Disney (in Orlando, not California), BTW, is propped up in part by pumping in water from state parks (such as Blue Springs).
It’s slightly less stupid than growing rice in a desert, but it’s still stupid.
As to the water issues in Arizona and California, I’ve always thought it was a stupid idea for a bunch of people to live in the desert and treat water as anything other than precious. I did not see that when I was last in Arizona – lots of imported grass and trees and so on. And golf courses. And landscaping appropriate for the northeast. :smack:
Blake, I haven’t really seen you do anything in this thread except share your opinions. You haven’t supported anything you’ve said with a cite, with one exception. My cites were refutations of your assertions, and those were my points. I’m sorry you missed that. Instead of telling me I’m wrong, why don’t you show me where you’re right? Because so far, your points seem to be of the “harrumph, harrumph, poppycock,” variety, and I don’t find them persuasive. Of course you don’t have to agree with my views, but you’d be more persuasive to show me where I’m wrong.
I hardly suggested that there will be inadequate water to produce food anywhere on Earth. But that there will be a more limited food supply is not much in dispute. You seem to think otherwise (“As I already noted, if food prices become high because of a prolonged lack of water, then that food will be imported, as it is elsewhere in the world.”) but have offered exactly nothing in support of that point of view.
You were the one who said my point about marked jumps in food prices was laughable. My cites regarding Texas and their cattle production refuted that. I made the point about the limited number of Texas farms because you yawned over the mere 500 million folks who would be out of work in California agriculture. You were the one who said that when food is less available in California, we would simply import food from elsewhere. My cite regarding global food production showed that this might be easier said than done. Is it really so hard to grasp?
With respect to localized food production, I offered an opinion. Don’t think I need to justify that to you or anyone. I will say that local production is the only way through which I’m aware that one can assure a reliable food supply. Some people take it more seriously than others, and I am such a one. That’s ok, isn’t it? Most places do have localized sources of water and they know how to get at it. This will permit them to reliably grow a larger proportion of what they eat. Not a bad idea, when food prices are rising uncomfortably.
I’ll allow you’re right, that food production over the past 1,000 years has become more outsourced… but that doesn’t make it a wise choice. I suspect the more unpredictable weather in future years is going to make the reasons for that painfully clear.
Instead of going on the offensive, why don’t you buttress the opinions you offered and refute of what I offered? I mean, if you can. I’d love to be wrong.
To be really scrupulous, southern California is only partly desert. The major population centers are in “Mediterranean” climate zones.
However, you’re absolutely right, it’s absurd for us to have green lawns in front of every house, and golf courses in every community. It’s bad enough to have populations in the millions, but at least we can divert (steal) enough Colorado River water to keep alive. Pissing it away on landscaping is totally insane.
(My favorite hiking trails go through a section of the city of San Diego that has been left fairly untouched – chaparral and sumac and toyon and oaks. No irrigation at all. Okay, there’s a drinking fountain…)
Well, its never going to happen because liberals in California aren’t exactly fond of the free market. But perhaps they could change regulations such that the distribution of water comes closer to a free market distribution.
And water is a commodity – it is exactly the same no matter where you get it. In fact, water is even more of a commodity than things like steel or rice, because it should be identical on a molecular scale (excluding pollutants) regardless of source. So the free market should be able to provide water very efficiently. (The free market is probably not very efficient at supplying the system of distribution of water, since that is a monopoly, for what its worth)
I know on a map it looks like it is downhill from the Great Lakes to California, but in reality it is all up hill. The pumping cost would be tremendous to move water that distance over the mountains.
I am not even getting into the question of what the good people of the Midwest would do if that was even a semi serious proposal.
What about Lake Tahoe? It isn’t renewable because of the very small basin, but it is close and uphill and would solve California’s water problem for decades, not to mention the 5000 foot-plus total head that could be harnessed for electricity. In addition, you’d only have to get California, Nevada, the Pyramid Lake reservation, and the US government to agree, which is smaller than the entire Great Lakes states and Canada.
Note: I don’t agree that we should, but from a strict resource perspective, it’s not bad. Even from a long term perspective, it could increase the amount of water available to California.
The media isn’t helping, going on and on breathlessly about the “crisis”.
Much of California is desert. It’s always in a “drought”, that’s normal conditions. What’s abnormal is sucking water out of the ground and piping it in from other regions to support plants that are not adapted to desert conditions. Doing some of that is not a problem, but the system was never well designed and based on overly optimistic/inflated numbers for what water is actually available.
Why? This isn’t a national problem. It’s a regional problem. The only reason there should be a national response is if the region proves incapable of making the hard choices required to solve the crisis.
This isn’t a natural disaster, although the media and certain special interest groups will try to sell it as such. This is a man-made “disaster”.
We’ve had a couple threads on this forum about why that will never happen, encompassing reasons from international treaties with Canada to physics and energy costs.
^ This.
^ This.
Why, whenever discussions of California agriculture and water use come up, do people throw out stupidity like “grow oranges in Kansas”? The problem here is growing crops in an area unsuited to those crops. At which point the climate of California is brought up but that’s not the issue, the issue is that there is not enough water in California. Lack of natural water sources make it unsuitable for many crops, which we sustain artificially. Just as would be required by growing oranges in Kansas.
We need to stop being stupid.
If the Central Valley ceased to be no one would try to “grow oranges in Kansas”. They would grow oranges in places suited to oranges… like, say, Florida. Or import them from other places that grow oranges. Kansas would continue to grow Kansas-suitable crops.
