11 Trillion Gallons of Water Needed To End California Drought 330
mrflash818 points out a new study which found that California can recover from its lengthy drought with a mere 11 trillion gallons of water. The volume this water would occupy (roughly 42 cubic kilometers) is half again as large as the biggest water reservoir in the U.S. A team of JPL scientists worked this out through the use of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. From the article:
GRACE data reveal that, since 2011, the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins decreased in volume by four trillion gallons of water each year (15 cubic kilometers). That's more water than California's 38 million residents use each year for domestic and municipal purposes. About two-thirds of the loss is due to depletion of groundwater beneath California's Central Valley. ... New drought maps show groundwater levels across the U.S. Southwest are in the lowest two to 10 percent since 1949.
And on the plus side... (Score:2, Funny)
... they are creating a nice, warm dessert there, something the planet does obviously not have enough of. Finally the decades of knowingly over-using the available water supply are going to pay off.
Re:And on the plus side... (Score:5, Funny)
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It's only a joke, or an attempt at one, so please no rabid comments about how climatology is not a "real science" like economics apparently is.
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My favorite warm dessert is creme brulée. What's yours?
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Mmmm....nice warm dessert. Yep we don't have enough desserts in general on this planet.
Its good they are making more.
*dool* apple pie. Yummy.
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Northern California is not and never has been remotely desert-like. There are in fact huge forests around me. And this is where the drought has been severe and has caused a lot of forest fires.
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Especially when you consider that "before California's massive flood control and aqueduct system was built, the annual snow melt turned much of the [central] valley into an inland sea. [wikipedia.org]."
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You need a hot desert to get the sand. You need sand to get the worms.
Sand trout make the desert. Then they turn into worms. Amateur.
11 Trillion Gallons of Water Needed to Water Rice (Score:2, Informative)
GRACE data reveal that since 2011, farmers raising water-intensive crops in barren desert soil caused the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins to decrease in volume by four trillion gallons of water each year (15 cubic kilometers).
Re:11 Trillion Gallons of Water Needed to Water Ri (Score:5, Informative)
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To which conservatives would probably reply, '11 trillion according to scientists? What do they know? The market will fix this in no time and come in at half that amount' or some such bullshit.
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The typical family uses an acre-inch of water a month, or an acre-foot per year, whatever that is in gallons.
But residential use is trivial over all - most water use is in power generation, and most of the rest is agricultural. California is one of the few states that actually uses saltwater for power generation, but still: mostly farms.
Re: 11 Trillion Gallons of Water Needed to Water R (Score:4, Informative)
"Still, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, thermoelectric power generation accounts for only 3.3 percent of net freshwater consumption with over 80 percent going to irrigation."
I'm not sure the use in power is as bad as you assert.
11 Trillion Gallons? (Score:3)
Is that a lot? I mean compared to rainfall over that area.
Re:11 Trillion Gallons? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about 0.37% of Lake Superior...
Anyway... according to the news and Google they've received about 10Trillion gallons of rain in the past 10 days SO guess problem solved ;-)
Re:11 Trillion Gallons? (Score:5, Informative)
Is that a lot? I mean compared to rainfall over that area.
It is about 10cm or 4 inches spread over the entire state.
There are 264 gallons per cubic meter. So 11 trillion gallons is 4.16e10 m^3. California has an area of 424,000 km^2, or 4.24e11 m^2. So divide the volume by the area, and you get the depth = 4.16e10/4.24e11 = 0.098 m or 9.8 cm or about 4 inches.
I live in San Jose, and we have gotten more than 4 inches of rain in the last week, and it is still raining. There are areas of California (the Mojave Desert) that get a lot less, but also areas (the North Coast) that get a lot more.
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The real question is, what does an average average californian rainfall look like. Sure, SJ got a lot last thursday and is continuing to get a bunch, but how does that small area average out with the rest of CA?
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a lot of it needs to go back into the ground, into the underground aquafers, instead of just running to the ocean. large portions of the state have sunken because of the depleted gruond water. Areas are as much as 20-40 feet lower than they were a half century ago.
