7 ms·

CA drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say

52 points by hncurious 5y ago

sithlord 5y ago
wouldn't that suggest its more of a cycle, than "climate change"?
- asdf333 5y ago
  i think it is “exacerbated by climate change”
  - da_big_ghey 5y ago
    Then I think question is how we know there is such exacerbation since we are at 3 years only.
    - jshen 5y ago
      We know human induced climate change is real. We know that this climate change will cause extreme weather events. We know that this climate change will have unforeseen consequences that we never imagined. Then we have you, demanding that we prove that any individual event is purely caused by climate change to imply we should all bury our heads in the sand. This way lies madness and great suffering.
      - da_big_ghey 5y ago
        No, you make words in my mouth. We are reasonably sure of all three first items you have listed. I only make the contention that I have not yet seen evidence of this specific event. Most information I have heard suggest largest impact some years in the future. I say nothing about "bury our heads in the sand".
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        > you make words in my mouth The idiom is "putting words in my mouth". https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/putting+words+in+my+mouth https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/putting+words+in+my+mou...
        loopz 5y ago
        Climate reports and studies are regarded as conservative. IPCC reports are for example aggregate meta-studies, and those again not granular enough to detail weather. So it may be extremes are coming this decade and feedback effects (heatwaves, fires, floods, albedo change, ocean warming and acidification) also triggering this decade. It won't be one effect, and it'll take time worsening, but could happen faster than anticipated and all at once, on the timescale of decades. It would be foolish to expect correct scientific predictions and consensus in all details before it happens.
        jshen 5y ago
        What evidence would you expect to see for this specific event?
      - whatev373857 5y ago
        We actually don't know any of those things. The situation, more accurately stated, is that a lot of people have excessive certainty about those things.
    - dboreham 5y ago
      Through science? e.g. attempting to model the mechanism and re-playing the model with and without climate change.
      - goatlover 5y ago
        The climate models did not predict the current heat domes. I listened to a podcast just yesterday where the climatologist was explaining how they were caught by surprise. But I forgot which podcast it was, so here's a Guardian article from a few weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/02/canadian-inferno-northern-heat-exceeds-worst-case-climate-models https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/02/canadian... The climatologists are saying warming increases the likelihood of these extreme events. The problem is the models said they shouldn't be happening yet. So maybe something additional is going on. The issue now is the media is going to report any bad weather as climate related, which is no better than claiming there is no global warming because one experienced a colder winter than normal.
        pl-94 5y ago
        The lastest report of IPCC brings more data and confidence about extreme weather. The key number is that their probability has increased by a factor of 150 wrt. to pré industrial era.
        loopz 5y ago
        Weather forecasts did predict these extremes though. So if you have 10*10 what do you get? Climate models warn against local extremes like that, but do not yet model all the details. There are no redeeming factors of significance, so that is very concerning.
    - tessierashpool 5y ago
      where do you get that 3 years number? scientists have known about it since the 1960s, and the Industrial Revolution was centuries ago. even the article, which is from 7 years ago, talks about a drought that's been going since 2000.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hunter-gatherer 5y ago
  Yes but no. From the article: > “Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist" Also note this article is from January 2014.
- rolph 5y ago
  there is nothing excluding both events concurrently
criticaltinker 5y ago
This article is from 2014 - but definitely still relevant. It contains some interesting facts and commentary: > Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources > Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms. > Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  This is one good thing to point out, there are very many periodic cycles which affect weather patterns. It is important to not yell “global warming” each time a change is noticed but to actually try to understand what is happening and the inputs to those results.
- yalogin 5y ago
  Is growth also increasing farm sizes and their water consumption? That will be interesting to understand.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Much of the ag production is for export from the state, local population growth is probably not strongly correlated.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >> Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources I feel that whenever people bring up that fact, there's an implicit point that water problems should be solved by reducing agriculture, but doesn't California's agriculture industry produce a huge fraction of the high-value fruit and vegetables that people eat?
js290 5y ago
"...reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet years, were considered all but useless... never built... 2016 & 2017 California received record snow & rainfall... windfall of millions of acre-ft of runoff was mostly let out to sea." http://bit.ly/2HnjQTR http://bit.ly/2HnjQTR
sunsetSamurai 5y ago
Dumb question, why doesn't California invest in desalination plants? I know they're expensive and complex. But Israel and Singapore have several of them running, if they can do it California should be able too.
- mgr86 5y ago
  I'd be curious as well. It appears they have at least 11, including in San Diego. With 10 more planned as of 2019[0] [0]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-desalination-plants-are-on-the-rise https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-d...
  - mdorazio 5y ago
    They are fabulously expensive for the water output you get. The San Diego one is (or was) the largest in the Western hemisphere, cost about a billion dollars to build, requires 40MW to run, and only covers about 7% of the potable water needs for the San Diego area.
    - stickyricky 5y ago
      Do you have a figure for price per gallon? It might be interesting to do a cost benefit analysis between desalination and the water pipeline from Canada mentioned elsewhere in the comments.
      - mdorazio 5y ago
        The best I have is from [1], which estimates 50 million gallons a day at an ongoing operating cost of around $50 million per year. You'd have to pick a timeframe to also amortize the cost of the plant itself and add that in. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545661598973132 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545...
    - maybelsyrup 5y ago
      A billion? Only? I think some context can be helpful here. As a nation, we're happy -- hell, our elites (yes, we on HN) practically begged -- to spend $6.4 trillion dollars over 20 years to have fun foreign adventures in the sand, playing guardian of freedom and feeling real nice about it [1]. $1bn for 7% of the water needs for a major (and growing) US metro area sounds like a bargain to me. For a measly $14bn we'd cover the whole city. Defund the Pentagon, turn it into a WeWork, and let's do fun, neat stuff with our civilization. If we're gonna throw piles of money at things with low ROI, why not throw it at fusion and desalination instead of drone striking children at Pakistani weddings? 100% sincere here, not being cheeky. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on...
olivermarks 5y ago
Golden opportunity to deepen reservoirs during the drought, but instead one was closed and drained for seismic refit which could take a decade. https://www.valleywater.org/project-updates/2012-c1-anderson-dam-seismic-retrofit https://www.valleywater.org/project-updates/2012-c1-anderson...

