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A new study published as a joint effort by scientists at Cornell University, the University of Arizona, and the U.S. Geological Survey finds that the chances of the Southwest facing a “megadrought” are much higher than previously suspected.
According to the new study, “the chances of the southwestern United States experiencing a decade-long drought is at least 50 percent, and the chances of a ‘megadrought’ – one that lasts up to 35 years – ranges from 20 to 50 percent over the next century.” Not so crazy, according to Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University who has helped pen many studies of historical megadroughts: “By some measures the west has been in drought since 1998 so we might be approaching a megadrought classification!” he says. The study points to manmade global climate change as a possible cause for the drought, which would affect portions of California (where a drought is currently decimating farms), Arizona and New Mexico.
http://modernfarmer.com/2014/09/scientists-american-southwest-faces-megadrought/
(Score: 2, Insightful) by evilviper on Saturday September 06 2014, @10:34AM
We could do without the constant fear-mongering. The key is right there in the summary: "By some measures the west has been in drought since 1998" In other words, it's 1984 new-speak bullshit that the news media flings at the public at every opportunity. It's the same way every single day there's record temperatures (high or low). Now that we've got computers precisely monitoring hourly temperatures, every day, some 5-block radius is going to be higher or lower than it has been on that exact same day, since they started recording that minutiae.
Rain levels slightly lower than average? "We're in a drought!" Rain levels higher than average? "That's still not enough rain to make up for the last 3 years of drought!" or "Despite all this rain, they're having a drought up-stream where we get our water from!" I don't think there's been a year in the past 20 of living in So Cal, where I haven't heard about what a terrible drought we're in. I'm not joking, the above quotes are very much based on what the local news reports.
As another commenter said (better than I could) not too long ago: I'll believe there's a real drought and start conserving water when all the golf-courses around me stop getting watered and turn brown.
As for farmers, they should blame salmon. Endangered species laws say animals get first call on all available resources, so dams are releasing far more water than they used-to, to accommodate one animal or another, substantially reducing available human supplies. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, you can decide for yourself.
Of course farmers have themselves to blame, too. Homeowners are being asked to install drip-lines, and paying fines if there is ANY water run-off onto the sidewalk. Meanwhile, it's slow-going even asking farmers to install SPRINKLERS rather than flood irrigation which wastes obscene amounts of water. Never-mind taking the next step of requiring specific types sprinklers that waste less water to evaporation, and forget about requiring subterranean watering systems like drip or soak lines. It's a prisoner's dilemma, of course, particularly because farmers get absurdly low rates, but the end result is years where the government steps-in and says you don't get any water because of the overuse.
I get pleas from the water company, asking me to spend hundreds of dollars on low-flow toilets and rip out my lawn to conserve water, on a regular basis... This might save me a few cents every months. I don't fault anyone who wants to do so, but it's pretty ridiculous trying to bully people to do uneconomic things. And when they get their way, the water district gets less revenue, and has to raise their rates to compensate... This pattern has repeated several times over.
Fortunately, the state of California has a nice little law that says new construction can't be approved until the municipality has proven it has sufficient water reserves to supply it. So, using twice as much water will mean half as many neighbors, or at least forcing those who want development to find and develop more expensive sources of more water. Green-shaming the public is just so much cheaper for them.
BTW, I can see the angry replies now, so I'll mention that I do say this as someone who supports tiered water prices, grey-water systems, and has extremely low-flow aerators on all faucets and showers, etc. Just ask adolf (1961) [soylentnews.org].
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday September 06 2014, @10:39AM
Oops, I missed the closing quote on my link near the end:
I do say this as someone who supports tiered water prices, grey-water systems, and has extremely low-flow aerators on all faucets and showers, etc. [soylentnews.org]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday September 06 2014, @11:50AM
In which areas are people bullied into water preservation?
Almost seems like a hint to move to greener pastures..
(Score: 4, Informative) by khallow on Saturday September 06 2014, @01:52PM
Pretty much the entirety of California. I think one of the bigger contributors to the downfall of that state will be the widespread and epic mismanagement of water. I might add that we might see a US southwest "megadrought" just from that part alone even if the climate plays nice. Draining the water table completely is a recipe for long term and enduring droughts IMHO.
(Score: 4, Informative) by evilviper on Saturday September 06 2014, @02:29PM
While California is more often the butt of jokes on the subject, the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is even more troubling, affecting about "27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#Accelerated_decline_in_aquifer_storage [wikipedia.org]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday September 06 2014, @01:53PM
Any big cities in the South West. Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc.
It would be absolutely mindbogglingly stupid to move just because water happens to be a little more expensive. It still remains a completely trivial expense to average households. Those with an acre of blue grass may feel a bit of pain, but even that is a small expense next to, say, the cost of home heating, up north.
