221–230 of 280 posts
As John Steinback said in East of Eden : “I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unironically, wet / dry cycles isn't good news for California either. Research published in the aftermath of the fire examines how this extremely wet to extremely dry weather sequence is especially dangerous for wildfires in Southern California because heavy rainfall leads to high growth of grass and brush, which then becomes abundant fuel during periods of extreme dryness.
I wonder how much of an effect human activity has on these cycles. Obviously, there are cycles within nature that don't include human activity but is this particular "equilibrium" (if we could call it that) the result of human settlements and all that entails or have they always happened this way but without a huge chunk of the population being in the midst of these modulations to witness it and be affected by it.
Many of California's ecosystems have evolved to expect fires. Humans can't stand fires and aggressively put them out. So fuel that would be regularly burned off in mild wildfires instead builds up into megafires that exceed the limits of what the ecosystem can handle (a lot of California trees are fire-tolerant, but there's a point where the flames get too high and too intense).
So yeah, the human activity that affects these cycles is caused by our cognitive dissonance and fear to phrases like "mild wildfire".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
wildfire is part of nature.
Yes, of course, those natural wildfires started by downed power infrastructure [1], bullets [2], and campfires on red flag days [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Fire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldor_Fire [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Fire
Now do all the other ones started by lightning and lets have a complete list.
This might be a stupid question, but if "drought" means "abnormally dry" yet an area is in "drought" 90% of the time, does that not just mean the definition of drought is wrong? It would be more accurate to say that dry periods in california are just "normal weather" and the occasional wet periods are the abnormal weather. I enjoy the rare periods when it's sunny in the UK, but I wouldn't refer to a typical cloudy pe…
Drought doesn't mean "abnormally dry" though, it means lack of rain resulting in water shortage. And California has had a lot of water shortages.
If demand is far higher than supply due to overuse by industry that's definitely a water shortage - there isn't enough of it, and something is probably suffering as a result. I don't think that's a useful definition of drought though. If someone builds a massive factory consuming 100s of millions of gallons of water per day that's definitely going to cause a problem but I'm not sure it's reasonable to say that there's suddenly a drought.
I think the definition of drought is instead current rainfall compared to historical average - which then leads to the question of if the change is just that rainfall has now been low for so long the historical average has changed, or if rainfall has actually improved. I don't think the article addressed this, but I only skimmed it so maybe I missed it.
As John Steinback said in East of Eden : “I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to…
how to be a novelist: use 10^n words when 10^(n-1) will do.
> The Salinas Valley cycles through wet and dry decades. Droughts cause ruin and exodus, yet people always forget the previous climate phase.
I dunno, doesn't seem to have the same impact on me. Maybe there is something to that whole prose thing.
Isn't this the same state where the rich people water their plush lawns even in the peak of summer during drought? And where 90% of the water for its huge capital city-district (Los Angeles) is not even sourced locally (say, by desalination of seawater, as it is a coastal city), but it's instead piped from hundreds of miles away, while banning the villages at the source locations from using the local rivers/lakes as…
"villages"? You're not from here are you? Makes me wonder if internationally you're getting general anti-American propaganda or if Republican anti-California propaganda is leaking worldwide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drought doesn't mean "abnormally dry" though, it means lack of rain resulting in water shortage. And California has had a lot of water shortages.
It's not quite as simple as that though - in most places, especially California, water shortages are not a simple natural imbalance between the amount of rain that falls and how much flows out in rivers and streams. If demand is far higher than supply due to overuse by industry that's definitely a water shortage - there isn't enough of it, and something is probably suffering as a result. I don't think that's a useful…
Lots of factories in Washington, seemingly no problem.
As John Steinback said in East of Eden : “I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to…
> And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way. Just as true with economic cycles and so many other things.
maybe we just want to be somewhat okay the whole time.