California is doomed

[theprestige]

I’ve always wondered why California never built any deep ocean OTECs.
Maybe they live just too far away.

Having taken the bold step of establishing millions of lives in a desert, California should be leading the world in advanced water supply technologies. Irrigation, reclamation, desalination, deep sea thermals.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Big Muddy is overflowing its banks. Rained ten days here in July.

Meanwhile, in the desert...

 

[RussDill]

2.6 billion gallons (the amount stolen and wasted by water bottlers) is not "insignificant". That's equal to 41,600,000,000 8oz glasses of water or 5,200,000,000 person-days of water at the recommended minimum of 8 glasses/day.

Using last year's population estimate (38.8 million), that works out to 67 days of water per year taken from CA. Over 2 months worth of human consumption of water. By the way, Nestea alone has been stealing/wasting CA water for over 27 years now (and on an expired permit at that).

http://www.newsweek.com/nestles-california-water-permit-expired-27-years-ago-321940

So lets add all that up: 67 days of water for people/ year x 27 years (minimum) that water bottling has been going on = 1,809 days or over 4 years of personal consumption water that should have been in the aquafers but isn't just to make money for water bottlers.

That is far from "insignificant". Just ask some of the residents of CA who are ALREADY out of recoverable water what they'd give for those years' worth of water.

http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-east-porterville-20140918-story.html#page=1

So your answer to "the amount is insignificant in comparison to CAs total water budget" is to compare the amount to the amount of water that humans drink, which is also insignificant to the total water budget.

The article you linked talks about rural wells in the central California valley going dry. California is not currently in danger of running out of drinking water in municipal supplies. The water shortage you linked is directly linked to agriculture in the central California valley over pumping groundwater. What percentage of groundwater wells in the central valley do you think go towards bottled water?

 

[RussDill]

BTW, I do feel really badly for the huge number of workers in the Central Valley that will be out of a job, and subsequently, out of a home, when the economics of water delivery finally adjusts to the reality.

I think the reason that state politicians have been unable to make the difficult decisions is that they want to be sure that the drought takes the blame. If they change laws and regulations and as a direct result, farms go out of business and people lose their jobs, they'll be voted out. But if they wait for the drought to completely destroy all ground water and reservoir reserves, forcing farms out of business due to complete unavailability of water, they can avoid blame and responsibility for the disaster (cities didn't meet their conservation targets, rich people waste water, water bottlers are at fault, etc).

It's a game of chicken that will make the fiscal and ecological consequences that much more severe.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

BTW, I do feel really badly for the huge number of workers in the Central Valley that will be out of a job, and subsequently, out of a home, when the economics of water delivery finally adjusts to the reality.

We'll probably have a bunch of Calis moving to Oklahoma to find work.

 

[luchog]

Oh, FFS. The societies that have lived in harmony to conserve their environment have been low population, non-industrial people. They haven't had an impact on the land because there weren't many of them, not because they were PHD's in land management.

Exactly. They didn't have an impact because they weren't capable of having an impact.

But even small populations can have a huge adverse impact on their local environment. The forests of Easter Island and Lebanon jump immediately to mind. Then there were the various civilizations that died out after poisoning their own water supplies with refuse, causing dramatic increases in disease. Look up the primary causes of desertification.

Few, if any, people have lived "at harmony with the land".

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

We'll probably have a bunch of Calis moving to Oklahoma to find work.

Ah. Cokies.

 

[Dinwar]

2.6 billion gallons (the amount stolen and wasted by water bottlers) is not "insignificant". That's equal to 41,600,000,000 8oz glasses of water or 5,200,000,000 person-days of water at the recommended minimum of 8 glasses/day.

I see you still haven't done the basic research on this topic.

Tell me: What percent of California's water deficit is 2.6 billion gallons? Because THAT is what we are comparing against. Unless it's over, say, 20% we can ignore it without altering the equations in a way that anyone would notice. This makes attacking that business futile at best, and at worst an exercise in damning millions of people over petty spite.

You are allegedly a Christian. I take it they have repealed the commandment against bearing false witness since I left the church?

BTW, I do feel really badly for the huge number of workers in the Central Valley that will be out of a job, and subsequently, out of a home, when the economics of water delivery finally adjusts to the reality.

