13 ms·

California is not in drought

254 points by symby 5y ago

01100011 5y ago
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/... CA climate has been much drier in the past, even before global warming. We seem to have this discussion every few years when there's a drought, but quickly forget. It seems like we do the same thing with wildfires and earthquakes.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  But we moved 50 million people there in the past 60 years so clearly nature must stop the mega drought cycle.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    It has nothing to do with the people. The majority of the water is used for agriculture, which supplies the nation and even the world with water-hungry food.
    - chrisco255 5y ago
      It's both. Yes a lot of fruits, veggies and nuts are grown in California but the nation's staple crops (corn, wheat, and soy) and livestock are grown in many other states. That is to say, we should be building desalination plants in California. Israel figured out a way to do this economically already. It's high time for CA to follow suit.
      - Cerium 5y ago
        Exactly. I don't want to feel like I'm acting amorally when I want to water my garden. If I go over my allotment of naturally provided water, then I should start paying desalination rates, but I should not feel bad because I'm not "saving enough" compared to my neighbors.
        pixl97 5y ago
        No snowflake will take blame for the avalanche.
        beambot 5y ago
        I don't want to put words in the GP's mouth... but I believe GPs point is more akin to "one snowflake = one snowflake" (to use your analogy). In other words: California does not value water equally between use cases -- to the point where certain crops are exploiting that imbalance. E.g. almonds might be a special case since, while water intensive, there may be fewer alternative geographies. Cattle, however, are plenty-viable elsewhere & shouldn't receive such an imbalanced incentive to consume water. One natural starting point: One liter of water is priced uniformly regardless of use...
      - mdorazio 5y ago
        We already are [1]. Obviously we need more, though. I'd much rather have a sizable desalination plant for LA County than most of the boondoggle projects that get funded by propositions. [1] https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawater-desalination/?q=/seawater-desalination https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawat...
      - CameronNemo 5y ago
        How do you plan to power desal plants? LADWP is still importing coal fueled electricity from Utah. Not to mention all of the petroleum and natural gas plants scattered around California. Before we have desalination, we need more renewable energy.
        njarboe 5y ago
        We could start by not shutting down our the last nuclear power plant in California in 2025 that currently provides 10% of the states electricity.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        CameronNemo 5y ago
        Sure. But even with that plant we depend on fossil fuels. So it is clearly not a complete option.
    - cronix 5y ago
      > The majority of the water is used for agriculture, which supplies the nation and even the world with water-hungry food. It kind of sounds like it has everything to do with people, unless people aren't eating that agriculture or eating whatever that agriculture eventually feeds.
    - anewaccount2021 5y ago
      People build houses in forested areas. People buy second homes in the Sierra range. Now you can't do controlled burns...you're burning someone's house down. California cannot do controlled burns. There is too much invasive development, and the State isn't going to tell NorthStar or Kirkwood to take one for the team by burning the Sierra deadwood down.
    - splitstud 5y ago
      Which does not mean that's where farming should be done, or whether si many people should crowd into a desert.
  - ericbarrett 5y ago
    “Non-environmental” water use in California is 20% urban, 80% agricultural. Source: https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/06_June/June2019_Item_12_Attach_2_PPICFactSheets.pdf https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
- yissp 5y ago
  During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way. (East of Eden)
  - sambroner 5y ago
    I was reading East of Eden recently and that description really wormed its way into my mind. Even if it's worse today, we knew there were ~35 year drought cycles!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
benmarten 5y ago
I’m so tired of these pseudo science modelers. We have seen where it leads us with covid. Humans tend to overestimate their importance.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  You don't really have to trust anyone's opinion on this... You literally just need a yardstick and a calendar. Or a pair of eyes. Snowpack gets worse and worse every year.
  - npsimons 5y ago
    > Or a pair of eyes. Snowpack gets worse and worse every year. Yup. I spend a good deal of time training for and rescuing people in the Sierras. Snow pack is very obviously lower than a decade back. Sure, sure, we'll get the occasional outlier like that massive snow pack a few years back, but ever other year, it gets lower and lower.
    - coyotespike 5y ago
      Love this. One level up from eyes, you can just look at the geological record to observe climate change and CO2. CO2 goes up, place gets hot. No need for models. You only need fancy models if you're trying to get super precise about when changes will occur, like less than 100 years precise.
legitster 5y ago
> 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 the summer now melts sooner, or falls as rain and rushes westward to the sea in the winter, when we need it the least. A quick look at any satellite photo from a heavy-snow year reveals that no number of new dams could ever replace the snowpack’s formerly reliable volume. The headline is the epitome of burying the lede. If you read to the bottom, the writer clearly lays out the actual thesis: rainfall is the same - the problem is that snowpack is seriously declining. Which is kind of like a moisture battery. This is why climate change can counterintuitively cause both "droughts" and floods. I'll admit that it took the longest time for me to understand the concept myself.
- bjt 5y ago
  > rainfall is the same Compared to the last 1,000 years, yes. Compared to the abnormally wet 1900s-era patterns that established our current expectations, no.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    > Compared to the abnormally wet 1900s-era patterns This assertion seems to compare historical rainfall averages across the entire nation against just the SW region. ref: https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/precipitation-change https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate...