California is also more dependent on its snowpack than actual precipation.
Its an arid state that recieves little precipitation outside of the mountains.
most of its yearly water supply comes from the snowpack of the Sierra mountains, acting like a
Re:11 Trillion Gallons? (Score:5, Funny)
If you set 11000 Libraries of Congress on fire, it would be enough to put the fire out.
Better Link (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't real thrilled with the linked article. All it did was call out a number with nothing to scale it against.
A real quick search brought up an estimate of three years worth of rain like this would be needed to make up for the drought and also had some other ways of relating what 11 trillion gallons actually means as precipitation received is traditionally measured in inches.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wh... [cbsnews.com]
I would just request (Score:5, Funny)
that we not get it all at once please.
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well, as always it's an all or nothing proposition, so good luck!
so, with the 11 trillion (Score:2)
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Bordered by a rising Pacific Ocean (Score:2)
Desal...
Go figure (Score:2)
Huh, growing crops in a desert is not such a great idea, isn't it?
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Huh, growing crops in a desert is not such a great idea, isn't it?
At the prices the people growing the crops pay for that water, you bet it is. Now, about how those prices are made...
Re:Go figure (Score:5, Informative)
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The San Joaquin Valley is only green because of irrigation. Agriculture is not sustainable there without depleting underground water resources.
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"coherent, effective strategies" all involve stealing water rights and destroying agriculture.
That's overstating the case a bit. I'm seeing grapes go in all over Northern California at a time when we can't afford the existing water consumption, let alone additional. Precious few of these vines are dry farmed.
Is that the real problem? Or does it disguise .... (Score:2)
... overpopulation? Maybe it's time to address the underlying problem that isn't going to go away even if we continue to ignore it... we are coming closer and closer to not being able to sustain our growing population.
How now brown cow?
Re:Is that the real problem? Or does it disguise . (Score:5, Interesting)
Like not enough drinking water for everyone? This not at all what is happening. It's unsustainable agriculture, excessive urban landscaping and lastly, perhaps a need to adjust some social norms. People didn't take daily showers through most of human history.
but not by going to Texas and bringing fail (Score:2, Troll)
There may be too many Californians, but please don't solve your California problems of unemployment, crime, high taxes, ridiculous cost of living, etc. by moving to Texas. If you do, as so many have, please leave your failed political ideology in California. You're coming to Texas because here you can get a good paying job that you can't get in California, you can buy a nice house for $100,000, etc. In other words, because the Texas way is working better.
Since you've decided life will be better in Tex
Re:Glad you like it, please stay there. Wouldn't l (Score:4, Insightful)
Ghiradeli hasn't been top notch for years. Our weather is most.certainly some of the best in the world. Violent crime rates are virtually identical between Texas and California (https://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html). There hasn't been a power crisis in California for over a decade. An active night life is generally considered a virtue. Breast implant rates in the South are extremely high.
Plus if you want to play the beauty angle, we aren't nearly as fat.
It's great you have regional pride but don't be so condesending if your region can't walk your talk.
Obviously, but there are barriers (Score:2)
However, since they think success is their birthright we won't be seeing many doctors, engineers, lawyers etc from their large number of child
Hard to visualize trillions of gallons (Score:2)
The San Francisco - Oakland - San Jose MSA area is 27000 km^2 [wikipedia.org]. (this MSA covers a large area, from Santa Cruz up to Sonoma)
So, 42 km^3 spread over 27,000 km^2 is around 1.5m of rainfall.
Add in the Sacramento CSA (which extends to Tahoe), and that's another 57,000 km^2 [wikipedia.org] and that takes it down to around half a meter of rain, or around 19" of rain.
That doesn't seem like that much water since SF and Sacramento average over 20" of rain per year, so it sounds like they are saying that even if it only rained from
Begun ... (Score:2)
Begun, the water wars have.
And what is going to happen when California doesn't get 11 trillion gallons of water?
Things go to hell quickly when you start running out of water.
