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The water management situation in California is very complex. It really bugs me that desal is the most popular drum to beat, along with "California is a desert"

The water management situation in California is very complex. It really bugs me that desal is the most popular drum to beat, along with "California is a desert" and "California is irresponsible". California's per capita water usage is roughly in the neighborhood of other western states (http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2014/10/differences_in_water_use_across_states http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2014/10/di..., scroll down), and although there's certainly room for improvement, it's really not bad considering the massive amount of agriculture in California. Not mentioned in the article -- unless I missed it -- is that the Carlsbad plant is being built at a cost of around $950 million, and I wouldn't be surprised if it crossed the magic $1 billion line by the time it was operational. That's a huge amount of money for just one plant; it could take around 50 plants of that size to completely offset the effects of an extended drought, and there would still be significant costs in then moving all of that water into the central valley areas where it's needed for agriculture. Everything that I've read recently is suggesting that what we're experiencing now is likely to be the new normal for California. This is because the Sierra snowpack has become nearly nonexistent in recent years, and it previously accounted for around 30 percent of California's total water storage, and it provided that water year-round. That's a 30 percent haircut right off the top. Even when we get wet seasons, it's not expected that they will be cold wet seasons, which means we'll see less snow in the mountains. And, since most of the rain that falls west of Sacramento gets funneled directly to the Bay, wet seasons won't even be helpful in the long term. So what's happening is California is experiencing some of the effects of climate change. (I know HN at large doesn't believe AGW is real, but that's not really what this comment is about.) That means there's going to have to be a lot of adaptation, and not just in one area. California's environmentalists -- and I usually count myself among them -- are going to have to get used to the idea of more dams and more reservoirs. California needs to make up for that missing 30% somehow. It also needs to start adopting water conservation the way that energy conservation has been seeing adoption; we should be seeing affordable greywater systems that move water from your bathroom sink into your toilet tank, for example, and residential water storage systems for landscape use should become more common. We're going to have to figure out how to handle the agricultural industry. They're adapting too. They should get more help and encouragement, with access to more resources for water conservation. California is one of the most technologically advanced states in the US; it should be possible to dedicate some of that technological expertise to new forms of irrigation. Storm runoff has to be handled better. It should be captured and treated and stored, diverted into marshes and other wetland areas. Of all of these various things that need to be done, desalination is one of the most expensive per-gallon solutions.

xigency 11y ago
All good points. This is definitely an issue that I think deserves as much discussion as it can get. Talking about the economics of what might be required, I'm sure that many people would like to help to work on solutions.
mentat 11y ago
Can you post some citations for your "new normal" assertion?
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  It's a fair question, but no, I haven't started a bookmark tag for those. I keep bookmark tags for all the other things that I read that I expect someone will want citations for during some internet debate, but I haven't started one for this particular subject yet, since it's relatively new. I have however gone back through a lot of my reading history and dug out quite a bit of other links and supporting data. Interestingly, that specific phrase, "new normal", came up quite a bit, which is probably why I used it without thinking about it. Finding supporting articles wasn't super difficult, but synthesizing them into something coherent will take way more effort than I'm willing to put into a 10-hour-old HN thread which probably nobody will ever read. So I'll synthesize it and post it to my personal site in due time, and then post that to HN (where I expect it won't get any traction at all, but at least I'll have something to point to the next time someone wants citations).
  - mentat 11y ago
    Having studied some meteorology in college I haven't heard a coherent example of what changes people believe have happened to the weather patterns or why. If you want to reply here, I'll check back from time to time.
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      > Having studied some meteorology in college Ah, in that case, here's my understanding, in brief. There are several components: 1. California has had multi-hundred-year drought cycles in the past, according to tree ring data, and the last several hundred years have been unusually wet by comparison. It's possible that we're re-entering a long period of overall drought. (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-history-of-drought-repeats.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-histor...) 2. The current drought has been exacerbated primarily by a pattern of high and low pressure systems over the arctic, the polar vortex system. The newer "curvy" shape of the polar vortex is leading to systems which are keeping cold fronts from descending into the west coast. 3. The current working theory is that the shape of the polar vortex is influenced mostly by the temperature of the arctic, so it's not likely to return to what we thought of as normal until the arctic starts to cool down again, which might not be happening anytime soon. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex#Climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex#Climate_change -- sorry for Wikipedia link.) 4. There has been a gradual decrease in snowfall over the Rockies and, I think, the Cascades region. (e.g. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/201502 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/201502, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-climate-change-global-warming-rockies-snow_n.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-clima...) A lab in Berkeley is responsible for measuring snow pack in the Sierra, and they have some data going back to the late 19th century. Unfortunately, all I can find are graphs of their data, not their actual data, so I have to contact them and see if they're willing to share that so I can see how the average is changing. My hunch -- although it's only a hunch at this point -- is that I'll find a slight overall decline in average snowfall, same as there is in the Rockies and Cascades. Seeing if this data is available is part of what's holding up a more comprehensive reply. I have links to articles for most (all?) of this, but ... it's a little bit discombobulated still. I think it really needs to be presented more coherently to look very convincing. Part of the reason that I'm reluctant to start sharing links right away is that some of the sources I have at the moment are crappy little blogs -- thank you very much Google -- and I have to take the graphs they've ripped off and try to locate the primary sources they ripped them off from and then read them and make sure the context is correct and all that. I'm not a meteorologist or climate scientist, it's likely there are areas that I'm oversimplifying or misunderstanding. But, I am an avid reader, and I haven't come across much material that's painting an optimistic view of California's climate in the near future.