- jjav 5y ago
  > rainfall is the same But it isn't. 20 to 10 years ago every winter in norcal was heavy rains for a few months. That's happening less and less, many winters are now almost entirely dry (like current one).
- ttwwmm 5y ago
  Sonoma's water doesn't come from snowpack.
okareaman 5y ago
Desalination of seawater will be the norm in the future and people then will wonder how we ever got by without it
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  I worked for a desalination company in the 1980s. From then until a few years ago, I would have disagreed with your assertion. Some recent advances have me rethinking that, however. https://singularityhub.com/2019/06/18/inching-towards-abundant-water-new-progress-in-desalination-tech/ https://singularityhub.com/2019/06/18/inching-towards-abunda...
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Have you seen this desal operation in Australia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms#/media/File:160411_Whole_Site_Aerial.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms#/media/File:1604... It's a farm in the middle of the desert that gets all its water from desalinated sea water powered entirely by an array of mirrors.
    - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      I'm fairly skeptical of massively expanding existing RO operations due to how we tend to handle brine - which (from what I've seen) is usually just dumping it in the general area we pump from. However my past concerns for altering seawater on a planetwide scale are much abated. Rising sea levels and glacier melt have put an end to that.
  - throwaway197812 5y ago
    Better membranes and renewable-powered desalination plants are not going to do anything about the waste problem. Has there been any progress on that?
    - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      Brine disposal has always been my concern. I haven't come across anything promising but I'm well out of the loop.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
devmunchies 5y ago
California has plenty of water for California. Now, whether it can continue to be a fruit and nut agricultural hub for the rest of the country is another thing to consider.
- npsimons 5y ago
  Beef and dairy use more water, use more land, generate more GHG[0]. Deal with animal agriculture first, then we can talk about the fruits and nuts. [0] - https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths
  - kansface 5y ago
    I'm highly skeptical of this source. What percentage of that water usage for animal agriculture is actually in the form of grass (or rainfall more properly)? What percentage of the land used could be productively farmed by humans for human edible foods? What percentage of the GHGs from animal husbandry are net new? IE, a cow eats some grass, makes some co2 or w/e, which then goes back into new grass.
    - quixoticelixer- 5y ago
      Animals drink a lot of water but grass does take even more. Cows produce net CO2e emissions because they produce methane.
      - splitstud 5y ago
        Cows do not produce methane. Decaying grass produces methane, whether in a cow or out.
    - tuatoru 5y ago
      When I worked for a rural water provider in a relatively wet climate (so the cattle were grass fed), we allowed around 50 litres per day per beef animal and around 120 litres each for dairy cattle. Cows do drink a fair amount, especially if they're not shaded in the heat. In the case of dairy, there's also a lot of washing water for milking.
neartheplain 5y ago
We have the technology to solve this problem, and we've had it for thousands of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_cisterns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_cisterns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_stepwells_in_Gujarat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_stepwells_in_Gujara... Los Angles piloted a "smart cisterns" program in 2015 that captured residential roof runoff in centrally monitored and operated cisterns, which could hold or release water according to flood conditions and local demand: https://stormwater.wef.org/2015/11/los-angeles-homeowners-capture-stormwater-smart-cisterns/ https://stormwater.wef.org/2015/11/los-angeles-homeowners-ca...
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  I recall reading about something similar in Tokyo Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underground_Discharge_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underg...
- slavoingilizov 5y ago
  How exactly do wells and cisterns prevent wildfires? Like many others this technology treats the symptom and doesn’t solve the problem.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    The technology to prevent wildfires is controlled burns. The Ohlone indians would regularly do controlled burns, reducing the density of trees by 90%. A combination of anti-controlled burn mentality, building expensive homes in forested areas, and an antipathy to "greedy loggers" has turned California into a tinderbox waiting to go off. The state needs to liquidate 90% of its forests ASAP, because reducing carbon emissions and blaming political enemies aint gonna turn California into a tropical climate. It's an arid state prone to hundred-year droughts, and it's not the place where you want to see lots of trees, not unless you also enjoy seeing the occasional massive wall of flame devouring the countryside.
    - 5y ago
testfoobar 5y ago
We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount of water that California uses annually to produce almond exports would provide water for all Los Angeles homes and businesses for almost three years."
- musicale 5y ago
  Regardless of what the product is, perhaps California should not be subsidizing water exports.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  This is poor logic influenced by the politics of the LA aqueduct and water project. Nuts are calorie dense, and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie. Food simply requires a lot of water. For example, A 5 oz glass of wine takes 34 gallons. A head of iceberg lettuce takes 16 gallons of water. You will note that the motherJones article compares almond water things like home use, not other food sources.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    Can you give more sources? First time I see someone refuting that growing almonds is a water shit show
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - npsimons 5y ago
      It's not so much that almonds aren't water intense, as that things like beef and dairy (which are also heavily produced in California) are so much worse: https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths Yet we never see beef or dairy demonized the way almonds are. Believe me, there are better plant milks than almond milk (pretty much any of them), but dairy has such a higher impact on the environment (as does beef), it's incredibly disingenuous and hypocritical to complain about almonds before addressing dairy and beef.
