some dry reading for you:Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
A Global Assessment of the Water
Footprint of Farm Animal Products
some dry reading for you:Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
A Global Assessment of the Water
Footprint of Farm Animal Products
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_LakeQuote:
Originally Posted by KQ
edit- Thanks KQ-> Ive read that link. didnt think people would care that a horse water footprint is 1.3 acre feet of water a year....
edit 2- that study includes rainfall -> many think that rainfall should not be included in footprint as dryland farming is not the issue...
as I said - stump dumbQuote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
http://www.fightorflighttour.org/fof...4/08/bufsk.jpg
A postcard shows what remained after a herd of buffalo was slaughtered; buffalo skulls piled on grassland, somewhere in Michigan.
FWIW according to all the signs along I-5 this is simply a "congress created dust bowl"
Well, so you know all about how dam building deals controlled the direction of Congress for decades, Floyd Dominy, Army COE v. BLM rivalry, William Mulhollond, O'Shaughnessy dam, etc., etc., but not everyone does.Quote:
Originally Posted by KQ
Let the Arabs finance western research into desal. plants, refine the tech for a period and implement in CA.
San Diego has been under some form of housing moratorium since 2004 due to lack of water supply. The infrastructure is only the CA government's issue, not the population's. The public can walk away. Ag is here to stay as long as there is water to fuel them. They have endured drought before. 12.8% of the US total ag production in one central location isn't something you walk away from. The quality of soil and sunshine isn't something that you can take with you. The tech folks can pack their laptops and beat it.Quote:
Originally Posted by neufox47
The new plant in SD is over one billion dollars to supply 50 million gallons a day: for reference the California aqueduct can deliver nearly that much EVERY HOUR. Water from desal costs approximately 10x the cost of conventional water supplies, that is, while there is enough capacity within our own power grid to supply the plants. To achieve 100% desal, we're talking about a complete western US power grid upgrade, complete with enough power plants to push the megawatts of energy required to run the plants. Who on the west coast is ready to approve a new Nuke plant?
The main problem with desal is that it is too expensive to operate consistently, which turns operators off from building them in the first place. It is not likely to ever see a positive return on investment as once we have a good snow year, all of the desal plants get mothballed. It's the same logic behind the fracking boom of the moment. If OPEC and the Saudi's decided to up production, fracking gets mothballed until the next supply crunch. This is what happened to Santa Barbara and their desal.
Yup. They all believe that the water in the CA aqueduct should be theirs (i.e. fuck LA) and that the delta should be sucked through right up to the point the whole thing is full of brackish water.Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
i think its crazy that most places in California have no ground water protection laws. Here on our farm in Lane County, Oregon we have two strong wells (and several creeks but thats aside the point) and we can't use a drop for farm use aside from watering livestock. From what I gather nothing is stopping farmers down there in many locals from drilling wells and pumping water at will.
That just changed, as of last year. Though implementation/phase-in needs to speed up A LOT.Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
There were large herds of buffalo in Michigan?Quote:
Originally Posted by KQ
yes. In the NE they were in western NY, in the SE they were almost to Florida. They reached Mexico in the south and west into eastern Cali, Oregon and WA. ALso went way up into northern BC and Alberta...Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronWright
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com...cas-serengeti/
What's stopping the OC or any of the SoCal cities from buying up a billion $$ in farms and absorbing their water rights? I'm can't begin to understand why this is even an issue when common sense solutions could solve it overnight.
i give up. there is a good pic on wiki showing the bison range.
good point. I am also interested in this ideaQuote:
Originally Posted by Deebased
I think its tragic that far more effort has been put into re-introducing apex predators which are highly conversational (and scary for some people) vs the good ole' American Buffalo. I bet far more people would be in favor of buffalo than wolves, grizzly, etc. In fact I bet if we had huge swaths of buffalo running amok, I bet the wolves wouldn't sound so bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
/end thread drift.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deebased
Colorado has done this already, and maybe still is.
With claims of beg, borrow, or steal being used along with buying.
So, move Ag....where in the hell can ag move to? Less than 4% of the surface of the earth can grow anything.
Buy Ag's water rights....what are you going to eat? import everything from China? That's a winner!
It would seem like anybody with their head out of their ass would give FOOD the benefit here, after all, everyone still eats! And until there is a alternate food source, people might want to see a few golf courses go dry, drain a few pools so you can still have 3 meals a day grown here in the US.....(for the most part)
btw, the reason alfalfa hay is sent to Japan and other Asian country's is they have no land space to grow alfalfa, they do however have animals to feed. China is NOT a major importer of alfalfa hay....yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by farmguy
There's plenty of farmland available across the breadbasket of the US that's stuck growing corn Ethanol bullshit because its the cash crop. Create a shortage of <name food here> and they'll start growing it there.
you sure about that alfalfa export stat Farmguy?