52 points by hncurious 5y ago

sithlord 5y ago

wouldn't that suggest its more of a cycle, than "climate change"?

asdf333 5y ago
i think it is “exacerbated by climate change”
- da_big_ghey 5y ago
  Then I think question is how we know there is such exacerbation since we are at 3 years only.
  - jshen 5y ago
    We know human induced climate change is real. We know that this climate change will cause extreme weather events. We know that this climate change will have unforeseen consequences that we never imagined. Then we have you, demanding that we prove that any individual event is purely caused by climate change to imply we should all bury our heads in the sand. This way lies madness and great suffering.
    - da_big_ghey 5y ago
      No, you make words in my mouth. We are reasonably sure of all three first items you have listed. I only make the contention that I have not yet seen evidence of this specific event. Most information I have heard suggest largest impact some years in the future. I say nothing about "bury our heads in the sand".
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        > you make words in my mouth The idiom is "putting words in my mouth". https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/putting+words+in+my+mouth https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/putting+words+in+my+mou...
      - loopz 5y ago
        Climate reports and studies are regarded as conservative. IPCC reports are for example aggregate meta-studies, and those again not granular enough to detail weather. So it may be extremes are coming this decade and feedback effects (heatwaves, fires, floods, albedo change, ocean warming and acidification) also triggering this decade. It won't be one effect, and it'll take time worsening, but could happen faster than anticipated and all at once, on the timescale of decades. It would be foolish to expect correct scientific predictions and consensus in all details before it happens.
      - jshen 5y ago
        What evidence would you expect to see for this specific event?
    - whatev373857 5y ago
      We actually don't know any of those things. The situation, more accurately stated, is that a lot of people have excessive certainty about those things.
  - dboreham 5y ago
    Through science? e.g. attempting to model the mechanism and re-playing the model with and without climate change.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      The climate models did not predict the current heat domes. I listened to a podcast just yesterday where the climatologist was explaining how they were caught by surprise. But I forgot which podcast it was, so here's a Guardian article from a few weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/02/canadian-inferno-northern-heat-exceeds-worst-case-climate-models https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/02/canadian... The climatologists are saying warming increases the likelihood of these extreme events. The problem is the models said they shouldn't be happening yet. So maybe something additional is going on. The issue now is the media is going to report any bad weather as climate related, which is no better than claiming there is no global warming because one experienced a colder winter than normal.
      - pl-94 5y ago
        The lastest report of IPCC brings more data and confidence about extreme weather. The key number is that their probability has increased by a factor of 150 wrt. to pré industrial era.
      - loopz 5y ago
        Weather forecasts did predict these extremes though. So if you have 10*10 what do you get? Climate models warn against local extremes like that, but do not yet model all the details. There are no redeeming factors of significance, so that is very concerning.
  - tessierashpool 5y ago
    where do you get that 3 years number? scientists have known about it since the 1960s, and the Industrial Revolution was centuries ago. even the article, which is from 7 years ago, talks about a drought that's been going since 2000.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hunter-gatherer 5y ago
Yes but no. From the article: > “Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist" Also note this article is from January 2014.
rolph 5y ago
there is nothing excluding both events concurrently