mullingitover 5y ago
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-gdp-by-industry/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-g...
- kardianos 5y ago
  Do you eat money?
  - rednerrus 5y ago
    I get all my calories watching Doogie Howser reruns.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    We could all stand to eat fewer almonds though.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    California isn't big on dietary staple agricultural goods. The five biggest ag businesses are dairy, grapes, almonds, cattle, pistachios, and strawberries, none of which we really need to grow here. They're luxury foods generally. There's not that much that's grown here that couldn't be grown elsewhere.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Exactly. We could all eat drought resistant oats for each meal with a shot of essential vitamins and minerals. Very efficient and green!
      - dqv 5y ago
        There's no need to bring the argument to this level of absurdity. The parent made a valid point about those food items being luxuries. Less fun is not the same thing as no fun.
a11r 5y ago
The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately become uneconomical. That is the right long term solution to aligning resource usage with available supply.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  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. Urban areas take their water from very specific locations, and a farmer using water from some other source does not necessarily result in any less water available in the location the urban water is drawn from. In many (probably most) cases, if farmers won’t use the water, nobody will, because there is no way to get it from where it is to where it is needed. People tend to think about water distribution similarly to electricity, which is completely wrong. With electricity, there is one all-encompassing grid that everyone uses, and if some people use more of it, there is less of it available for others. Water is not like that: it is as if there were thousands of independent grids that cannot be easily connected, because pumping water over large distances is most often prohibitively expensive.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Oddly a large majority of the state actually drains into San Francisco Bay Area. ~99% of free flowing water in CA would evaporate or dump in a tiny number of rivers which are tapped for urban water. The only reason many of these watersheds appear separate is 100% of the water is removed long before it enters the ocean. The Kern River being a great example that used to dump into the San Joaquin River but none of that water flows into the ocean today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_California PS: Wells generally tap flowing water even if it’s simply not obvious that’s what’s going on. Basically, the ground can only hold so much water and it normally absorbs excess from rain which eventually flows into streams etc.
anewaccount2021 5y ago
So much denial in this thread. It is far too late to prevent a megafire in California. Too many people. Too much invasive development. No homeowner is going to volunteer to have their home or vacation property burned down as a favor to the State. Look at how the population of the Sierra communities has swelled in just the past few years. You ain't seen nothing yet. The past few years are barely a preview of what's to come. The megafire will happen and burn for years. No insurance system can pay out for what will happen - losses will be carried by property owners with no recourse.
throwaway823882 5y ago
Move to the east coast! We waste water like it's water.
- selectodude 5y ago
  Chicago needs seawalls to keep Lake Michigan out.
trimbo 5y ago
1000 word opinion piece and not one mention of the Delta Smelt? The author is right though, this climate is the norm. A better way to put it is that California has always been in drought. So when politicians say "drought", they actually mean "deficit". There's more than enough rain and snowpack, but we're not collecting enough of it to meet demand. We could collect more--at great expense--or use less. As i mentioned with my opening quip, something like 50% of the water that we could collect is allowed to run into the sea. The somewhat infamous reason for this is the endangered Delta Smelt. The truth though is that there's actually no limit to the water that would be used. Growers would still be demanding more. We allow the creation of billionaires on water rights here, through the growing of insanely water-needy crops like almonds[1]. Whenever this subject comes up, I recommend reading "Cadillac Desert". It really opened my eyes about the history and politics of water in the West. The "drought" talk is all kind of a scam, and it's good to see articles that kind of hit on that. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick
- mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
  Yeah, I’ve only read part of that book but it’s quite good. There’s also a long PBS documentary based on it that came out in the ‘90s (maybe ‘95?) available on YouTube.
  - eigen 5y ago
    4 hour version. https://youtu.be/PR2BSGQt2DU https://youtu.be/PR2BSGQt2DU
- eweise 5y ago
  Maybe no mention of delta smelt because Sonoma doesn't get its water from the delta.
  - trimbo 5y ago
    I was wrong, I glossed over the "migrating fish" reference here: > But Central Valley lawmakers are hopping mad that the governor didn’t declare drought statewide, because they want the rules bent to allow the opposite — more water from reservoirs to grow their crops, less for urban residents and migrating fish.
vmception 5y ago
Is this normal temperature in socal this time of year? Low-mid 60s 8 out of 10 days
Haga 5y ago
Could solar be used to artificially cool mountaintops water like they do in Himalaya?
roel_v 5y ago
PSA for us Euros that instinctively ignored latimes.com links since blocking us when GDPR came into effect: they now let us in! Time to unlearn the reflex.
williesleg 5y ago
Water wars are next. They've been planning this for longer than the ice age, global warming, and climate change.
giantg2 5y ago
This sounds more like the local environment is just not able to support the large local population and agricultural. It's similar to the cause of housing issues and cost of living issues in that area - there's too many people.
NoblePublius 5y ago
This is the state that still directs most Sierra run off into the Sacramento Delta for the benefit of a smelt, right?
foxyv 5y ago
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/2017/08/09/city-wide-study-shows-how-much-water-urban-landscaping-really-uses https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/water/community/2017/0...

