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California is Running Out of Water

newtboy says...

What do they mean “running out”? We’ve been out of water for decades.

As bad as this sounds, I think he’s under selling the problem big time.

Federal officials announced in February that California farmers will get no federal water this year, zero (that’s the Central Valley Project), while the state has allocated agriculture only 15% of normal from its distribution systems.
Meanwhile the state has also demanded agricultural water districts and cities stop diverting water from rivers and streams along the San Joaquin River. This includes 200 cities in and around the Bay Area, like San Francisco which gets up to 85% of its water from those rivers and streams.
Some rivers and streams in California have stopped flowing, all have reduced flow. The Mad River, just blocks from me, is usually 6-8’ deep bank to bank (75-100’) for at least 6 months out of each year, the last 3 years it never reached its banks and remained a shallow stream all winter, becoming a creek in summer. It is abnormal, most rivers are worse off.
Aquifers have already been depleted so much that the entire Central Valley is sinking rapidly. Reservoirs are WELL below 50%, despite what this clip said (Shasta is reporting at 40% today, but driving over it it looks like maybe 10-20% full with no inflow).
So far this year along, over 1000 residential wells have gone dry. This includes many entire communities losing their drinking water supplies completely. The number of agriculture wells that can no longer function is uncountable. It’s estimated we will lose 2700 drinking water wells this year state wide.

The California water problem isn’t a pressing future issue, it’s an ongoing unmitigated disaster we’ve ignored for far too long. At this point, it’s likely insurmountable, and a collapse of California agriculture will make today’s inflation seem like the good old days when average workers could afford to eat. Start a garden, it’s going to get weird.

Science of keeping migrating birds off a toxic water pit

spawnflagger says...

Yeah, if each ball is ~$0.33 and that reservoir needed 96 million, would have cost them $32M. (they say they last about 10 years and can recover some of cost via recycling, but also it saved them a lot of money on chlorine, because less of it was needed to keep algae down).
So, even if they need fewer balls and they last 20 years at the copper mine, I highly doubt it costs them $1M a year in staff+drones+bullets.

But I bet there's other materials that are cheaper that aren't food-safe like they need for drinking water reservoirs... another re-use for floating-ocean-trash? In that case they could actually charge by the ton like other waste-management companies.

eric3579 said:

Or it's a money issue, and when is it not when a corporation (mining company) has to foot the bill. Actually who knows why but i have to assume that covering it has been thought of.

Science of keeping migrating birds off a toxic water pit

Lake Oroville Drought, California

newtboy says...

More good news. So much is being pulled from aquifers to make up for and combined with the loss of surface water that the water table is dropping (along with the entire central valley). This means that, as they draw down reservoirs to empty to supply downstream communities with water, much of that water goes underground because the water tables have dropped below river beds, so the rivers cannot retain and transport the water. This is just starting to happen, but is definitely going to have major impacts in the future, causing the majority of California's water transportation system to be unusable.

Time to invest in desalination.

Lake Oroville Drought, California

newtboy says...

So strange to see Bob posting evidence of climate change since he denies it exists.

An important thing to note is most man made lakes are constantly filling with silt, and that’s not taken into account when determining %. If Oroville is 27% full, but 15% full of silt, it’s only 12% full of water. The older the lake, the more silt has displaced water and lowered actual capacity. Lake Mead is estimated to have 60-90 ft of silt, and based on water level above sea level is about 30% of capacity…but half or more may be silt. As bad as things look, they’re actually worse.

Edit: I would like to see large projects started removing that silt from the dry reservoirs, extending their lifespan and capacity without taking them out of service to do it. Crisis + opportunity = Crisortunity!

West Coast Cherry Crops Destroyed By Heatwave

newtboy says...

And now the swarms of locusts (ok, really grasshoppers) begin.

Utah farmers, already struggling with drought and extreme heat, are being plagued by grasshoppers destroying what little crops they managed to grow. Early heat caused an early hatch, leading to swarms. Many farmers abandoned their crops rather than go through the expense of spraying a crop they have no water for, allowing a bad situation to get exponentially worse. Hay may soon be in short supply along with produce.

If it's a mild winter, expect worse next year when their eggs hatch. Without improvement in the weather, colder in winter wetter in spring and cooler in summer, farmers nationwide expect next year to be far worse than this year's disastrous growing season. Nevada and Arizona are due to lose their main water source soon, and California expects more water shortages statewide as reservoirs near empty and aquifers go dry.

Sure sounds like the climatologists were correct, if anything minimizing the effects and rate of change from climate change; heat, drought, plagues, swarms, fires. They were not exaggerating them @bobknight33. These are exactly what they predicted, just a decade early, and exactly what you denied would happen. All time high local temperatures were reached worldwide in the last month including ground temperatures of 118 F in arctic Siberia and 130 F last weekend in Death Valley, the hottest atmospheric air temperature ever seen on the planet since humans existed.

But nope, climate change is a liberal hoax, they just have the entire planet lying to support it, destroying their own crops and cooking their citizens to keep the lie going. 🤦‍♂️

I hope you live long enough for your children to accept that their disastrous future was caused by you and your ilk and abandon you to the baking streets in your old age to starve and bake. You ignorant and dishonest deniers deserve worse for decimating the only planet we have. Your children will come to that conclusion, the only question is when.

MIG 15 hydraulic failure over the Mojave Desert

SFOGuy says...

So I was unclear; did the gear end up doing a gravity drop? Or did the pilot in the front cockpit initiate an emergency procedure like with a spare reservoir or something?

*promote

bobknight33 (Member Profile)

bobknight33 (Member Profile)

Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?

Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?

Reservoir No. 2 - Shade Balls

Kaindy Lake Where Trees Grow Underwater,Upside Down

A Brilliant Analysis of Solar Energy into the Future

newtboy says...

I agree for the most part, but with batteries, now becoming reasonable in size and price, it's not so hard to be totally off grid. Micro hydro can also be efficient power storage if properly designed with a dual reservoir system.
Granted, that seems to work best in small scale setups so far, but there is an island .....(https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/17/349223674/tiny-spanish-island-nears-its-goal-100-percent-renewable-energy)
...currently (since 2014) using this tech to be nearly 100% green.

Dismissing projections as unrealistic without fully examining them may doom our economy and planet.
That's what happened with solar, people just claimed it's expensive and unreliable, which meant those they convinced didn't know how wrong that is, and didn't buy systems or support solar farms. I ignored them and did some light math, and found that even an expensive high tech system with batteries, professionally installed, would pay for itself in about 8 years, with a 20 year expected lifespan (and I live in Humboldt county, with the foggiest airport in America, not Arizona). I'm damn glad I didn't listen. Even a 2 year delay would have cost me 1/2 my rebates, making the system take an extra 2+ years to pay for itself by costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars (instead of saving me thousands per year).

Edit: Also, here in Humboldt we just switched to choice in electricity, we can choose regular pge power (mostly old school generation), a mixture of up to 75% (I think, maybe higher) renewable for cheaper, or 100% renewable for more. All 3 now bill transmission (including voltage/frequency regulation) separately, so it's easy to see what generation alone costs. It's clear so far that mostly renewable is the best bet economically, and I assume it will become more renewable as new technologies become available.....at least I hope so.

Grave Digger's record breaking front wheelie

newtboy says...

Nice. They must have built that motor (and trans) with this in mind...dry sump, front pickup, huge external reservoir....or it probably would have seized being vertical that long.
*quality driving



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