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1.../p2p-80446309/
"China has now pushed past Japan as Asia's biggest buyer of U.S. alfalfa and is second only to United Arab Emirates as the globe's top importer, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture"
debased corn is way down-> soy is way up and is the new corn (because of exports to feed animals)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...as-profit-king
but that is a non issue. comparing the midwest's growing season to the valley in California's is... well there is no comparison.
Quote:
Originally Posted by farmguy
Thought I'd dissect this a bit http://chartsbin.com/view/wwu
So 90% of the earth's surface is definitively unusable covered by ice, desert, mountains, water. Of the remaining 10% almost half of that is useful for farming?
1. The farmers in the valley are old school and wouldn't sell to a municipiality. There is quite a history of land/water grabs in the state by LADWP and the like (i.e. Owens Valley)Quote:
Originally Posted by Deebased
2. CA water law is now quite convoluted regarding junior and senior water rights. If I understand correctly, even if they did buy the farmland their water rights would get lowered to the bottom of the heap, so they'd get screwed.
3. OC and SoCal aren't suffering from water restrictions in the same way farmers are. They're still getting water, and plenty of it.
Keep in mind a lot of the facts on water usage in CA:
50% (33% if you exclude the N. Coast) of it is used in environmental pursuits. If we truly wanted to say screw the environment, we need water, we'd dam off the golden gate, turn SF Bay into a freshwater bay and be done with it. Problem solved. Environmental apocalypse, sure, but we have water.
40% (53% if you exclude the N. Coast) of it is used for ag. Yup. And the gov't just told the farmers they're getting 0% allocation from surface water because they have to meet environmental requirements and get some water to Socal.
10% (14% if you exclude the N. Coast) is for urban use. And of that, we've just been told to conserve 25% of it. That's a whopping 2.5% of the total water pie for CA, and the hardest to get.
source: http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108
The point? LA and OC aren't going to dry up and blow away, the system puts human lives above farming so there's no reason for a land grab. Buying up the farms would only give you another location to drill a well The farmers will suffer for a couple years while (in some respects, correctly) complaining that the drought they are experiencing is government made, produce prices in the US will rise. The farmers also shot themselves in the ass by turning more and more land into higher margin perennial crops that need to consistently be watered. Now they're not able to and they're freaking out because they took the risk and are losing.
Its been 4 yrs since we exported any hay and at that time China was still being explored, last I talked to my neighbors, it was still moving slow and most of their crop was going to Asian markets.
Of the 10% farmable ground, take out cities, towns roads etc, also factor in how much is lost every year to urban sprawl. I think the last number I saw was 50,000 acres in CA alone what's left is farm ground. Right now we are growing more food on less ground then we did in the 50's.
The reason they grow corn in the bread basket.....and very little else...they have no....wait for it.......WATER! They depend almost entirely on rainfall to grow anything, the major crops are corn, soybeans, wheat. The other 2 choice's of water are the Colorado river, CA and AZ suck on that as well and the.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer..which is being drawn down damn fast. Corn for Ethanol, so what? People want to be free from OPEC so they are willing to add 10% ethanol to gas to reduce our dependency on them. Drill more, find another source and ethanol goes away. Moving crops from CA east to the bread basket will not work, they are grown there for a reason, climate, soil, water. CA has the largest number or variety of crops grown anywhere in the US, over 300 different crops I think, WA is second with 250+. The bad news, growing food takes water, and a hell of a lot of it and it has to always be there, crops die on allotments. If you need 30 inches a year to crow rice, it will not produce crap at 20 inches, it dies.
Here in Washington I too have restrictions on my well. I can only use it for irrigation after I've depleted my surface water right. You can buy rights to drill basalt wells but it's a pretty penny.Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
In Odessa Washington the aquifer is running dry. Soon the town will be without water.
Study finds Odessa aquifer is running out of time
And Grizzlies roamed the great plains in large numbers.Quote:
Originally Posted by steepconcrete
I will go full-on-looney pipe bomb ecoterrorist if anybody tries to drain my fucking lake.
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...psu7llfn4s.jpg
Not while I live and breathe. No fucking way.
What is it they say in Colorado? "whisky's for drinking, water's for fighting", something like that.....
^^^^For sure a great read about large-scale water diversions and associated politics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Steve
Another saying attributed to Colorado : "water doesn't flow downhill, it flows towards money".
Multiple trans-divide diversion projects have left a roster of excellent spring-skiing trailheads throughout the state. This makes me feel better about being part of the problem.
Lightanger
Carry on... (Also, Ski to Be, we have a budget surplus these days. Get your shit straight.)[/QUOTE]
My bad on that and thanks for the correction.
What's amazing is that there is any Western state left that does not fully recognize that surface water and groundwater might be hydrologically connected.