254 points by symby 5y ago

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/... CA climate has been much drier in the past, even before global warming. We seem to have this discussion every few years when there's a drought, but quickly forget. It seems like we do the same thing with wildfires and earthquakes.

chrisco255 5y ago
But we moved 50 million people there in the past 60 years so clearly nature must stop the mega drought cycle.
- ummonk 5y ago
  It has nothing to do with the people. The majority of the water is used for agriculture, which supplies the nation and even the world with water-hungry food.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    It's both. Yes a lot of fruits, veggies and nuts are grown in California but the nation's staple crops (corn, wheat, and soy) and livestock are grown in many other states. That is to say, we should be building desalination plants in California. Israel figured out a way to do this economically already. It's high time for CA to follow suit.
    - Cerium 5y ago
      Exactly. I don't want to feel like I'm acting amorally when I want to water my garden. If I go over my allotment of naturally provided water, then I should start paying desalination rates, but I should not feel bad because I'm not "saving enough" compared to my neighbors.
      - pixl97 5y ago
        No snowflake will take blame for the avalanche.
        beambot 5y ago
        I don't want to put words in the GP's mouth... but I believe GPs point is more akin to "one snowflake = one snowflake" (to use your analogy). In other words: California does not value water equally between use cases -- to the point where certain crops are exploiting that imbalance. E.g. almonds might be a special case since, while water intensive, there may be fewer alternative geographies. Cattle, however, are plenty-viable elsewhere & shouldn't receive such an imbalanced incentive to consume water. One natural starting point: One liter of water is priced uniformly regardless of use...
    - mdorazio 5y ago
      We already are [1]. Obviously we need more, though. I'd much rather have a sizable desalination plant for LA County than most of the boondoggle projects that get funded by propositions. [1] https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawater-desalination/?q=/seawater-desalination https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawat...
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
      How do you plan to power desal plants? LADWP is still importing coal fueled electricity from Utah. Not to mention all of the petroleum and natural gas plants scattered around California. Before we have desalination, we need more renewable energy.
      - njarboe 5y ago
        We could start by not shutting down our the last nuclear power plant in California in 2025 that currently provides 10% of the states electricity.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        CameronNemo 5y ago
        Sure. But even with that plant we depend on fossil fuels. So it is clearly not a complete option.
  - cronix 5y ago
    > The majority of the water is used for agriculture, which supplies the nation and even the world with water-hungry food. It kind of sounds like it has everything to do with people, unless people aren't eating that agriculture or eating whatever that agriculture eventually feeds.
  - anewaccount2021 5y ago
    People build houses in forested areas. People buy second homes in the Sierra range. Now you can't do controlled burns...you're burning someone's house down. California cannot do controlled burns. There is too much invasive development, and the State isn't going to tell NorthStar or Kirkwood to take one for the team by burning the Sierra deadwood down.
  - splitstud 5y ago
    Which does not mean that's where farming should be done, or whether si many people should crowd into a desert.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  “Non-environmental” water use in California is 20% urban, 80% agricultural. Source: https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/06_June/June2019_Item_12_Attach_2_PPICFactSheets.pdf https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
yissp 5y ago
During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way. (East of Eden)
- sambroner 5y ago
  I was reading East of Eden recently and that description really wormed its way into my mind. Even if it's worse today, we knew there were ~35 year drought cycles!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

