the Rio Grande region of northern New Mexico, where many of their descendants still live today. Using oral history, archaeology, and soil science, archaeologists have been able to come up with new ideas about the end of Mesa Verde. Even though there was a drought at the end of the time that people lived at the site, we can see that the environment was only one of the things that led people to move. The conditions when people moved weren’t much worse than they had been before.

(Emphasis mine.)

> everything died so we traveled through the hellish lands of death until we reached a place with water

What are you talking about? Here are stores from the Cochiti - https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/sw/tci/index.htm . I couldn't find something like what what you described.

Or, "The oldest tradition of the people of Acoma and Laguna indicates that they lived on some island; that their homes were destroyed by tidal waves, earthquakes, and red-hot stones from the sky. They fled and landed on a low, swampy coast. From here they migrated to the northwest, and wherever they made a long stay they built a "White City" (Kush-kut-ret)" - http://www.legendsofnativeamerica.com/region_southwest/legen... .

In that story, things died because it was too cold, until Summer and Winter came to an agreement.

And as I quoted earlier, "The conditions when people moved weren’t much worse than they had been before."

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