xigency 11y ago

All good points. This is definitely an issue that I think deserves as much discussion as it can get. Talking about the economics of what might be required, I'm sure that many people would like to help to work on solutions.

mentat 11y ago

Can you post some citations for your "new normal" assertion?

thaumaturgy 11y ago
It's a fair question, but no, I haven't started a bookmark tag for those. I keep bookmark tags for all the other things that I read that I expect someone will want citations for during some internet debate, but I haven't started one for this particular subject yet, since it's relatively new. I have however gone back through a lot of my reading history and dug out quite a bit of other links and supporting data. Interestingly, that specific phrase, "new normal", came up quite a bit, which is probably why I used it without thinking about it. Finding supporting articles wasn't super difficult, but synthesizing them into something coherent will take way more effort than I'm willing to put into a 10-hour-old HN thread which probably nobody will ever read. So I'll synthesize it and post it to my personal site in due time, and then post that to HN (where I expect it won't get any traction at all, but at least I'll have something to point to the next time someone wants citations).
- mentat 11y ago
  Having studied some meteorology in college I haven't heard a coherent example of what changes people believe have happened to the weather patterns or why. If you want to reply here, I'll check back from time to time.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    > Having studied some meteorology in college Ah, in that case, here's my understanding, in brief. There are several components: 1. California has had multi-hundred-year drought cycles in the past, according to tree ring data, and the last several hundred years have been unusually wet by comparison. It's possible that we're re-entering a long period of overall drought. (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-history-of-drought-repeats.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-histor...) 2. The current drought has been exacerbated primarily by a pattern of high and low pressure systems over the arctic, the polar vortex system. The newer "curvy" shape of the polar vortex is leading to systems which are keeping cold fronts from descending into the west coast. 3. The current working theory is that the shape of the polar vortex is influenced mostly by the temperature of the arctic, so it's not likely to return to what we thought of as normal until the arctic starts to cool down again, which might not be happening anytime soon. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex#Climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex#Climate_change -- sorry for Wikipedia link.) 4. There has been a gradual decrease in snowfall over the Rockies and, I think, the Cascades region. (e.g. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/201502 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/201502, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-climate-change-global-warming-rockies-snow_n.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-clima...) A lab in Berkeley is responsible for measuring snow pack in the Sierra, and they have some data going back to the late 19th century. Unfortunately, all I can find are graphs of their data, not their actual data, so I have to contact them and see if they're willing to share that so I can see how the average is changing. My hunch -- although it's only a hunch at this point -- is that I'll find a slight overall decline in average snowfall, same as there is in the Rockies and Cascades. Seeing if this data is available is part of what's holding up a more comprehensive reply. I have links to articles for most (all?) of this, but ... it's a little bit discombobulated still. I think it really needs to be presented more coherently to look very convincing. Part of the reason that I'm reluctant to start sharing links right away is that some of the sources I have at the moment are crappy little blogs -- thank you very much Google -- and I have to take the graphs they've ripped off and try to locate the primary sources they ripped them off from and then read them and make sure the context is correct and all that. I'm not a meteorologist or climate scientist, it's likely there are areas that I'm oversimplifying or misunderstanding. But, I am an avid reader, and I haven't come across much material that's painting an optimistic view of California's climate in the near future.