benmarten 5y ago

I’m so tired of these pseudo science modelers. We have seen where it leads us with covid. Humans tend to overestimate their importance.

idiotsecant 5y ago
You don't really have to trust anyone's opinion on this... You literally just need a yardstick and a calendar. Or a pair of eyes. Snowpack gets worse and worse every year.
- npsimons 5y ago
  > Or a pair of eyes. Snowpack gets worse and worse every year. Yup. I spend a good deal of time training for and rescuing people in the Sierras. Snow pack is very obviously lower than a decade back. Sure, sure, we'll get the occasional outlier like that massive snow pack a few years back, but ever other year, it gets lower and lower.
  - coyotespike 5y ago
    Love this. One level up from eyes, you can just look at the geological record to observe climate change and CO2. CO2 goes up, place gets hot. No need for models. You only need fancy models if you're trying to get super precise about when changes will occur, like less than 100 years precise.

legitster 5y ago

> 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 the summer now melts sooner, or falls as rain and rushes westward to the sea in the winter, when we need it the least. A quick look at any satellite photo from a heavy-snow year reveals that no number of new dams could ever replace the snowpack’s formerly reliable volume. The headline is the epitome of burying the lede. If you read to the bottom, the writer clearly lays out the actual thesis: rainfall is the same - the problem is that snowpack is seriously declining. Which is kind of like a moisture battery. This is why climate change can counterintuitively cause both "droughts" and floods. I'll admit that it took the longest time for me to understand the concept myself.

bjt 5y ago
> rainfall is the same Compared to the last 1,000 years, yes. Compared to the abnormally wet 1900s-era patterns that established our current expectations, no.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  > Compared to the abnormally wet 1900s-era patterns This assertion seems to compare historical rainfall averages across the entire nation against just the SW region. ref: https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/precipitation-change https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate...
jjav 5y ago
> rainfall is the same But it isn't. 20 to 10 years ago every winter in norcal was heavy rains for a few months. That's happening less and less, many winters are now almost entirely dry (like current one).
ttwwmm 5y ago
Sonoma's water doesn't come from snowpack.

okareaman 5y ago

Desalination of seawater will be the norm in the future and people then will wonder how we ever got by without it

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
I worked for a desalination company in the 1980s. From then until a few years ago, I would have disagreed with your assertion. Some recent advances have me rethinking that, however. https://singularityhub.com/2019/06/18/inching-towards-abundant-water-new-progress-in-desalination-tech/ https://singularityhub.com/2019/06/18/inching-towards-abunda...
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Have you seen this desal operation in Australia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms#/media/File:160411_Whole_Site_Aerial.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms#/media/File:1604... It's a farm in the middle of the desert that gets all its water from desalinated sea water powered entirely by an array of mirrors.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    I'm fairly skeptical of massively expanding existing RO operations due to how we tend to handle brine - which (from what I've seen) is usually just dumping it in the general area we pump from. However my past concerns for altering seawater on a planetwide scale are much abated. Rising sea levels and glacier melt have put an end to that.
- throwaway197812 5y ago
  Better membranes and renewable-powered desalination plants are not going to do anything about the waste problem. Has there been any progress on that?
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    Brine disposal has always been my concern. I haven't come across anything promising but I'm well out of the loop.

