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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

#171

Post by robonerd »

deaddodo wrote: post #91
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.

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…

>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.

The San Francisco watershed covers 40% of California including much of the region you are speaking of. The paleoclimate research, measuring historical salinity of the Bay using carbon dated sediment cores, shows that during the Medieval warm period the San Francisco watershed averaged only 60% of the rainfall it does today.

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

#172

Post by robonerd »

lokar wrote: post #96
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…

The residents see it differently. They have been farming there for several generations and it's been mostly fine, the land is very productive when irrigated. The fact that it all depends on a massive public subsidy (both cash and water) from the rest of the state is ignored by then. They focus on arguments like "stop dumping water in the ocean" - eg make all the river run dry before reaching the coast, and "this is w…

The problem is California is such a young land, people there think "several generations" is a long time that gives them insight into the typical climate of California. They look back one or two hundred years and remember lots of wet weather, and extrapolate out from that to conclude things will be dandy.

Paleoclimatologists look further back than that, and what they say about the history of California is a lot more grim. The present droughts are mild when you look back even just a thousand years.

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

#173

Post by adhesive_wombat »

deaddodo wrote: post #79
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…

> Meanwhile, they continue to push nonsense to help. The amount of water used by residences doing "outdoor watering" is miniscule. Agriculture is over 80% of the water use in california. If they were going to completely run out of water in a week, and all outdoor watering by residences would stop, it would buy you less than a day. This is definitely true and something I try to point out to people all the time. The Ca…

> The whole "Save water, we're in a drought" rhetoric is (generally) a political move from those industries to deflect blame, guilt and responsibility on the populace.

Just like convincing people that if only they recycle plastic bottles, the environment will be saved, and if it isn't, obviously it was people who just didn't recycle enough shampoo bottles.

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

#174

Post by ac29 »

wbl wrote: post #150
ehnto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really the whole story though, because water supplies are not a centrally stored resource shared amongst all consumers. It's a fairly distributed system with lots of different reserves feeding different consumers. For example, small towns may pull their drinking water from a dam or other reserve that is of limited supply, where the agriculture in the area is not affecting the same water, being pulled from…

Not true in California due to the state water project. Water is captured in NorCal and shipped to SoCal for agriculture. Central Valley farmers directly reduce the water for SV suburbs. The only river they haven't tapped is the Klamath.

They're not all interconnected though. For example, where I live most water comes from Hetch Hetchy, which is not connected to the central CA agricultural water delivery projects.

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

#175

Post by pnutjam »

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?

Hahaha.. Room between the 2 "extremes" of "use every drop of water in the river so it never makes it to the ocean" and "Let plants and animals have a little water". This is exactly what's wrong with discourse in America.

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

#176

Post by jandrewrogers »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #74
danaris wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think there should absolutely be limits of some kind, if the water need in places like California could be spread out over the water table of, say, everything else west of the Mississippi, I imagine it could make a big difference to the water-poor places without running the risk of depleting the water-rich places enough for anyone to even notice. Of course, that's assuming that such a pipeline network would b…

The nuclear power + desalination plant combo seems like a no-brainer to me in particular. Even if it meant sticking them in Oregon or Washington (for reduced seismic risk) and piping the fresh water down to Cali.

The Pacific Northwest does not have reduced seismic risk. It is prone to regular strong earthquakes, both from the subduction zone and from systems of major thrust faults that run through populated areas. Also major tsunami risk since many of the thrust faults run through large bodies of water.

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

#177

Post by floor2 »

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…

While you're correct about the native people often living as nomads and lacking clothing or permanent structures, it's worth clarifying the "genocide" claim which is a source of mass misunderstanding about American history.

To be clear- many indigenous groups lived as distinct tribes for decades or centuries which then disappeared, but essentially none of them were due to direct contact with immigrants from Europe. Disease, drought, inter-tribal warfare wiped out the vast majority.

The introduction of guns and horses to tribes that had lived in a state of intergenerational conflict led to much higher death rates when groups clashed. Even relatively minor diseases can lead to deaths when the entire tribe needs to keep moving daily to follow a herd of animals.

The narrative of European immigrants wiping out the tribal groups is mostly a modern fiction, heavily signal-boosted by Chinese & Russian propaganda to undermine Western human rights demands by turning contemporary abuses into a "whataboutism" of an imagined past.

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

#178

Post by YATA1 »

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#179

Post by s1artibartfast »

mercutio2 wrote: post #162
stevenwoo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When one drives on I-5 or 99 through central California, there are billboards every 10-20 miles telling people that big government is trying to stop farming by restricting water rights. There is a constant messaging campaign (for the 20+ years I have lived in California) and the signs all look the same, and it's the opposite of what you are writing.

Huh? Those signs all are arguing for more free water for agriculture. That’s not the opposite of “The politicians won’t tell farmers to pay for their inefficient water use”. Or maybe you’re arguing “yeah, politicians, won’t try to charge market rate for water, because the farmers are already up at arms at not having more subsidies thrown their way”?

It's not about subsidies, it is about water contracts and infrastructure that the farmers paid for up front.

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

#180

Post by danans »

api wrote: post #35
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…

Isn't there a third option that involves building serious infrastructure to pipe water down from the Northwest? Of course you can't build things in America anymore so that's probably off the table.

Water is very heavy. The energy expenditure (AKA fossil fuel burned) to lift water over the mountains between the PNW and Southern CA would be massive and defeat any climate change progress.

A fraction of that energy/investment put toward using water more efficiently in agriculture (in both the physical and economic sense) would make a bigger difference.

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