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Re:Begun ... (Score:5, Informative)
They've been doing that for years in my city to brackish water to supplement the water supply. The problem is that these last few years have been exceptionally dry. You can't just build desalination plants overnight, especially for the amount of water we're talking about, plus it needs to be transported quite a distance and is very expensive. Most of the water is used for agriculture. California produces around 1/3 of all of the food in the country.
Re:Begun ... (Score:5, Funny)
Begun, the water wars have.
Just watch out for the mutant Kangaroos and the hot girl driving the tank.
Classic pricing problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Make something free (or nearly so), and people will use lots of it. CA's water problem is by no means insoluble.
1. Figure out how much water the state can sustainably use.
2. Set a price for water usage. Set a flat price for all users, residential, commercial, industrial. No reason that some users of water should get it more cheaply than others.
3. If usage remains above the level determine in #1, raise the price.
4. Repeat process until usage falls to the level determined in #1.
Of course, this process would likely result in a big chunk of the unsustainable agriculture in CA going under, but so be it - basing a business on the assumption that you'll get continued massive discounts on a key input isn't particularly wise planning, and there's no reason why other CA water users should be forced to subsidize those businesses.
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The next thing you'll know is Cohagan will want to have all of the air.
Re:Classic pricing problem (Score:5, Interesting)
5. Distribute proceeds equally to every resident.
This is morally sound, as natural resources belong to everyone. It also turns what would otherwise be a disproportional burden on poor people into an opportunity. Now if you figure out how to be especially thrifty in regards to water use, you can end up with net positive income and use it to improve your life.
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1. Figure out how much water the state can sustainably use.
I like your idea, but even this is a fight that's been going on for decades, if not longer.
Re:Classic pricing problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly, flat-rate water has been a major factor in wastage of water in California. We only got water meters installed here in Sacramento about 4 years ago, which has resulted in a tripling of our water rates - and quadrupling of the pay to the bureaucrats who get sinecures on the various water boards.
But California is a boom-and-bust state when it comes to water. We have 3-5 year drought periods that alternate with floods, such as the floods of 1986 and 1997. If this actually turns into an El Nino year (the forecasts for this are mixed, but generally unreliable either way) this may be another flood year. Folsom Lake and Lake Shasta were at historic lows 3 weeks ago, and have been at least partially refilled since December 1. And it's raining right now, with more rain predicted to continue through Friday.
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I'm all in favor of increasing water storage, but there are too many Greens in San Francisco who want to tear down what we already have. For example, there's a great place on the North Fork of the American River near Auburn, CA, and they were about a third of the way into preparing for a dam, when the eco-freaks decided that since California is earthquake country (true enough, but not near Auburn) that we shouldn't build any dams. Then they wanted to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and tear down the dam - de
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when the eco-freaks decided that since California is earthquake country (true enough, but not near Auburn) that we shouldn't build any dams.
There is no part of California which is not earthquake country. Some places have longer periods than others.
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You left out a biggy: 5. Don't punish conservation.
How do some CA utilities punish water conservation? It goes like this: A. drought hits. B. utility requests conservation. C. Good citizens comply. D. Because utility revenue is proportional to usage, utility has less revenue. E. Utility has to raise rates. F. Good citizen who complied is a chump. He ends up paying more because he did a good deed.
What about the Ogallala Aquifer? (Score:2)
The sprawling Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains provides freshwater for roughly one-fifth of the wheat, corn, cattle and cotton in the United States. But key parts of the underwater aquifer are being depleted faster than they can be recharged by rain (see map)....
how much it will cost to desalinate water? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's exercise how much it might cost to desalinate water
best current tech to desalinate water is about $0.5 per cubic meter
11 trillion gallons ~ 42 cubic km of water or 42 billion cubic meters
thus the sum required is 21 billion dollars.
given that there are reasons to think that cost might be reduced - the solution looks costly but hardly unmanageable
Re:how much it will cost to desalinate water? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to this [mercurynews.com], the largest plant in the country costs about $1 billion and will be able to handle about 50 million gallons per day.
