California is not in drought • Hacker News Board

Re: California is not in drought

#191

Post by ashtonkem » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #63

xyzzyz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Drawing the distinction between municipal drinkable water and agricultural water is useful. But in the Central Valley, my understanding is that farms are heavily reliant on well water, and their use pushes the level of the aquifer down in a way that disrupts the supply of drinking water. In some cases, there is a direct competition between agricultural use and residential use, but not necessarily "urban" use. https:/…

Well water is even harder to regulate, because anyone can sink their own well whenever they want to. There’s no state owned tap to which you can attach a meter and send a bill for.

Re: California is not in drought

#192

Post by npsimons » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

dqv wrote: post #82

splitstud wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes perfect sense until you consider the massive amounts of inputs, measured in land or energy, it takes to grow those crops on the smaller amount of land footprint you ARE measuring.

We still us 1.5x the land for for growing feed for animals (excluding feed exports). If you're suggesting that feed requires less inputs, provide the sources that back up that suggestion.

> If you're suggesting that feed requires less inputs

This is the thing that really gets me. It's so bloody obvious from the second law of thermodynamics that animals are going to require more resources than plants. There's even a name for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level

This, much like weight loss and treating mental illness, seems to be one of those communal Dunning-Kruger areas of HN. Probably because people don't want to admit that their diet is contributing to global warming, or they have some "hurr durr, vegans suck!" attitude.

Then again, I've noticed an influx of people denying the fact of the January 6th insurrection, so I shouldn't really be surprised.

Re: California is not in drought

#193

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

Melting_Harps wrote: post #183

legitster wrote: post #6

> 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…

> It will be good to know what that will be like from a client side perspective, speed, streaming etc. Being born and raised in California and, and having been there until my mid 20s with occasional year long long projects and several trips back to see family I can tell you the winter snowfall are definitely lower. This years crazy January freak me the hell out after having lived in Colorado where it's typical to hav…

[deleted]

Re: California is not in drought

#194

Post by WillPostForFood » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #143

WillPostForFood wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring. Honestly not sure if you are joking or just being glib? Nuts are extremely calorie dense. Almonds - 165 calories per oz Iceberg - 4 calories per oz Romaine - 5 calories per oz

They are, but outside things like almond milk almond flour, which are not often consumed, people don't base their diets on almonds, they are used as flavoring much more than they are eaten for their nutritional value (unlike rice or wheat or even lettuce).

I would have agreed a decade ago, but with the rise of low carb and keto diets, almonds and other nuts have become a major part of diets for a lot of people.

Re: California is not in drought

#195

Post by tuatoru » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #123

tuatoru wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also poor logic. Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring. A snack size serving of almonds is around 20 of them, representing about 20 gallons. A side dish of lettuce is probably about half of one, 8 gallons. That said, California's water is probably best used in high value add industries like semiconductor manufacturing.

Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring. Honestly not sure if you are joking or just being glib? Nuts are extremely calorie dense. Almonds - 165 calories per oz Iceberg - 4 calories per oz Romaine - 5 calories per oz

I'm saying that mosts nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc.) are not consumed purely for their calorific value. We have potatoes, grains, and vegetable oils for that.

Nuts are primarily used to add flavouring to a meal based on (say) rice, or as snacks rather than full meals.

Re: California is not in drought

#196

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #195

WillPostForFood wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring. Honestly not sure if you are joking or just being glib? Nuts are extremely calorie dense. Almonds - 165 calories per oz Iceberg - 4 calories per oz Romaine - 5 calories per oz

I'm saying that mosts nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc.) are not consumed purely for their calorific value. We have potatoes, grains, and vegetable oils for that. Nuts are primarily used to add flavouring to a meal based on (say) rice, or as snacks rather than full meals.

> I'm saying that mosts nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc.) are not consumed purely for their calorific value.

Most food isn’t consumed purely for its caloric value, but the calorie density of nuts means that they are often a major source of calories as consumed.

> Nuts are primarily used to add flavouring to a meal based on (say) rice

Arguably, preference for the flavor is a result of them being used for a long time to add additional fat and protein calories to a meal based on rice. They don’t have to be the major component to be significant that way, since rice has little protein and less fat and is far less calorie dense than nuts are.

> or as snacks rather than full meals.

