4 ms·

California could mitigate a lot of this, and probably will, eventually. ... There's going to be a tremendous amount of resistance from all angles to any attempt

by nkurz 11y ago

California could mitigate a lot of this, and probably will, eventually. ... There's going to be a tremendous amount of resistance from all angles to any attempts to mitigate the effects of the climate in California. Where do you see the resistance coming from? The timescale here is interesting, because "driest in 500 years" implies that although this particular instance might be caused by human activity, that we are still in the range of natural variability. I'd guess that many people who fear upending civilization to avoid CO2 production would agree that a reliable water supply is a priority. Would concentrating on the issue (less water than demand) rather than the causes (anthropogenic or not) make it more likely for mitigation efforts to succeed?

thaumaturgy 11y ago
> Where do you see the resistance coming from? Environmentalists don't want more dams constructed; agriculture doesn't want more water use regulation; industry doesn't want tighter environmental (or water) regulations; residents aren't going to be able to cut back on water usage much more; automobile manufacturers don't want further emissions cuts. Every single interest group wants to point to another interest group and say, "this situation is their fault, make them fix it instead." I think a better question is, where do you not see resistance coming from? > we are still in the range of natural variability And does that make this a more comfortable living situation for you? > I'd guess that many people who fear upending civilization to avoid CO2 production would agree that a reliable water supply is a priority. It's true that the recent and continuing decline of carbon dioxide emissions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Yearly_trends_in_annual_regional_carbon_dioxide_emissions_from_fuel_combustion_between_1971_and_2009.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Yea...) is "upending civilization" -- we have never been worse off, as a species, than we are now -- but why we could expect those people to agree on how to get a reliable water supply is a mystery to me, given that they can't even be expected to agree on what the problem is. > Would concentrating on the issue (less water than demand) rather than the causes (anthropogenic or not) make it more likely for mitigation efforts to succeed? Well, I dunno, I guess. If people refuse to address the causes -- which, even in the face of overwhelming supporting evidence, they seem likely to do -- then I suppose the only remaining option is to decrease demand down to levels that can be supported by the relatively meager amounts of precipitation across the state. Which, again, makes California sound like a pretty nice place to be from.
- danjayh 11y ago
  > > we are still in the range of natural variability > And does that make this a more comfortable living situation for you? Not more comfortable, but perhaps also not something for which we should immediately point the finger at CO2 emissions. I think a more important step for California is to re-asses its priorities for water use. The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense. In my area, the climate isn't quite as nice, but I can dig a 10ft deep hole in my horse pasture and it'll turn into a nice pond. No, you can't grow almonds and certain other trendy foods in the midwest ... but you can grow crops that will adequately feed the populace, and it's a far more ecologically responsible place to farm. We grow tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, broccoli, green beans, blackberries, corn, and a few other things in our garden and most years I don't need to give it a drop of water from a hose. I've actually had to put a good deal of time, effort, and money into managing the water that runs off of our land (we have ~11 acres that all slope toward our house). The commercial corn field across the street has no irrigation system, at all. Although some farmers do it, watering with groundwater here is definitely the exception and not the norm. ... now if only the competition for software engineers were a bit more intense ... I blame the damn snow :).
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    No offense intended, and I'm not being accusatory, but: > The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense. This is the sort of statement I was talking about being frustrated with earlier. Given the overall growing conditions in California, it's insane not to farm as much of it as is practical. The water problem in California is complicated and multi-faceted, and it is not entirely the responsibility of agriculture to solve it. (Which isn't to say that they can't do a lot to help, either.)
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Water - and the lack of water - is a part of the overall growing conditions in California. We know that California has droughts and that those droughts can last many years. (50 year, 80 year droughts are not unknown). Given that it is weird to allow agricultural water use without strict controls, realistic pricing, and beeter storage.
jcranmer 11y ago
There's basically two competing interpretations of the Western US drought: 1. It's a storage problem (i.e., most farmers): those damn environmentalists blocked us from building more dams so we lost the ability to store more water when wetter years happened in the past, and now we've got almost nothing left to draw water from. 2. It's a throughput problem (i.e., most environmentalists): those damn farmers are using more water per annum than nature is providing on average. They desperately need to cut their water. When major constituencies can't agree on the problem, how do you get them to agree on a solution?
- IndianAstronaut 11y ago
  This is an easy problem to solve with our friend, data. Just run some models and simulations and calculate where water usage is heaviest.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    That data pretty well exists, though it could always be improved. There are charts you can find that give the annual water usage per tree for different varieties of trees. But, as much as I'm a complete raving lunatic fan of data-driven politics, there's still politics involved. The data doesn't really tell you what to do, which was jcranmer's point, and mine. At best it just tells you what not to do.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  But isn't that the case with any kind of thing people use? You need to create/store it, and you need to deliver it. I go to the supermarket shelves and there are hundreds of items with similar issues. We don't debate the hoarding of pickles. Or the production capacity of peanut butter. This is a serious problem, and I'm not trying to belittle it. But as I recall, you can give people a gallon of water anywhere in California for just a few pennies, maybe less. To interested outsiders, the issue here seems to be almost entirely a political one.