If you built $21 billion dollars worth of those plants, you get about 1 billion gallons per day of desalination capacity, which would take about 30 years to just to regenerate those 11 trillion gallons, not even considering what's needed to handle existing overconsumption.
Still manageable, but it's not a good short-term fix.
And (Score:5, Interesting)
New drought maps show groundwater levels across the U.S. Southwest are in the lowest two to 10 percent since 1949.
The remaining bits, in certain areas, will be poisoned by fracking
Suddenly this article makes sense.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
The Bush family buys 100,000 acres over one of the World's largest fresh water aquifers.
How Coincidental! (Score:2)
How ENTIRELY coincidental is it that the weatherman here in Sacramento, CA reported yesterday that the storms since December 1 have dumped 10 trillion gallons of water on the Golden State!
Granted, only about 10% of that has fallen in catchment areas that feed into our many reservoirs and lakes, and rainfall doesn't percolate into the ground water for years - but this is a STUNNING example of the AlGore Effect.
I'm an agnostic Jew; I'm not certain that God exists. But I _AM_ certain that He has a great sen
Icebergs? (Score:2)
The US has a number of nuclear-powered naval vessels and a large supply of ice in Alaska. Canada or Russia might provide more. Would something like this work for California?
That's a smidge under 4" for the entire state (Score:3)
The area of the state of California is 163,696 square miles.
$ units --verbose
Currency exchange rates from www.timegenie.com on 2014-04-02
2866 units, 109 prefixes, 79 nonlinear units
You have: 11 trillion gallons
You want: 163696 in mile^2
11 trillion gallons = 3.8666624 * 163696 in mile^2
11 trillion gallons = (1 / 0.25862097) * 163696 in mile^2
I find '4" over the entire state" to be a little bit more manageable than some unscaled number with a bunch of zeros, but maybe it's just me.
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In SI units, (40m^3 for 400.000km^2) it would be easier to calculate ;-).
The four inch or 10 centimeters are required in the aquifers in southern California.
First that is about 1/3 of the area. So we go to 30cm or 1 foot. That is still manageable.
Then we need to take into account that only a small part (optimistic: 25%) goes into the aquifers. That quadrupels it to 4 feet or 120cm. That is quite a lot.
To take that optimistic assumption, not too much must go into runoff and evaporation. So we need continuous
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Surely there is a technological fix for this?
If I look outside the window of my little office in Santa Clara, the patch has already been applied. It has been raining all day!
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It may be raining but there's a long way to go before the drought is truly over. Most importantly you need a good snow pack in the Sierras this winter to end the drought.
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Whoosh!
Re: But but but (Score:3)
I've looked at the San Francisco annul rainfall for the past 150 years, and this drought was no more severe than the last few in the early 90s and late 70s, among other droughts. The rainfall has averaged 22" a year with a standard deviation of 8". Even if this season doesn't fill the reservoirs, next season will.
Re: But but but (Score:4, Insightful)
What was exceptional about this drought was the temperature. It had record warmth that dried out the soil more than in the past.
Re: But but but (Score:4, Insightful)
I've looked at the San Francisco annul rainfall for the past 150 years, and this drought was no more severe than the last few in the early 90s and late 70s, among other droughts.
You're forgetting how weather reporting has become as sensationalized as every other aspect of journalism. Cheat sheet to modern TV meteorology:
1) Every unusually cold spell is the result of a polar vortex.
2) Every severe weather event is the result of anthropologic climate change.
3) The only proper way to cover a tropical cyclone is to have a guy standing on a sea wall in a rain coat. Bonus points if you can barely understand him due to the effects of wind on his microphone.
4) Buzzwords poorly understood by the broader population (this includes most meteorologists and practically all of the ones on television) must be thrown in to consume airtime. See Item #1 and add "El Niño" and "La Niña" to the list.
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It flows to the bay not to most of the reservoirs, and not to the Sierras where most of the snowpack provides water for the summer, and not to replenish the ground water (which has been being sucked out for the last century).
Re: But but but (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck, this. Residential use - and even most commercial use - is completely inconsequential. California sadly has a bunch of assholes who think farming water-intensive crops in a desert is a great idea.