The Chinese would pull this off easily if they were in charge, and put all you naysayers in the gallows if you didn't like it.
Aren't they attempting to do something like this over there?
Meanwhile, Brazil's largest city is a few steps ahead of L.A. In this crisis.
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/20...isis-rationing
Can you get sick from drinking piss?
DJ Sapp bringing the knowledge. thanks man.
How does Mt. Shasta look this week? Anyone? Photos? recon?
"Pretty sure, ya"Quote:
Originally Posted by mcski
"Even if it's your own?!?"
Since I was a little kid I've had this idea of a continent wide water delivery system. It could be the largest public works project in the history of mankind kinda thing. I'm talking pipes into the craziest places for water intake and then into every existing public system and additional small systems that would eventually get built to move water to places that are well only now.
It seems that there is always somewhere it's raining and there are always places just letting their fresh water run away because it's beyond their needs and there is no way to store it and no system to move it to where it is needed. I'm not talking about tapping the Great Lakes although they should be part of the larger system.
I first heard talk of a pipeline to transport water to SoCal in the 90s. Texas used to have what seemed like yearly flooding from torrential rains. More water than they knew what to do with and SoCal needs it, seemed like a match made in heaven.
The price was exorbitant and evidently a deal breaker and though I'm not up on my national weather trends these days, I don't recall hearing of Texas floods in recent years so maybe it was a just a bad idea if the supply was fleeting and not dependable.
How about people stop having so many damn kids?
There...I said it. Sure it will take a while to feel the positive effects. But this common sense solution needs to move out of the taboo category rapidly. I know this is 'Murica and all, but how about you have 2 kids or less and you get a tax break? You have 8 kids and you pay a shitload of taxes? The environment is fucked now. What happens when we have 12 billion people in 35ish years?
Uhh yeah, Texas had a little dought:Quote:
Originally Posted by powpig
http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net...ck-300x232.jpg
Agronomists have revised estimates for the cost of Texas’ devastating drought, finding that it cost the agricultural sector $2 billion more than originally thought.
According to the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, the Texas drought has caused $7.62 billion in damages to crops and farming operations. That’s up from $5.3 billion reported last August.
Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon explained last September:
Warmer temperatures lead to greater water demand, faster evaporation, and greater drying-out of potential fuels for fire. Thus, the impacts of the drought were enhanced by global warming, much of which has been caused by man.
Nearly every single agricultural sector in the state was hammered by the record-breaking drought that began in 2010, causing a ripple effect through global commodity markets. With livestock, cotton, peanut and even pumpkin crops hit hard, shortages of product is driving prices up and putting a squeeze on farmers in the state
“When you are one of the biggest agricultural producing states in the nation, a monumental drought causes enormous losses,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said in a statement this week after the new damage figures were released. Other agricultural experts weighed in on the devastating impact to Texas farmers:
“2011 was the driest year on record and certainly an infamous year of distinction for the state’s farmers and ranchers,” said Dr. David Anderson, AgriLife Extension livestock economist. “The $7.62 billion mark for 2011 is more than $3.5 billion higher than the 2006 drought loss estimates, which previously was the costliest drought on record. The 2011 losses also represent about 43 percent of the average value of agricultural receipts over the last four years.”
“No one alive has seen single-year drought damage to this extent,” said Dr. Travis Miller, AgriLife Extension agronomist and a member of the Governor’s Drought Preparedness Council. “Texas farmers and ranchers are not strangers to drought, but the intensity of the drought, reflected in record high temperatures, record low precipitation, unprecedented winds coupled with duration – all came together to devastate production agriculture.”
Like a baseball hitter on steroids, climatologists say that the likelihood of the Texas drought was increased due to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Scientists at NASA, including climatologist James Hansen, said in January that analysis of 50 years of temperature data show that the Texas drought was “a consequence of global warming because their likelihood was negligible prior to the recent rapid global warming.”
http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net...1/Drought1.gif
Texas A&M, climate scientist Andrew Dessler asserted last August, “there is absolutely no way you can conclude that climate change is not playing a role here. I’m quite surprised that anyone would even suggest that.” Texas climatologist Katherine Hayhoe recently explained, “our natural variability is now occurring on top of, and interacting with, background conditions that have already been altered by long-term climate change.”
Just as we see during the current heat wave shattering high-temperature records throughout the U.S., climatologists and meteorologists are consistently saying that these extreme weather events are being influenced by extra energy in the atmosphere (see March Madness: ‘This May Be An Unprecedented Event Since Modern U.S. Weather Records Began In The Late 19th Century’).
“It is highly unlikely the warmth of the current ‘Summer in March’ heat wave could have occurred unless the climate was warming,” said Dr. Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground in a scientific analysis of the phenomenon.
As the rest of the country catches up to Texas, farmers in the state continue to incur billions in damages — a sign of the economic costs to come.