criticaltinker 5y ago

This article is from 2014 - but definitely still relevant. It contains some interesting facts and commentary: > Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources > Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms. > Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said.

colechristensen 5y ago
This is one good thing to point out, there are very many periodic cycles which affect weather patterns. It is important to not yell “global warming” each time a change is noticed but to actually try to understand what is happening and the inputs to those results.
yalogin 5y ago
Is growth also increasing farm sizes and their water consumption? That will be interesting to understand.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Much of the ag production is for export from the state, local population growth is probably not strongly correlated.
tablespoon 5y ago
>> Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources I feel that whenever people bring up that fact, there's an implicit point that water problems should be solved by reducing agriculture, but doesn't California's agriculture industry produce a huge fraction of the high-value fruit and vegetables that people eat?

js290 5y ago

"...reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet years, were considered all but useless... never built... 2016 & 2017 California received record snow & rainfall... windfall of millions of acre-ft of runoff was mostly let out to sea." http://bit.ly/2HnjQTR http://bit.ly/2HnjQTR

sunsetSamurai 5y ago

Dumb question, why doesn't California invest in desalination plants? I know they're expensive and complex. But Israel and Singapore have several of them running, if they can do it California should be able too.

mgr86 5y ago
I'd be curious as well. It appears they have at least 11, including in San Diego. With 10 more planned as of 2019[0] [0]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-desalination-plants-are-on-the-rise https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-d...
- mdorazio 5y ago
  They are fabulously expensive for the water output you get. The San Diego one is (or was) the largest in the Western hemisphere, cost about a billion dollars to build, requires 40MW to run, and only covers about 7% of the potable water needs for the San Diego area.
  - stickyricky 5y ago
    Do you have a figure for price per gallon? It might be interesting to do a cost benefit analysis between desalination and the water pipeline from Canada mentioned elsewhere in the comments.
    - mdorazio 5y ago
      The best I have is from [1], which estimates 50 million gallons a day at an ongoing operating cost of around $50 million per year. You'd have to pick a timeframe to also amortize the cost of the plant itself and add that in. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545661598973132 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545...
  - maybelsyrup 5y ago
    A billion? Only? I think some context can be helpful here. As a nation, we're happy -- hell, our elites (yes, we on HN) practically begged -- to spend $6.4 trillion dollars over 20 years to have fun foreign adventures in the sand, playing guardian of freedom and feeling real nice about it [1]. $1bn for 7% of the water needs for a major (and growing) US metro area sounds like a bargain to me. For a measly $14bn we'd cover the whole city. Defund the Pentagon, turn it into a WeWork, and let's do fun, neat stuff with our civilization. If we're gonna throw piles of money at things with low ROI, why not throw it at fusion and desalination instead of drone striking children at Pakistani weddings? 100% sincere here, not being cheeky. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on...

olivermarks 5y ago

Golden opportunity to deepen reservoirs during the drought, but instead one was closed and drained for seismic refit which could take a decade. https://www.valleywater.org/project-updates/2012-c1-anderson-dam-seismic-retrofit https://www.valleywater.org/project-updates/2012-c1-anderson...