Meanwhile the infrastructure blows. Even when it rains, there's no real collection - ain't got nowhere to store it.
Frankly, there is no massive, critical, die, tonight-at-11-doooooom drought. There is an extinction-level stupid mismanagement problem, though.
Re:But but but (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely there is a technological fix for this?
Stop growing vegetables in an arid valley and replant the massive amount of fallow land in wetter parts of the country.
Re:But but but (Score:5, Insightful)
Apply some of that massive Silicon Valley brainpower to developing large-scale desalination instead of the next batch of faddish social media apps.
Re:But but but (Score:5, Funny)
I just tweeted out your idea to see if we can get it trending.
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Seriously, putting the idea out on social media would be the last thing we want. It would attract Hollywood and Greens, who would automatically come out against it because science, chemicals, energy.
Re:But but but (Score:4, Insightful)
Point 1 is an issue today with the small reverse-osmosis plants that several coastal cities have already built. The argument, however, runs: "R-O is expensive and we don't get much water for the size of the plant, so why put up with the ugliness?" But what if the minds of SV could come up with a technology that was ten or a hundred times more efficient than R-O, and a realistic source for city-sized volumes of water? Think of there being a square-cube law for ugliness.
Point 2 is typical swill from "environmentalists" who know nothing about science and have no real appreciation for large-scale systems. Desalination plants to not create salt; they just temporarily separate it from the water. After the water is used by humans, it makes its way back to the sea and is reunited with the salt. In fact, desalination gives us the option of leaving the salt inland, REDUCING the amount of salt in the ocean. Salt has innumerable industrial uses, and has been a prized item in commerce for millennia. Furthermore, being able to build really large desal plants would make it easier to extract all sorts of usable minerals from the concentrated brine at the output. Move enough water, and it becomes practical to do such things as extract uranium from the sea to power the plant.
Point 3: Here in Arizona, we would be glad to add more reactors to our nuclear complex in Phoenix to send more power to California. We're already making a fortune from Californians who refuse to generate their own energy.
Point 4: Yes, NIMBYism and Luddism killed the California bullet train, which all the liberals wanted until the moment construction actually started. But water is an even more vital need than transportation. Watch for thirsty farmers to start shooting lawyers while the whole nation applauds.
Re:But but but (Score:5, Informative)
I will add to point 2.
The Gold Coast Desal plant is a 125ML RO plant and the brine is returned to the ocean. Testing has shown that you can't detect the increased salt content when more than 20m from the outlet pipe.
The biggest problem with people who think it will increase salinity of the oceans is their inability to grasp the scale of the ocean vs what is removed.
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Why do desal? Reuse the water that is coming from the waste water treatment plants. Instead of dumping that in the river to flow out ot sea put it through a second plant and return it to the reservoir. You solve your water problems and you solve the problem of nitrogen rich water flowing into the ocean.
Desals have to combat the corrosion problems you get from dealing with salt. Much easier to deal with non-salt water.
Re:But but but (Score:4, Informative)
Technologically the plant designs are almost identical. Both are a reverse osmosis design using pressurised water driven up against a membrane. Modern desal plants are actually quite energy efficient, just not as efficient as AWT plants. And the only reason AWT plants are more efficient is that the input water actually has less impurities than salt water.
The other benefit of AWT plants is you get high nutrient biosolids from it that you can then use as fertiliser. Note this is ONLY the case if the AWT sits down stream from a standard waste water plant. If it doesn't and you do an all in 1 process the solids are contaminated with nasty stuff from the medicines we consume which means it is restricted in its use.
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There is no drought. There's just overpopulation and pumping water hundreds of miles to farm in a desert. Their #1 electricity use is pumping water for those farms.
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Sure, over-use is a problem, but there's also less precipitation than is normal.
