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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

#181

Post by ac29 »

rory wrote: post #134
Spooky23 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what are we going to do? California and Arizona wiped most of the US produce business off the map. Between the destruction of Ukraine, the western us droughts and the impending exhaustion of much of the Ogallala Aquifer, looks like many chickens are coming home to roost in the coming years.

The worst culprits (in terms of volume + heavy water usage) are almonds, pistachios, and walnuts. No one is going to starve because nuts become rare and expensive, so let's start there.

The worst culprit is Alfalfa, used as livestock feed: https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CA-Ag-Water-U... (pdf link)

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

#182

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

> and got by just fine

Or maybe not. The Anasazi left a bunch of uninhabited ruins. Current thinking is that drought played a big part in why their population declined.

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

#183

Post by bradleyjg »

elmomle wrote: post #157
bradleyjg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

There’s plenty of water for residential and even commercial use without dams. Dams are the only thing making the southwest farmable.

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

#184

Post by rsync »

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…

"There is likely no way to fix this without completely destroying the livelihoods of a lot of farmers, and nobody wants to deal with that for real."

I disagree. I hate to be the hand-wavy "desalinization" guy but ...

We have completely green solar energy and desal (I assume) wouldn't even necessarily require a base load. We could have all the water we need and everyone in California could have a nice green lawn. Or wash their cars. Or grow almonds.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are even any technical problems to solve - it's just implementation of existing technologies. And is climate-neutral at worst. And we have a staggering budget surplus in California.

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

#185

Post by juve1996 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #160
LBJsPNS wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grow your own food then.

> Grow your own food then You’re saying this to Iowa ?

> Iowans spend an estimated $9 billion on food each year; 90—95% of this food is imported into the state.

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/ffed/wp-content/uploads/20...

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

#187

Post by 8note »

pnutjam wrote: post #175
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The compromise is what's already there today. The extreme would be to get rid of all human water use to allow the environment to recover

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

#188

Post by rsync »

danans wrote: post #166
neverartful wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The saltwater is in the ocean, and the agricultural areas lacking water (south central valley) are on the other side of the coastal mountain range. So it will be a huge energy expenditure to 1) desalinate and 2) pump the water over the mountain range. I suspect it would be too expensive for agriculture, which relies on artificially cheap water.

"The saltwater is in the ocean, and the agricultural areas lacking water (south central valley) are on the other side of the coastal mountain range. So it will be a huge energy expenditure to 1) desalinate and 2) pump the water over the mountain range."

I'm not so sure ...

A large amount of municipal/consumer water, from reservoirs, comes down those mountains - and if the coastal users reduced that demand (as they received water, locally, from desal) then that water could either stay in the mountains or be redirected elsewhere - with gravity.

I'm sure there are many different scenarios but I know for certain that there are big reservoirs away from the coast and at (relatively) high elevations ... those could be used differently.

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

#189

Post by 8note »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #179
mercutio2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The infrastructure that came with water in it? They built the Colorado River?

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

#190

Post by deaddodo »

seanalltogether wrote: post #167
deaddodo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Water bottling is a red herring, that one arrowhead bottling facility in california that everyone likes to blame for water shortages uses the same amount of water in one year as a similar sized alfafa farm.

Except there’s not one water bottling plant. There’s multiple Arrowhead bottling plants, Crystal Lake’s plant, a few Nestle Pure Life, Dasani, Aquafina, etc.

In fact, a simple Google search would have told you that there are over 110 of them:

https://money.cnn.com/2015/05/26/news/companies/california-b...

And while the amount they bottle is a drop compared to Ag, their total bottling amount equals the total residential (which includes municipal) water usage in the state. Yet they pay a fraction per gallon, lobby to keep water restriction measures in place on residents and spread misinformation on the topic.

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