Snacks tend to be eaten largely to fill a caloric demand (not necessarily need, as it can be in people habituated to surplus) and a nut-based snack may be a bigger calorie chunk than a “full meal” of less calorie dense foods the same person eats.

Re: California is not in drought

#197

Post by kosh2 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #92

mullingitover wrote: post #43

While the agriculture sector would love cities to go into drought mode and cut back on water usage, let's review a fun fact: agriculture isn't even in the top ten of industries contributing to state GDP[1]. However, agriculture uses 80% of the state's water. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-g...

> However, agriculture uses 80% of the state's water. This is what economists sometimes call a stock-flow inconsistent argument. Water, like money, circulates, and to stick your finger on one part of that chain and insist that something is being used by X and thus not available for Y does more to obfuscate than enlighten. Some of the water "spent" on agriculture then evaporates into the air and ends up as snowfall wh…

> Water, like money, circulates

I'm not an expert in this area but I have strong doubts that this argument is useful in this case.

Let's think of an example. Two people are die because of dehydration. Luckily they happen to find a full 1 liter water bottle.

One of the them quickly grabs it and drinks it all. Then she tells the utterly shocked other person: "Don't you worry, water, like money, circulates. You see, I will eventually pee out this water and it will evaporate and it will become rain and so on".

My point is, that the amount of usable water matters. If you have X liters of waters from wells, rivers and so on each year that you can access, it won't be any more just because there is a water cycle.

Re: California is not in drought

#198

Post by Teknoman117 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #178

Teknoman117 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we start rolling out desalination at scale before things get dire. As far as powering that goes, we'd either have to start deploying as much renewable energy generation as physically possible or get over our collective fear of building more nuclear power plants. Or both. One of those self contained, passively safe tanker truck sized 100 MWe reactors that last 30 years that LLNL has proposed a few times sounds…

> have to start deploying as much renewable energy generation as physically possible Do reasonable people still believe we can simply produce millions of square miles of solar panels and wind mills(that have their own production and maintenence issues), and that will somehow solve our energy issues? It's just not going to happen. We need nuclear power....and more.

(which is why I mentioned nuclear power in my comment)

It's sad because it's probably the only thing that'll save us at this point, but it seems to be political suicide. Most of the problems surrounding it are solvable if we desired to solve them. (By 'desired' I mean funding research at an actionable level even though the current regulatory hurdles are expensive)

On a side note, I wonder what the energy consumed mining and refining uranium versus the power that can be generated from it is compared to getting the resources for photovoltaics or the neodymium you need for practical wind turbines.

Re: California is not in drought

#199

Post by foxyv » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

California needs more trees and less of those greenscaped, french style lawns. Nearly 70% of Los Angeles water is used to make small patches of green worthless non-native plants that have to be mowed once a week or you get a ticket. The city government is the worst offender too. They practically flood their parks and greenscaped nonsense every day with stupid amounts of water.

Worst of all is some places in California you aren't ALLOWED to remove the high maintenance, water sucking, worthless patch of grass because of some HOA or city regulation. They call a mulched, tree covered, sustainable and bare dirt yard "Ugly." Then they want to replace it with a fungus looking growth that has to be trimmed all the time by loud gasoline powered equipment that wakes night shift workers up at 9AM.

https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/water/community/2017/0...

Re: California is not in drought

#200

Post by kemiller » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

dqv wrote: post #65

kemiller wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water and land that they use isn't necessarily useful for other crops. Marginal pasture land can't be magically turned into cropland but almond orchards can.

Sure but the 77.3 million acres to grow the plants we eat pales in comparison to the 781 million acres we use for animal agriculture.[0] Why turn almond orchards into cropland when we can just use less of the land we use for animal production and turn that into cropland? I highly doubt all 781 million acres can only be used for animal grazing. [0]: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/bloomberg-illustrates-how-...

If we could be using that land for high-value crops, we probably would — look at the land values for cropland vs rangeland and you'll see all the incentive needed to allocate more cropland. I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't reduce some of the more wasteful ways we raise food animals — big concentrated feedlots where they get corn and soybeans. We should. But it's misleading to just point out how much land gets used for what without considering the capability of the land in question. Ending the corn and soy subsidy regime would help a lot right off the top.