See the scary map here:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
The weekly update for California says:
Locally heavy precipitation fell across portions of the state this past week. Amounts ranged from 1-6 inches (liquid equivalent) across a large portion of northern California, and parts of the central and southern coastal areas. Up to 3 inches of precipitation (liquid equivalent) was reported in the southern Sierras. However, snow pack remains well below-normal in many areas due to the relatively mild temperatures associated with these storm systems. In addition, much more precipitation is needed to replenish lost reservoir storage. There are still deficits in the conservation pool of millions of acre-feet in the Shasta and Oroville reservoirs north of Sacramento. Oroville reservoir gained about 100,000 acre-feet of storage in the recent storm, returning to one million acre-feet in storage capacity. The capacity of this reservoir is 3.5 million acre-feet, with a flood reserve space of 750,000 acre-feet. Well to the south, last week’s storm produced several inches of rain for San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles Counties. However, this was not enough to generate runoff in natural streams and therefore did not provide any benefit to surface reservoirs. Since the start of the Water Year (October 1), almost all precipitation gauges in the area are still running below normal. No revisions were made to the California drought depiction this week. With the anticipation of another significant precipitation event in the short-term, alterations could be required next week, pending resulting impacts.
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May be OT, but it seems insane to me to use the lossy chain of wind to electricity to pump when we could be pumping groundwater with those windmills that are now a lot better than the ones we used to pump with.
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Sure there is - 1.1 trillion people carrying ten gallons of water each to California. Or, each of the ~400 million Americans carrying 27,000 gallons. Plenty of places in the world suffering from too much water - the challenge is only in moving it around cheaply enough that someone is willing to pay for it. Hell, they want to build a pipeline across the country to move oil that only costs about $2/gallon, and water is far safer and less viscous - you could probably move it at half the price, if that.
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Sure. Just move SoCal to Wisconsin.
SoCal is a scub/desert/swamp. That's just the way it is. Pouring water on a desert to make it anything else is the same as pouring sand on a beach to combat erosion. It looks good for a season, but nature prevails next year. You ultimately end up with exactly what nature put there to begin with.
It's all hype. This is not a "problem," it's called geography. You can't "correct" SoCal's location and geography with any technology now extant.
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A nuclear powered de-salination plant and pumping station. But good luck getting that built in Ca.
Re:But but but (Score:4, Interesting)
By my calculation at 47 cents per 100 gallons (which is retail in CA), it would cost about $51 billion to end the drought.
The low end of desalination is $1/cubic meter which would cost about 41 billion while the high end of desalination is about
$2/cubic meter which would cost about 80 billion. I believe those numbers are drinking water too so you could probably
take some shortcuts if all you're doing is filling up a reserve.
40-80 billion is a big number but is fairly managable if depreciated over the life of the desalination plants of say 20 years.
If things get desperate enough, desalination plants are more than capable of providing the water. The main problem
with desalination plants is that they are a risky investment. If the drought ever does end then you are basically
priced out of the market and you have these big expensive desalination plants collecting dust until the next drought.
Re: But but but (Score:2, Informative)
It's less than a dollar a day per person, problem solved. Truth is no one wants to solve the water problem.
Re: But but but (Score:4, Insightful)
This. If there weren't a drought, they'd have to come up with some other means of artificially forcing ascetic behavior on everyone. That's what environmentalists do these days—keep the public's attention on them by taking things away from everyone. See also light bulbs, plastic bags, electricity conservation, etc., most of which don't actually have the results they're hoping for.
For example, any power conservation (including bulb bans) results first and foremost in a reduction of the most expensive power—baseline nuclear and/or spending towards future renewable power—not the cheapest, dirtiest power. If anything, the best way to get cleaner power is to use a lot more power to force them to build more clean power plants, then cut back usage to earlier levels and demand that they shut down coal plants through legislation. Cutting consumption first provides little to no benefit.
Re:But but but (Score:4, Insightful)
The Fed created some $4 trillion to bail out banks. Off-balance sheet, they created another $16 trillion to bail out foreign banks. We can create money to solve a lot of problems. The artificial scarcity of money is imposed and political, not a necessity.
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I wonder how feasible it would be to grab freshwater from the mouth of the columbia river and transport it via flexible, non-rigid tubing laid on the seafloor through the SF bay and up to the CA aqeduct? I bet you could lay it fairly cheaply and you wouldn't need to worry about real estate prices.
