Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
|
|
Avalanches coming down Cloud's Rest are the best!
|
|
k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
|
|
|
Feb 12, 2016 - 04:31pm PT
|
Oh, um. It appears that the drought is worse than previously thought.
Take shorter showers, everybody!
4 Billion People at Risk as 'Water Table Dropping All Over the World'
Global scarcity of key life source far worse than thought, new study finds
The new publication follows a pair of NASA studies led by researchers from the University of California Irvine that showed that the impacts of global warming along with growing demand has caused the world's water supply to drop to dangerous levels.
"The water table is dropping all over the world," Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at the time. "There's not an infinite supply of water."
"We need to get our heads together on how we manage groundwater," Famiglietti added, "because we’re running out of it."
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
|
Feb 29, 2016 - 12:46pm PT
|
We are now down below 90% of normal for this date......
another drought year.
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
|
Feb 29, 2016 - 01:34pm PT
|
This is from a blog written by a water professional insider at the State, who remains unknown. However, her insight has attracted a lot of attention:
How will 3 million acres of irrigated land go out of production?
Between groundwater overdraft, urban growth and climate change decreasing useful precip, I predict that 3 million acres of irrigated agriculture in California will go out of production in the next few decades.
What I can’t predict is how they will go out of production. Here are some ways it could happen:
The State could offer to buy agricultural land at five times market rate, from anyone who wants to sell. Or the State could buy out entire water districts, so that it owns contiguous land.
The State could do nothing, let wells fail and let growers eat their losses individually, wherever they are. Counties would pay for the costs of scattered abandoned lands.
Water districts could plan for continued shortages, identifying the lands that will not get water, allowing the land along entire laterals to go dry. The remaining farmers could pay compensation to the farmers who will not receive water.
The State could identify 6 million acres of prime ag land that it wants to support. It could offer that acreage the assurance of water during droughts or monetary support in dry years in exchange for growing fruits and veggies. It could forbid groundwater pumping for ag use outside the 6 million acres.
The State could hasten the failure of the 3 million acres by forbidding groundwater overdraft, billing farmers for the costs of subsidence, and banning almond orchards.
The State could offer to buy out lands during generational change.
There are lots of ways this could happen. Only some of them have horrible outcomes for everyone. Some of them have costs in money and some of them have costs in human suffering. Some of them concentrate wealth among the already wealthy and some of them support middle class farming towns. When I am pessimistic, I am not pessimistic that the land will go out of production. That is inevitable.
I am pessimistic that refusing to face that fact means that the collapse will be catastrophic, disorderly and borne by individuals, instead of planned, orderly and borne by all of us. I am pessimistic that the taboo of describing a poorer future means that we won’t do the work to create the least bad outcome.
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
|
Feb 29, 2016 - 01:50pm PT
|
WATER BOND. REALLOCATION OF BOND AUTHORITY TO WATER STORAGE
PROJECTS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE.
Prioritizes water uses in California, with domestic uses first and irrigation uses second, over
environmental, recreational, and other beneficial uses.
Reallocates up to $10.7 billion in unused
bond authority from existing high-speed rail ($8.0 billion) and water storage ($2.7 billion)
purposes, to fund water storage projects for domestic and irrigation uses.
Removes requirement
that water storage projects funded by the $2.7 billion amount also benefit the environment.
Creates new State Water and Groundwater Storage Facilities Authority to choose the projects to
be funded by reallocated bond amounts.
|
|
neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
|
|
|
Feb 29, 2016 - 04:16pm PT
|
hey there say, ken M ... and splater... thank you kindly for the updates...
i may not be in calif, anymore, but it is still dear to my heart, :(
been wondering what the news is like...
i know from family, etc, as to the bits of rain and snowfall etc,
up north... but i sure also know:
it was not what was really needed, :(
my mom and i were just talking about this, the other night...
thanks again for sharing...
|
|
k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
|
|
... taboo of describing a poorer future means that we won’t do the work to create the least bad outcome.
A capitalistic society means that we have to grow, quarter over quarter. To buck this concept means that you're a socialist, or worse. Our debt must be fed, austerity must be borne by the poor.
Yeah, I guess I'm pessimistic about this as well.
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
Just how bad is the drought?
The January 2016 rainfall total in Merced was 5.19" and for February it was .36".
This disparity spells D-R-Y to me.
And it proves (as if we needed convincing) that we two-leggeds only are here by the grace of weather, which seems to me to be god-like in its mysteries.
Earthquakes & fires take a back seat to weather every time.
"BONE DRY."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bone-dry.html
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
neebee,
It is actually disheartening.
We are below the historical average, although we may catch up and surpass that this month.
But people are SO missing the context.
To analogize:
In finance, it's like we have a monthly nut to pay, and a huge outstanding loan. We've not been able to make the payments for 4 years, but this month our crazy uncle Bob died, leaving us enough to make this years' payments, so we cheer, and look around thinking we don't need to economize and save and find a way to cut that monthly nut.......and we are just going ignore that long-term loan.
We over-draft groundwater, causing the land to settle (up to 50 feet in places in the Central Valley), PERMANENTLY losing that storage capacity for all time. THAT is the huge long term loan.
No one is even talking about paying that back.
|
|
c wilmot
climber
|
|
CA needs less farms. Decades of having a de facto slave workforce has artificially created the vast farming system which drains the water table
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
bergbryce:
Be aware that the difference between what is in Shasta right now, and average, is about 171 BILLION gallons of water deficit below average.
This does nothing about restoring the groundwater deficit of 15 TRILLION acre-feet in the Central Valley.
(1 acre-foot=326,000 gal)
and no reason not to think that we are going to head right back into drought conditions next year, as the long term models predict as "the new norm"
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
Dingus, I certainly agree.
One could build a dam, but WHERE does the water come from to fill it????
Assuming you have water, why not put it into the empty massive underground lake that is already there, and which costs nothing to build?
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
"Sierra Nevada snowpack below average"
by Ryan Sabalow, Sacramento Bee, March 1
In another sign that a once-promising El Nino weather pattern is proving to be no drought-buster, California officials say an unseasonably warm and dry February shrunk the Sierra snowpack to below average depths.
On Tuesday, the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program measured 58 inches of snow at Phillips, off Highway 50 near Echo Summit. The measurements are the best recorded in early March since 2011, and amarked contrast to March 2015, when the snow depth was only 6.5 inches. But some levels are still just 83 percent of the March 1 average.
Forecasters nonetheless hold out hope for a wet spring. Rain and snow that fell in the so-called "March Miracles" of 1991 and 1995 pulled California out of a prolonged drought those years, state officials said.
What California officials do best:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
|
|
Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
|
|
California, and the rest of the world, for that matter, needs fewer breeders!
ekat speaks the truth
BTW reduce farming? Really? How about eliminating lawns first.
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
How about eliminating lawns first
Good start. Also, don't put water in whiskey.
|
|
Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
|
|
^^^Ha Mark Twain famously said, "whiskey's for drinking and water is for fighting over".....must be the water that makes some drunks want to fight eh?
|
|
johntp
Trad climber
socal
|
|
Really? How about eliminating lawns first.
And golf courses in the desert. Freaking stupid. Not only Palm Springs but AZ and other desert areas.
Crap, I'm going into a rant. I've worked on water projects that sucked up to 8,000 gpm of ground water. We did what we could to minimize water loss but when that much water is used it is unreal.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!