deleted 5y ago

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devmunchies 5y ago

California has plenty of water for California. Now, whether it can continue to be a fruit and nut agricultural hub for the rest of the country is another thing to consider.

npsimons 5y ago
Beef and dairy use more water, use more land, generate more GHG[0]. Deal with animal agriculture first, then we can talk about the fruits and nuts. [0] - https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths
- kansface 5y ago
  I'm highly skeptical of this source. What percentage of that water usage for animal agriculture is actually in the form of grass (or rainfall more properly)? What percentage of the land used could be productively farmed by humans for human edible foods? What percentage of the GHGs from animal husbandry are net new? IE, a cow eats some grass, makes some co2 or w/e, which then goes back into new grass.
  - quixoticelixer- 5y ago
    Animals drink a lot of water but grass does take even more. Cows produce net CO2e emissions because they produce methane.
    - splitstud 5y ago
      Cows do not produce methane. Decaying grass produces methane, whether in a cow or out.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    When I worked for a rural water provider in a relatively wet climate (so the cattle were grass fed), we allowed around 50 litres per day per beef animal and around 120 litres each for dairy cattle. Cows do drink a fair amount, especially if they're not shaded in the heat. In the case of dairy, there's also a lot of washing water for milking.

neartheplain 5y ago

We have the technology to solve this problem, and we've had it for thousands of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_cisterns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_cisterns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_stepwells_in_Gujarat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_stepwells_in_Gujara... Los Angles piloted a "smart cisterns" program in 2015 that captured residential roof runoff in centrally monitored and operated cisterns, which could hold or release water according to flood conditions and local demand: https://stormwater.wef.org/2015/11/los-angeles-homeowners-capture-stormwater-smart-cisterns/ https://stormwater.wef.org/2015/11/los-angeles-homeowners-ca...

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
I recall reading about something similar in Tokyo Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underground_Discharge_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underg...
slavoingilizov 5y ago
How exactly do wells and cisterns prevent wildfires? Like many others this technology treats the symptom and doesn’t solve the problem.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  The technology to prevent wildfires is controlled burns. The Ohlone indians would regularly do controlled burns, reducing the density of trees by 90%. A combination of anti-controlled burn mentality, building expensive homes in forested areas, and an antipathy to "greedy loggers" has turned California into a tinderbox waiting to go off. The state needs to liquidate 90% of its forests ASAP, because reducing carbon emissions and blaming political enemies aint gonna turn California into a tropical climate. It's an arid state prone to hundred-year droughts, and it's not the place where you want to see lots of trees, not unless you also enjoy seeing the occasional massive wall of flame devouring the countryside.
  - 5y ago

testfoobar 5y ago

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California. From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... "it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount of water that California uses annually to produce almond exports would provide water for all Los Angeles homes and businesses for almost three years."

musicale 5y ago
Regardless of what the product is, perhaps California should not be subsidizing water exports.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
This is poor logic influenced by the politics of the LA aqueduct and water project. Nuts are calorie dense, and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie. Food simply requires a lot of water. For example, A 5 oz glass of wine takes 34 gallons. A head of iceberg lettuce takes 16 gallons of water. You will note that the motherJones article compares almond water things like home use, not other food sources.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Can you give more sources? First time I see someone refuting that growing almonds is a water shit show
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - npsimons 5y ago
    It's not so much that almonds aren't water intense, as that things like beef and dairy (which are also heavily produced in California) are so much worse: https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths Yet we never see beef or dairy demonized the way almonds are. Believe me, there are better plant milks than almond milk (pretty much any of them), but dairy has such a higher impact on the environment (as does beef), it's incredibly disingenuous and hypocritical to complain about almonds before addressing dairy and beef.

mullingitover 5y ago

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-gdp-by-industry/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-g...

kardianos 5y ago
Do you eat money?
- rednerrus 5y ago
  I get all my calories watching Doogie Howser reruns.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  We could all stand to eat fewer almonds though.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  California isn't big on dietary staple agricultural goods. The five biggest ag businesses are dairy, grapes, almonds, cattle, pistachios, and strawberries, none of which we really need to grow here. They're luxury foods generally. There's not that much that's grown here that couldn't be grown elsewhere.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Exactly. We could all eat drought resistant oats for each meal with a shot of essential vitamins and minerals. Very efficient and green!
    - dqv 5y ago
      There's no need to bring the argument to this level of absurdity. The parent made a valid point about those food items being luxuries. Less fun is not the same thing as no fun.