I do too, but in a "Damn, that sucks" kind of way. NO ONE who has done ANY research into the subject has had ANY doubt this was coming for at least two decades (that's when I found out about it). They placed their fiscal bets. When your business is built on a model that has a cutoff date, someone's going to be holding the bag when that cutoff date rolls around. I fell sorry for them. But in a lot of ways it really is a problem of their own creation.

It's a game of chicken that will make the fiscal and ecological consequences that much more severe.

Yup. Made even worse by smoke-screen attacks against issues that are visible, but have no potential to have any affect on the outcome. THAT is the danger of attacking water bottling companies and folks watering their yards: it allows the folks who made this mess get away with doing nothing, by re-directing the very just concerns and anger towards targets that are safe for politicians. This is not conspiracy theory thinking; I don't think anyone is getting together in secret lairs plotting this stuff out. It's the way career politicians tend to act. The farmers in California are pretty powerful, and no one is going to take a stand against demands to cut something that has been argued against for decades. They'd be idiots NOT to take such a stand.

 

[Puppycow]

Tell me: What percent of California's water deficit is 2.6 billion gallons?

Google tells me it was 11 trillion gallons in December of last year. Probably more now.

If my math is right that's 0.02%.

Another thing to compare it with is the total amount of water used in the state. The figure I found for that (USGS estimate) is 38 billion gallons per day, or 13.87 trillion per year. That's slightly less than 0.02% but you can round it to 0.02%.

Here is a pie chart:
http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/images/water-fig1-lrg.jpg

As you can see, agriculture accounts for 77% of the usage.


So yeah, the focus on bottled water seems misplaced. A lot of that probably gets consumed in-state anyway, no?

 

[gumboot]

Oh, FFS. The societies that have lived in harmony to conserve their environment have been low population, non-industrial people. They haven't had an impact on the land because there weren't many of them, not because they were PHD's in land management.

So sure, our way isn't set in stone... all California needs to do is 'lose' 99% of its population and all its industry and modern agriculture... then it can replicate "the vast span of human history, people have worked together in common to utilise their environment and conserve it for the common good. "

There's also countless examples in the vast span of human history of societies who over-populated and over-consumed their environment and failed. The idea that humans all lived in peace and harmony with nature until big bad capitalism came only is a fantasy. It's almost as absurd as the idea that the animal kingdom all live in harmony with each other. It's hippy BS. Watch your cat with a mouse it has caught and then come talk to me about the beautiful harmony of nature.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

You couldn't get a better case study in the pathological nature of an unbounded capitalist system operating in a world of hard physical limits.

There it is, in a nutshell. Capitalism lacks the systems thinking that government, in uses of the commons, must impose. Of course, that runs foul of the perfect market model, which no one has seen in the wild, but apparently is, indeed, perfect. Like a unicorn with flower pasties.

 

[gumboot]

I recommend that California immediately plants rice paddies in all available land. If you're going out, you might as well go out with a bang, right?

 

[casebro]

Google tells me it was 11 trillion gallons in December of last year. Probably more now.

If my math is right that's 0.02%.

Another thing to compare it with is the total amount of water used in the state. The figure I found for that (USGS estimate) is 38 billion gallons per day, or 13.87 trillion per year. That's slightly less than 0.02% but you can round it to 0.02%.

Here is a pie chart:
http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/images/water-fig1-lrg.jpg

As you can see, agriculture accounts for 77% of the usage.


So yeah, the focus on bottled water seems misplaced. A lot of that probably gets consumed in-state anyway, no?

And the pie chart doesn't even show the biggest slice, ecological water. The water allowed to run out to sea for the sake of some insignificant critter.

 

[Dinwar]

There it is, in a nutshell. Capitalism lacks the systems thinking that government, in uses of the commons, must impose. Of course, that runs foul of the perfect market model, which no one has seen in the wild, but apparently is, indeed, perfect. Like a unicorn with flower pasties.

The solution to problems caused by political manipulation is more political manipulation. Got it. You are aware of the fact that California flat-out stole a lake, right? Theft isn't capitalism.

The issue with ecological water is a bit more complex. It includes required remediation activities, and stuff required for treaties (working near the Colorado River was a lesson in why I never want to be a lawyer). But yeah, a lot of it is for absurd things, like keeping six fish (not fish species, but FISH) alive. They aren't really good at prioritizing in terms of preserving ecology out that way.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

The solution to problems caused by political manipulation is more political manipulation. Got it.