Oranges are not really California-suitable. Neither is rice or cotton, at least not on the scale it’s currently done (I’m assuming there are locations in California that do have sufficient water supply for these things, but they’re very small in extent and may well already have a city built on top of them or something.)
If the real cost of beef is $12.99/pound then that’s what the price should be. You don’t need beef, and you sure as heck don’t need it in the quantities consumed by the average American. We’d all be healthier if we ate less animal flesh (vegetarians excepted).
Subsidizing artificially low food prices is not good in the long-term – it encourages unhealthy eating habits, and it leads to distortions in production such as we currently see. I can justify some subsidies on true essentials to ensure the poor can eat a healthy diet but no one is entitled to beef, much less cheap beef.
While I get the argument we need to do something to help the citizens of California during the man-made crisis, that “something” doesn’t have to be the status-quo “solutions”. Diverting entire rivers isn’t working anymore, if it ever worked well at all. So why do more of the same?
How about making California agriculture more efficient? Yes, that means California might have to stop growing certain crops. Boo-fricking-hoo. There is no commercial crop that grows ONLY in California and nowhere else on the planet. Fruits and vegetables might go back to being more seasonal in nature – being old enough to remember such times I can say it wasn’t a nightmare.
No, it’s not, but for the long term good California agriculture needs to change. Maybe if we did that in a rational manner most of those people have work still. Some others may wind up needing to move or be retrained in some other endeavor. As someone who was forced to change careers in my late 40’s due to my prior work being rendered obsolete I really do understand what “change California agriculture” will mean for those “displaced” workers. I fully support doing something to help them weather the change.
Actually, I get most of that out of my backyard…
All of those crops can be grown elsewhere. In fact, they ARE grown elsewhere, by which I mean commercially as well as by amateurs such as myself. Californians seem to have this notion that the rest of us have no access to locally-grown produce but we do. In fact, local stores in my area heavily advertise which items are from local farms (defined as 150 miles by my employer). Of course, certain items from our area are highly seasonal – local strawberries for only a few weeks out of the year, for example – but that’s why humans invented ways to preserve food.
Which is probably a good thing, long term.
While there is no disputing a certain efficiency from centralized, large-scale crop production there are also some serious problems – such as a “drought” hitting a major production area having a more-than-local impact. A more distributed means of production, with more local production, would have numerous benefits from more resilience in the event of catastrophe to lower transportation costs.
Just to nitpick, I’d like to point out that the surface of Lake Michigan is nominally 579 feet above sea level; Lake Superior, slightly higher. If you were to build a pipe or canal from there to seaside Santa Monica, the water would travel down about 600 ft from start to finish. You could even (theoretically) make a siphon and it would be pump-less.
Yes but Califiornians are that wacky bunch that everyone loves to hear about the new stuff they will try out to try to save the planet. I feel many get some what of a concern to watch over them and a fascination that they are actually trying. Texans also have a reputation of a form of wackiness too but not so endearing and many people just like to leave them alone, and in Texas.
600 ft change in elevation over this distance is pretty much nothing. Even in a perfectly straigh tunnel the amount of water that could be carried over the distance needed would be minimal. And practically siphons can only work up a a height of 32 feet at the pressures that would be developed here.
Cite?
I don’t claim your statement is untrue; “enviros” favor efficiency and desalinization is inefficient. I just wonder what you read that made this “spin” seem usefully informative.
Are we also forgetting that there’s a freaking mountain range that cuts all the way from north to south in the middle of this supposed pipeline path from the Great Lakes to California?
Interesting article on the mothballed desalination plant in Santa Barbara here.
Desalination takes 2 gallons of seawater & produces a gallon of supersalty water and a gallon of desalinated water. At present, disposal of that supersalty water is done by dumping it into the ocean
There are a LOT of concerns about how that will affect the local (and not so local) marine ecology, which is adapted to a certain range of salinity.
Desalination may cause more problems than it solves. The devil’s always in those details.
I can’t see how it could affect the overall salinity…I mean, there are like 187 quintillion gallons of water in the Pacific. Even if you were creating millions or even billions of gallons of fresh water and an equivalent amount of ‘supersalty water’ it’s going to be a proverbial drop in the bucket. I can see how it could affect local environments though, so a way to disperse it over a large area would probably be necessary.
It occurs to me that further refining of supersalty water would result in granular salt; sea-salt, even, which has a higher price at the supermarket. Using everything of the pig but the squeal, so to speak.
Or we could dump the extra salt into our cheese mines.
Do you see anyone lamenting that the melting of Antarctic ice is decreasing the salinity of the ocean? Maybe a little extra salinity is just what we need to keep things in balance.
I think we should cross that bridge when we come to it.
No, I don’t think so. Given that such a large percentage of the water is used by agriculture, the voters of Cali will (rightly) take water from the farmers before there is any kind of refugee crisis.
I think hypersaline areas of ocean along the coastlines could be more problematic than that. And it would take quite the effort to get the extra salt more than halfway around the world to the Antarctic waters which are now somewhat less salty.
Nor is salt consumption likely to rise due to increased production. It’s a necessary nutrient and all, but supply still exceeds demand. Niche markets for ‘boutique’ salts exist but don’t play a big factor in terms of volume.
Just saying that desalination is a LOT more complicated than most people are assuming in these discussions.