a11r 5y ago

The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately become uneconomical. That is the right long term solution to aligning resource usage with available supply.

xyzzyz 5y ago
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. Urban areas take their water from very specific locations, and a farmer using water from some other source does not necessarily result in any less water available in the location the urban water is drawn from. In many (probably most) cases, if farmers won’t use the water, nobody will, because there is no way to get it from where it is to where it is needed. People tend to think about water distribution similarly to electricity, which is completely wrong. With electricity, there is one all-encompassing grid that everyone uses, and if some people use more of it, there is less of it available for others. Water is not like that: it is as if there were thousands of independent grids that cannot be easily connected, because pumping water over large distances is most often prohibitively expensive.
- Retric 5y ago
  Oddly a large majority of the state actually drains into San Francisco Bay Area. ~99% of free flowing water in CA would evaporate or dump in a tiny number of rivers which are tapped for urban water. The only reason many of these watersheds appear separate is 100% of the water is removed long before it enters the ocean. The Kern River being a great example that used to dump into the San Joaquin River but none of that water flows into the ocean today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_California PS: Wells generally tap flowing water even if it’s simply not obvious that’s what’s going on. Basically, the ground can only hold so much water and it normally absorbs excess from rain which eventually flows into streams etc.

anewaccount2021 5y ago

So much denial in this thread. It is far too late to prevent a megafire in California. Too many people. Too much invasive development. No homeowner is going to volunteer to have their home or vacation property burned down as a favor to the State. Look at how the population of the Sierra communities has swelled in just the past few years. You ain't seen nothing yet. The past few years are barely a preview of what's to come. The megafire will happen and burn for years. No insurance system can pay out for what will happen - losses will be carried by property owners with no recourse.

throwaway823882 5y ago

Move to the east coast! We waste water like it's water.

selectodude 5y ago
Chicago needs seawalls to keep Lake Michigan out.

trimbo 5y ago

1000 word opinion piece and not one mention of the Delta Smelt? The author is right though, this climate is the norm. A better way to put it is that California has always been in drought. So when politicians say "drought", they actually mean "deficit". There's more than enough rain and snowpack, but we're not collecting enough of it to meet demand. We could collect more--at great expense--or use less. As i mentioned with my opening quip, something like 50% of the water that we could collect is allowed to run into the sea. The somewhat infamous reason for this is the endangered Delta Smelt. The truth though is that there's actually no limit to the water that would be used. Growers would still be demanding more. We allow the creation of billionaires on water rights here, through the growing of insanely water-needy crops like almonds[1]. Whenever this subject comes up, I recommend reading "Cadillac Desert". It really opened my eyes about the history and politics of water in the West. The "drought" talk is all kind of a scam, and it's good to see articles that kind of hit on that. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick

mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
Yeah, I’ve only read part of that book but it’s quite good. There’s also a long PBS documentary based on it that came out in the ‘90s (maybe ‘95?) available on YouTube.
- eigen 5y ago
  4 hour version. https://youtu.be/PR2BSGQt2DU https://youtu.be/PR2BSGQt2DU
eweise 5y ago
Maybe no mention of delta smelt because Sonoma doesn't get its water from the delta.
- trimbo 5y ago
  I was wrong, I glossed over the "migrating fish" reference here: > But Central Valley lawmakers are hopping mad that the governor didn’t declare drought statewide, because they want the rules bent to allow the opposite — more water from reservoirs to grow their crops, less for urban residents and migrating fish.

vmception 5y ago

Is this normal temperature in socal this time of year? Low-mid 60s 8 out of 10 days

Haga 5y ago

Could solar be used to artificially cool mountaintops water like they do in Himalaya?

roel_v 5y ago

PSA for us Euros that instinctively ignored latimes.com links since blocking us when GDPR came into effect: they now let us in! Time to unlearn the reflex.

williesleg 5y ago

Water wars are next. They've been planning this for longer than the ice age, global warming, and climate change.

giantg2 5y ago

This sounds more like the local environment is just not able to support the large local population and agricultural. It's similar to the cause of housing issues and cost of living issues in that area - there's too many people.

NoblePublius 5y ago

This is the state that still directs most Sierra run off into the Sacramento Delta for the benefit of a smelt, right?

foxyv 5y ago

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/2017/08/09/city-wide-study-shows-how-much-water-urban-landscaping-really-uses https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/water/community/2017/0...