People are getting "bullied" into saving energy all over the place. Are you going to pick up and move to WA, where they've got lots of cheap hydro-power? Or maybe to South Carolina, where gasoline prices are lowest in the country?
My whole point is that they're directing their efforts the wrong way around. Maybe a number of the farmers should move, but those big users being less wasteful is an option, too.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday September 06 2014, @06:20PM
Are you going to pick up and move to WA, where they've got lots of cheap hydro-power?
No, goddammit, stay away. Parts of Washington are still suffering from the northward migrations of the hippie horde of the 60s and 70s.
They've moved up here, and are now tearing out dams left and right to destroy the same cheap water and power they moved here to enjoy.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @04:37AM
If they want to remove dams... I have a suggestion: ration their water and power proportionate to the amount that's no longer available. Don't just raise prices; make it unavailable. See how long it takes them to figure it out.
Idiots...
As to that 'endangered' salmon in California, as I recall it's actually an invasive species, not native.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Saturday September 06 2014, @01:54PM
Whenever there's mention of drought in America, it always makes me think of the Owens Valley Lake, drained by Los Angeles to the point where it's so dry that the salt and sediment residue left behind is blown across the entire state. The eventual solution? Pumping water from LA back to the lake in order to keep it wet.
Yet for all the press regarding its unprecedented drought, California still insists on growing things like almonds, despite them needing enormous amounts of water. Perhaps, just maybe, there should be a discussion about why such water intensive agriculture is being carried out in a fucking desert?
I agree that there's a logical failure, where ordinary people are expected to put up with more and more authoritarian water saving measures, while agriculture (by far the largest consumer of water) barely has to do anything.
I can only surmise that either the state of California is being completely won over by lobbying efforts, or that the drought isn't half as severe as the news hysteria machine says it is.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday September 06 2014, @06:06PM
Yet for all the press regarding its unprecedented drought, California still insists on growing things like almonds, despite them needing enormous amounts of water. Perhaps, just maybe, there should be a discussion about why such water intensive agriculture is being carried out in a fucking desert?
In the desert land was cheap and the long growing season makes it an attractive place to do agriculture, as long as there is cheap water available. I think we are screwed long term, as we have allowed over development in areas where farming can be relatively benign from an environmental standpoint. New Jersey for instance, has the nickname "The Garden State", gained because it had good soil, plentiful rain and relatively easy terrain to farm in a large part of the state. Now it has strip malls, condos and housing developments over much of that area and a great deal of high quality, sustainable food producing land has been lost forever. We'll lose the desert too, even if we still had cheap, abundant water, as the soil there tends to become more and more alkaline as it gets watered and efforts to mitigate that become more expensive and more futile as time goes on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Saturday September 06 2014, @09:06PM
I suspect it's time for a conversation over how land and water supplies have changed, and what we need to do differently in the future. As you say, prime arable land has been turned into housing developments, while deserts have been turned over for agriculture. It'll be immensely disruptive and costly, but I suspect that in the long run that land usage will have to be reversed.
Topsoil erosion seems to be becoming an increasingly immediate problem as well. It could be that we also need to do something radical with the soil itself, something like reintroducing the techniques making Terra Preta [wikipedia.org], a rich, dark soil with excellent nutrient content and retention qualities.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @04:42AM
It looks like this terra preta is fundamentally burned garbage. The problem for that nowadays is since garbage is largely plastics, you need to burn something else. Tho I imagine 'cleaned' garbage could be bricked up and used.
I saw a study over 20 years ago that claimed over half the best farmland in the U.S. had already been built over. Once it's gone, what do they expect to eat?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday September 06 2014, @06:13PM
This might save me a few cents every months. I don't fault anyone who wants to do so, but it's pretty ridiculous trying to bully people to do uneconomic things.
It is said in the investing world, that the sum of everything known about a company is reflected in the price of their stock.
It is a simplistic way of looking at the world, but in the end, it really is the only way. Yes there are large amounts of public works and expendatures to transport water all over the state, but those all end up being reflected in the price of water sooner or later. The same is true for gasoline to a large extent.
The days when and industry could externalize costs and pass them on to society as a whole are long gone. You can't get away with that anymore because people aren't that dumb, and they notice that newsprint paper is dirt cheap, but the river is an open industrial sewer. The paper mill is forced to bear cleanup costs and newsprint prices go up.
Its the same with water. When they start using all the much hyped new technology to set up solar powered desalination plants (or whatever) you can believe there is a problem. But all of this will be reflected in the price of water. When the price goes up, you know the worries are serious.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.