Not sure how you derive that interpretation from anything I've said. A democratically elected executive and legislature is by nature political manipulation?

You are aware of the fact that California flat-out stole a lake, right? Theft isn't capitalism.... The issue with ecological water is a bit more complex. It includes required remediation activities, and stuff required for treaties (working near the Colorado River was a lesson in why I never want to be a lawyer). But yeah, a lot of it is for absurd things, like keeping six fish (not fish species, but FISH) alive. They aren't really good at prioritizing in terms of preserving ecology out that way.

Are you suggesting imposition of proper policy by those better in the know? I recognize the huge drawbacks to direct democracy (via referenda) and generally do not support it. Representative democracy, yes, as it affords a better opportunity for those representatives to consider the interacting whole of the measures proposed.

Direct democracy can lead to successive isolated expressions of preference that end up in paradox: A>B, B>C, C>A. California is the archetypical case example.

 

[uvar]

I recommend that California immediately plants rice paddies in all available land. If you're going out, you might as well go out with a bang, right?

Right place, wrong timeline? (IIRC California gets ruined by floods in that one, to boot.)

More on topic, I was curious how much effort was going into seawater desalination - along with standard conservation efforts, it seems to be a fairly major component here (Australia), though we didn't get them finished in time for the last drought. Apparently, not too much - even the biggest, when it's done, will be less than half Wothnaggi's current capacity.

Though based on the numbers in Puppycow's post, even all ours added together would only supply 2-3% CA's total demand, and it's not like they don't have downsides.

 

[RussDill]

I recommend that California immediately plants rice paddies in all available land. If you're going out, you might as well go out with a bang, right?

California is currently number 2 in the nation as far as rice production goes. With 97% of that rice being grown near the moist locale of Sacramento. About half of the rice grown is exported out of the country. The water usage is about 880 billion gallons annually.

 

[catsmate]

2.6 billion gallons (the amount stolen and wasted by water bottlers) is not "insignificant". That's equal to 41,600,000,000 8oz glasses of water or 5,200,000,000 person-days of water at the recommended minimum of 8 glasses/day.

Yes it is insignificant. Your attempt to avoid rational discussion by resorting to appeals to emotion is rather pathetic.

Using last year's population estimate (38.8 million), that works out to 67 days of water per year taken from CA. Over 2 months worth of human consumption of water. By the way, Nestea alone has been stealing/wasting CA water for over 27 years now (and on an expired permit at that).

http://www.newsweek.com/nestles-california-water-permit-expired-27-years-ago-321940

So lets add all that up: 67 days of water for people/ year x 27 years (minimum) that water bottling has been going on = 1,809 days or over 4 years of personal consumption water that should have been in the aquafers but isn't just to make money for water bottlers.

That is far from "insignificant". Just ask some of the residents of CA who are ALREADY out of recoverable water what they'd give for those years' worth of water.

http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-east-porterville-20140918-story.html#page=1

Sigh. Instead of these silly statistics why not look at actual water consumption?

We'll probably have a bunch of Calis moving to Oklahoma to find work.

I like it. I may steal that plotline.

 

[Dinwar]

Not sure how you derive that interpretation from anything I've said. A democratically elected executive and legislature is by nature political manipulation?

We are discussing California. The problems in CA are due to politicians manipulating the market for various reasons--using methods that are anathema to capitalism, including outright theft (if you don't know what I am talking about, I respectfully suggest educating yourself on this topic before further comments). To blame this on capitalism is not rational. Citalism did not build the California Aquiduct, or establish water rights that would inevitably overdraw rivers.

Desalination suffers form a serious drawback: it is powe-intensive. And California has a very bad NIMBY problem. They want electricity, but fight like hell to avoid producing it. There were bars I couldn't drink at because I was involved with constructing those renewable power plants everyone thinks are the savior so of humanity. There were cases of slashed tires in the city of Mojave (not mine, because the police put a stop to it pretty quick, but the point was made). Without power you can't get salt out of water, and since CA has all but outlawed anything but renewables and are attacking those involved with building renewables, they can't do it.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I like it. I may steal that plotline.

The Grapes of Social Outrage?