Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you eat money?
Money can be exchanged for food. Same thing, for practical purposes.
At the end of the day, someone has to produce it
California is not in drought
131–140 of 216 posts
Re: California is not in drought
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't need desal, there is plenty of water if we dont waste water on golf courses and lawns in the desert.
I tend to agree with you. If water is precious then why is it so cheap? The avg family uses thousands of gallons a month. It's difficult to get people at current prices to stop wasting water. California farmers pay an average of $70 per acre-foot for water to irrigate crops (326,000 gallons) I live in an apt in California that doesn't even meter it. I can use all I want and the price is included in the rent. We have…
If I recall, this is the same point the Nestle CEO infamously made. It's a good point, but clearly the world is not ready to have that conversation.
Re: California is not in drought
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be overestimating the effects of circulation of water. It is true that water that evaporates is likely to someday fall somewhere as rain or snow. However agriculture is going to spread a lot of water during summer. At that point it evaporates very efficiency. But unfortunately during summer it is unlikely that anywhere in California will have the conditions for rain, so that water is going to fall in some oth…
Well, yes, water doesn't respect state boundaries so I'm not claiming that California is a closed system, nor am I claiming the majority of water used in agriculture evaporates rather than going into the water table. But just as water evaporates in CA and lands on Colorado, so water evaporates in the pacific and lands on California, and we get ground water and river water back from Colorado. So are you claiming there…
As irrigation becomes more efficient, the majority of water used in agriculture does indeed go to plants and then to evaporation. And while California does get some water back from the Colorado river, most does not. The water coming to California from other sources, such as the Pacific, is not materially affected by the amount of water flowing into the Pacific from California.
Therefore water given to California agriculture in any given year is unlikely to come back to California within that year. So for planning purposes, water given to agriculture should be considered mostly consumed and available to no other use within California.
And as the climate becomes hotter, this becomes even more true. A hotter climate means faster evaporation and an easier time for it to blow over the Rockies. Which is part of the reason why the trend as the climate changes is for land to the west of the Rockies to become ever drier, while land to the east to become wetter. (Most of the water to the east comes from the Gulf of Mexico.)
Re: California is not in drought
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you eat money?
California isn't big on dietary staple agricultural goods. The five biggest ag businesses are dairy, grapes, almonds, cattle, pistachios, and strawberries, none of which we really need to grow here. They're luxury foods generally. There's not that much that's grown here that couldn't be grown elsewhere.
The California central valley is probably the best climate on Earth for growing almonds and that is why about 70% of the world almond production happens there. If we don't really need to grow them here, then one does not really need almonds at all. But what singular food item does the world really need?
Re: California is not in drought
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be overestimating the effects of circulation of water. It is true that water that evaporates is likely to someday fall somewhere as rain or snow. However agriculture is going to spread a lot of water during summer. At that point it evaporates very efficiency. But unfortunately during summer it is unlikely that anywhere in California will have the conditions for rain, so that water is going to fall in some oth…
Well, yes, water doesn't respect state boundaries so I'm not claiming that California is a closed system, nor am I claiming the majority of water used in agriculture evaporates rather than going into the water table. But just as water evaporates in CA and lands on Colorado, so water evaporates in the pacific and lands on California, and we get ground water and river water back from Colorado. So are you claiming there…
> So are you claiming there is some systematic net movement of water out of California and into other states/countries?
Not OP.
The argument made in Cadillac Desert is pretty much the opposite: in order to irrigate California and to give drinking water to its inhabitants, we have damned and diverted many rivers elsewhere with some very large ecological effects.
Another thing to take into account is the salinization of soil as an effect of irrigation: every time water evaporates it leaves behind a salt deposit. This is a process we don't know how to revert and it's considered to be an important historical factor in the rise and fall of civilizations, migration patterns etc.
Re: California is not in drought
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's both. Yes a lot of fruits, veggies and nuts are grown in California but the nation's staple crops (corn, wheat, and soy) and livestock are grown in many other states. That is to say, we should be building desalination plants in California. Israel figured out a way to do this economically already. It's high time for CA to follow suit.
How do you plan to power desal plants? LADWP is still importing coal fueled electricity from Utah. Not to mention all of the petroleum and natural gas plants scattered around California. Before we have desalination, we need more renewable energy.
We could start by not shutting down our the last nuclear power plant in California in 2025 that currently provides 10% of the states electricity.
Re: California is not in drought
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
California isn't big on dietary staple agricultural goods. The five biggest ag businesses are dairy, grapes, almonds, cattle, pistachios, and strawberries, none of which we really need to grow here. They're luxury foods generally. There's not that much that's grown here that couldn't be grown elsewhere.
The California central valley is probably the best climate on Earth for growing almonds and that is why about 70% of the world almond production happens there. If we don't really need to grow them here, then one does not really need almonds at all. But what singular food item does the world really need?
> The California central valley is probably the best climate on Earth for growing almonds
Except for that whole pesky "lack of rain" thing--which was part of "climate" last I checked.
That would seem to indicate that California's Central Valley really isn't the best climate for growing almonds.
Re: California is not in drought
#138The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately becom…
Agricultural water and municipal drinkable water are two different things. The farm water does not come from the same distribution system as city water. For example, pulling water straight from a river to irrigate farm is agricultural water. Maybe the cost of agricultural water is too low, it probably is at least in some places. However, it is not clear at all that agricultural uses even compete with urban uses. Urba…
You're not from here, are you?
Re: California is not in drought
#139> But we legislated and plumbed this state for a different climate pattern, when annual winter rains reliably fell on Sonoma and points north, and a full Sierra snowpack reliably melted through the spring and summer to feed streams and irrigate orchards and farm fields. That era is long gone. The snowpack comes unpredictably, because a warmer climate means water that formerly stayed in the mountains as snow through t…
Sonoma's water doesn't come from snowpack.
Re: California is not in drought
#140The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately becom…
My personal synopsis of the California water situation is "when the situation gets dire enough the agricultural users will have to adapt." The government isn't going to let cities go without water yet keep it pumping for almonds.
The corrupt system will persist and urban users will continue to overpay, but at some point before people start dying of thirst the politics of unduly favoring agriculture will become untenable.