by nkurz 11y ago

thaumaturgy 11y ago

> Where do you see the resistance coming from? Environmentalists don't want more dams constructed; agriculture doesn't want more water use regulation; industry doesn't want tighter environmental (or water) regulations; residents aren't going to be able to cut back on water usage much more; automobile manufacturers don't want further emissions cuts. Every single interest group wants to point to another interest group and say, "this situation is their fault, make them fix it instead." I think a better question is, where do you not see resistance coming from? > we are still in the range of natural variability And does that make this a more comfortable living situation for you? > I'd guess that many people who fear upending civilization to avoid CO2 production would agree that a reliable water supply is a priority. It's true that the recent and continuing decline of carbon dioxide emissions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Yearly_trends_in_annual_regional_carbon_dioxide_emissions_from_fuel_combustion_between_1971_and_2009.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Yea...) is "upending civilization" -- we have never been worse off, as a species, than we are now -- but why we could expect those people to agree on how to get a reliable water supply is a mystery to me, given that they can't even be expected to agree on what the problem is. > Would concentrating on the issue (less water than demand) rather than the causes (anthropogenic or not) make it more likely for mitigation efforts to succeed? Well, I dunno, I guess. If people refuse to address the causes -- which, even in the face of overwhelming supporting evidence, they seem likely to do -- then I suppose the only remaining option is to decrease demand down to levels that can be supported by the relatively meager amounts of precipitation across the state. Which, again, makes California sound like a pretty nice place to be from.

danjayh 11y ago
> > we are still in the range of natural variability > And does that make this a more comfortable living situation for you? Not more comfortable, but perhaps also not something for which we should immediately point the finger at CO2 emissions. I think a more important step for California is to re-asses its priorities for water use. The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense. In my area, the climate isn't quite as nice, but I can dig a 10ft deep hole in my horse pasture and it'll turn into a nice pond. No, you can't grow almonds and certain other trendy foods in the midwest ... but you can grow crops that will adequately feed the populace, and it's a far more ecologically responsible place to farm. We grow tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, broccoli, green beans, blackberries, corn, and a few other things in our garden and most years I don't need to give it a drop of water from a hose. I've actually had to put a good deal of time, effort, and money into managing the water that runs off of our land (we have ~11 acres that all slope toward our house). The commercial corn field across the street has no irrigation system, at all. Although some farmers do it, watering with groundwater here is definitely the exception and not the norm. ... now if only the competition for software engineers were a bit more intense ... I blame the damn snow :).
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  No offense intended, and I'm not being accusatory, but: > The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense. This is the sort of statement I was talking about being frustrated with earlier. Given the overall growing conditions in California, it's insane not to farm as much of it as is practical. The water problem in California is complicated and multi-faceted, and it is not entirely the responsibility of agriculture to solve it. (Which isn't to say that they can't do a lot to help, either.)
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Water - and the lack of water - is a part of the overall growing conditions in California. We know that California has droughts and that those droughts can last many years. (50 year, 80 year droughts are not unknown). Given that it is weird to allow agricultural water use without strict controls, realistic pricing, and beeter storage.

jcranmer 11y ago

There's basically two competing interpretations of the Western US drought: 1. It's a storage problem (i.e., most farmers): those damn environmentalists blocked us from building more dams so we lost the ability to store more water when wetter years happened in the past, and now we've got almost nothing left to draw water from. 2. It's a throughput problem (i.e., most environmentalists): those damn farmers are using more water per annum than nature is providing on average. They desperately need to cut their water. When major constituencies can't agree on the problem, how do you get them to agree on a solution?

IndianAstronaut 11y ago
This is an easy problem to solve with our friend, data. Just run some models and simulations and calculate where water usage is heaviest.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  That data pretty well exists, though it could always be improved. There are charts you can find that give the annual water usage per tree for different varieties of trees. But, as much as I'm a complete raving lunatic fan of data-driven politics, there's still politics involved. The data doesn't really tell you what to do, which was jcranmer's point, and mine. At best it just tells you what not to do.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
But isn't that the case with any kind of thing people use? You need to create/store it, and you need to deliver it. I go to the supermarket shelves and there are hundreds of items with similar issues. We don't debate the hoarding of pickles. Or the production capacity of peanut butter. This is a serious problem, and I'm not trying to belittle it. But as I recall, you can give people a gallon of water anywhere in California for just a few pennies, maybe less. To interested outsiders, the issue here seems to be almost entirely a political one.