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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

#151

Post by dccoolgai »

maratc wrote: post #138
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…

Israel has successfully reused its wastewater for agriculture. Turns out crops like the recycled wastewater just as much as drinking water. More than 90% of wastewater is reused in Israel. The second-place holder reuses less than 25%. United States’ rate is less than 10%. [0] [0] https://www.fluencecorp.com/israel-leads-world-in-water-recy...

Works great until your crops get covered in PFAS and you have to shut down the farm.

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

#152

Post by hyperrail »

One meteorologist has criticized the drought map used in this article as making things look bad in Washington state when they are not:

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-large-portion-of-w...

> The essential message is that weather and climate data do not support the claims of extreme or severe drought in eastern Washington this year.

> There is no expectation of water problems over or near the Columbia Basin. The Drought Monitor graphics, which are created subjectively, are sufficiently problematic and deficient that they should not be considered or applied to any serious decision making.

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

#153

Post by timst4 »

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…

You are correct that nature will not wait for politics. I hope I am wrong, but the following seem absolutely certain:

-climate change will happen as Hemingway described going broke: gradually and then all at once. -The Central Valley will fail and there is no plan B. Food prices will be exorbitant and unobtainable for many during the transition. -Over the next 10-20 years direct sunlight will become unbearable. This will make laboring outdoors difficult, dangerous, and costly work. -One side effect of the warming upper atmosphere is the alteration of cloud formation conditions. -Over the next 30 years we will lose cloud cover, in some places almost entirely. This will accelerate the moisture loss in soils and create permanent dust bowl conditions across most of the American West. -Wildfires will begin to propagate in places that traditionally have had few. -Access to abundant fresh water and cloud cover will be the largest determinant of land value in 10 years.

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

#154

Post by sologoub »

maratc wrote: post #138
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…

Israel has successfully reused its wastewater for agriculture. Turns out crops like the recycled wastewater just as much as drinking water. More than 90% of wastewater is reused in Israel. The second-place holder reuses less than 25%. United States’ rate is less than 10%. [0] [0] https://www.fluencecorp.com/israel-leads-world-in-water-recy...

Israel also uses a lot of desalination: “ Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.” [1]

While CA is busy stonewalling desalination project that could cover 1/3 of Orange County needs and would reuse old power station infra. And not much else is planned.

Recycled water isn’t readily available in most of the state for irrigation either. Instead we dump it.

[1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...

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

#155

Post by hyperrail »

hyperrail wrote: post #152

One meteorologist has criticized the drought map used in this article as making things look bad in Washington state when they are not: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-large-portion-of-w... > The essential message is that weather and climate data do not support the claims of extreme or severe drought in eastern Washington this year. > There is no expectation of water problems over or near the Columbia Basin.…

This seems to be what he is referring to by the map's subjectivity:

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx

> Who draws the map?

> Several authors from the NDMC, NOAA and USDA create the map. They take turns, usually two weeks at a time.

> How do they figure out where and how bad drought is?

> This is what makes the U.S. Drought Monitor unique. It is not a statistical model, although numeric inputs are many: [...]

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

#156

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Maciek416 wrote: post #7
t-3 wrote: post #3

Hasn't drought in the American west been a constant for at least the past 1500 years? Like, that's the origin story of most of the native groups - "everything died so we traveled through the hellish lands of death until we reached a place with water". Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons, but it's pretty sure that they lived without most…

Big droughts have come and gone over the years. Here’s a nice historical data explorer: https://www.drought.gov/historical-information?dataset=0&sel...

> The SPI is the number of standard deviations that observed cumulative precipitation deviates from the climatological average

Is "the climatological average" the same as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatological_normal? if so then it's a pretty misleading metic. You can deviate from "normal" in both directions roughly at the same frequency, all the while dragging normal below a "you can survive this" threshold.

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

#157

Post by elmomle »

bradleyjg wrote: post #124
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.)

Dams dramatically increase evaporation. Pull down the dams on the Colorado and other rivers and you’ll decrease that 50%. It’ll be good for fish, and species that depend on fish, too.

Dams are the only thing making the southwest habitable at scale (regular water regardless of river flow).

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

#158

Post by refurb »

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 get solved real quick when water rights can’t be met because there is no water.

You can’t grow crops if there is no water. A few years of that and farmers just won’t bother.

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

#159

Post by jjoonathan »

krapp wrote: post #113
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

People lived in deserts all across the US for tens of thousands of years and got by just fine and never had to pay a dime for water. This isn't a desert climate problem, it's a "capitalism charging money for something that should be free" and "modern civilization having no concept of ecological balance" problem.

Are you kidding me? Water and farmland were perpetual sources of ancient conflict, even if you fail to normalize for population density.

Prices are how you push back and achieve balance. Wishful thinking is not a solution.

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

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

LBJsPNS wrote: post #61
dahfizz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't forsee a transcontinental water pipe going over well. I, for one, refuse to subsidize people who want to live in a dessert with my own water table. People should live in areas that can support human life.

Grow your own food then.

> Grow your own food then

You’re saying this to Iowa?

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