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Not nearly enough power. I would go with illegal aliens running on treadmills.
Re:"Michigan, give us your water!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Those wetlands you're disparaging are flood control systems. Those wetlands keep the rain from flowing straight out into the ocean; part of the reason we're in this mess now is that we've spent the last 100 years plowing them into the ground and pouring concrete over them (see: LA river).
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Those wetlands keep the rain from flowing straight out into the ocean; part of the reason we're in this mess now is that we've spent the last 100 years plowing them into the ground and pouring concrete over them (see: LA river).
The general tendency to cover the ground with concrete is more than half of the problem of LA, they receive more than enough rainfall every year to cover 100% of their needs but more than 99% of it runs off because that's what they designed the city to do. It's not just wetlands, it's all the lands.
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What does the EPA have to do with lack of rainfall?
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Re:Dont worry, they will just take it from somewhe (Score:5, Informative)
They have been taking water from somewhere for a long time, cant they just take more of someone else' water in order to live in a desert?
Hey, the USA is a large and sparsely populated country.... How about you try living in some of the more habitable areas?
Nobody lives in the California Desert. Well, okay, we do have a decent retirement community out in Palm Springs, but the parts that most people settled on were temperate grasslands, forests, and wetlands (the Central Valley was an inland sea for much of the year before we dammed it all up).
The real problems are:
1) Irresponsible farming by agribusinesses. This one here is the biggie, but is really hard to control because the biggest agribusinesses have so much political clout, both here and in Washington.
2) 150 years of politics. For well over a century, the saying has gone, "Liquor is for drinking; water is for fighting." There are a byzantine set of local, regional, statewide, interstate, and international laws governing how water is used everywhere in the state, most of it based on environmental studies decades or centuries out of date, and none of it changes quickly.
3) Wetland destruction. For a long, long time nobody understood the value of wetlands in water table control, flood prevention, and ecosystem management, and so much of it was filled in and paved over in the last 100 years. This has proven to be a huge mistake, one that will take decades and billions of dollars to fix, and isn't helped by ignorant jackasses who insist that environmental concerns don't exist, that scientists are hucksters, and that God will provide everything we could ever want, forever.
4) Climate change. The theory is nearly 200 years old; the lab-scale proof is over 150 years old; definitive proof it's happening out in the environment is over 50 years old. It's happening, right now, and given politics and the endless prattle of ignorant jackasses it doesn't look like it's going to be slowing down any time soon.
Did you notice what's not on that list? Cities. All of the urban and suburban development in California accounts for less than 10% of the state's annual water usage (the vast, vast majority is used for agriculture), and the number is dropping every year, as more efficiency and water recycling programs come online.
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Did you notice what's not on that list? Cities. All of the urban and suburban development in California accounts for less than 10% of the state's annual water usage (the vast, vast majority is used for agriculture), and the number is dropping every year, as more efficiency and water recycling programs come online.
Sure.. That agricultural usage is completely unrelated to the cities.
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Therefore the cities are completely independent and self-suficient and rely on neither the crops themselves nor the resources obtained in trade for the crops.
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You are probably right, in many ways. As far as I can see, it all comes down to the particular, bone-headed attitude and complete disconnect from reality that somehow seem so iconic of America. If I remember correctly, there was once a saying - 'The rain will follow the plough' - that illustrates it well; I mean, how can anybody even get that idea?
And then there are things like placing a large city in the middle of the Nevada Desert, and the farming, that you mention. You see it so often in The States, it's
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Did you actually ready the article?!? It clearly stated that 11 trillion gallons is 42 cubic kilometers or if you can't do the math 42 trillion liters.
That still doesn't actually mean anything, since we rarely state rainfall in such terms. And -where- rain falls is just as important as how much, and how much of it is snow is equally as important! You could dump 11 trillion gallons on the Northern Californian coast, that won't do anything for the drought situation in the state if it all just flows down into the ocean. The state's water supply throughout the year comes from three major sources: 1) reservoirs filled during the rainy months, then continuousl