We know that this climate change will cause extreme weather events.
We know that this climate change will have unforeseen consequences that we never imagined.
Then we have you, demanding that we prove that any individual event is purely caused by climate change to imply we should all bury our heads in the sand. This way lies madness and great suffering.
No, you make words in my mouth. We are reasonably sure of all three first items you have listed. I only make the contention that I have not yet seen evidence of this specific event. Most information I have heard suggest largest impact some years in the future. I say nothing about "bury our heads in the sand".
Climate reports and studies are regarded as conservative. IPCC reports are for example aggregate meta-studies, and those again not granular enough to detail weather. So it may be extremes are coming this decade and feedback effects (heatwaves, fires, floods, albedo change, ocean warming and acidification) also triggering this decade. It won't be one effect, and it'll take time worsening, but could happen faster than anticipated and all at once, on the timescale of decades.
It would be foolish to expect correct scientific predictions and consensus in all details before it happens.
We actually don't know any of those things. The situation, more accurately stated, is that a lot of people have excessive certainty about those things.
The climate models did not predict the current heat domes. I listened to a podcast just yesterday where the climatologist was explaining how they were caught by surprise. But I forgot which podcast it was, so here's a Guardian article from a few weeks ago:
The climatologists are saying warming increases the likelihood of these extreme events. The problem is the models said they shouldn't be happening yet. So maybe something additional is going on.
The issue now is the media is going to report any bad weather as climate related, which is no better than claiming there is no global warming because one experienced a colder winter than normal.
The lastest report of IPCC brings more data and confidence about extreme weather. The key number is that their probability has increased by a factor of 150 wrt. to pré industrial era.
Weather forecasts did predict these extremes though. So if you have 10*10 what do you get? Climate models warn against local extremes like that, but do not yet model all the details. There are no redeeming factors of significance, so that is very concerning.
where do you get that 3 years number? scientists have known about it since the 1960s, and the Industrial Revolution was centuries ago. even the article, which is from 7 years ago, talks about a drought that's been going since 2000.
> “Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist"
This article is from 2014 - but definitely still relevant. It contains some interesting facts and commentary:
> Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources
> Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms.
> Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said.
>> Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources
I feel that whenever people bring up that fact, there's an implicit point that water problems should be solved by reducing agriculture, but doesn't California's agriculture industry produce a huge fraction of the high-value fruit and vegetables that people eat?
Yes, it does. But the issue is also related to changes in what people eat. My understanding is that the increased demand for almonds has been particularly problematic for the region due to how water intensive it is, for example.
What’s not clear to me is whether or not we have to grow our fruits and vegetables in California. Certainly one of the issues is that for huge swaths of our farmland elsewhere we tend to grow mono crops which are often inedible to humans (such as most of our corn). Perhaps we could grow more fruit and edible vegetables there?
> California’s $6 billion almond industry, which produces roughly 80% of the world's almonds.
> California almond production grew from 370 million pounds (nearly 168 million kilograms) in 1995 to a record 3.1 billion pounds (1.4 billion kilograms) in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During that period, land planted with almond trees grew from 756 square miles (1,958 square kilometers) to 2,500 square miles (6,475 square kilometers).
Maybe it wouldn't affect California's GDP much if agriculture were cut back, but it would certainly affect my quality of life if produce became much more scarce as a result.
This is one good thing to point out, there are very many periodic cycles which affect weather patterns. It is important to not yell “global warming” each time a change is noticed but to actually try to understand what is happening and the inputs to those results.
"...reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet years, were considered all but useless... never built... 2016 & 2017 California received record snow & rainfall... windfall of millions of acre-ft of runoff was mostly let out to sea." http://bit.ly/2HnjQTR
Dumb question, why doesn't California invest in desalination plants? I know they're expensive and complex. But Israel and Singapore have several of them running, if they can do it California should be able too.
They are fabulously expensive for the water output you get. The San Diego one is (or was) the largest in the Western hemisphere, cost about a billion dollars to build, requires 40MW to run, and only covers about 7% of the potable water needs for the San Diego area.
Do you have a figure for price per gallon? It might be interesting to do a cost benefit analysis between desalination and the water pipeline from Canada mentioned elsewhere in the comments.
The best I have is from [1], which estimates 50 million gallons a day at an ongoing operating cost of around $50 million per year. You'd have to pick a timeframe to also amortize the cost of the plant itself and add that in.
I think some context can be helpful here. As a nation, we're happy -- hell, our elites (yes, we on HN) practically begged -- to spend $6.4 trillion dollars over 20 years to have fun foreign adventures in the sand, playing guardian of freedom and feeling real nice about it [1].
$1bn for 7% of the water needs for a major (and growing) US metro area sounds like a bargain to me. For a measly $14bn we'd cover the whole city. Defund the Pentagon, turn it into a WeWork, and let's do fun, neat stuff with our civilization. If we're gonna throw piles of money at things with low ROI, why not throw it at fusion and desalination instead of drone striking children at Pakistani weddings? 100% sincere here, not being cheeky.
Sure, maybe -- I'm no scientician -- but $6.4tn can buy mega megawatts. For that much money we can put everybody in Southern California on treadmills hooked up light bulbs.
Bad leadership in the political ranks. The problems that California has has hurt it for many years. We just have been able to get away with it due to tech and entertainment money largesse.
The progressive wing is against desalination plants and dams. They say that they are anti environment. They push for conservation.
The problem is that since 80% of the water is used by agriculture all the conservation efforts won't be enough. You can't reapportion the water because of water rights. The agricultural interests won't give up theirs.
Thus you end up doing nothing much and hoping for rainy seasons.
Other longstanding California issues: wildfires, insufficent power generation, bad schools, expensive housing.
It's so interesting. I'm all for _not_ firing coal for electricity but many environmentalists seem to really just be against everything. I also have nothing against a rational look at and discussion of all the options. The problem is the _same_ people will condemn you for coal and nuclear power trying to get you to use solar, wind and water. Then you do that and they block wind for killing birds and destroying the view, solar for using so much space and precious materials and water for the impact on the environment.
Yes absolutely, flooding a huge area for a dam can potentially destroy habitat for both humans and animals and will create greenhouse gases from dying plant matter and such. Agreed. What is the alternative? Burn a bunch of coal? That btw does the same but is not renewable. Look up "Garzweiler 2" in Germany.
Wind is curious. Destroying the view? Really? You care about 30 wind turbines destroying the view more than coal combustion particles in the air killing people slowly and painfully? That said, if you look at the "total possible wind capacity" in Germany for example it is laughable compared to the energy needs. As in the solar potential at max built out capacity ignoring all 'view' concerns is in the low Gigawatthours territory. Energy consumption in Germany is in the hundreds of Terwatthours. As in over 500 TWh, so over 500000 GWh. Installable wind capacity less than 15 GWh with estimates around half of that actually usable due to 'view concerns' and such. Other countries will have better ratios for sure.
As with most sweeping generalizations, it's not the same person making all of those points. It's possible to hold one of those views each and have a large group with contradictory interests.
I think the reason desalination doesn't make sense is because most of the water is used for agriculture as the comments above mentioned. As such the marginal cost of repurposing water from agriculture to people is probably significantly less than getting that water via desalination.
The pull seems to have been to get Canada to either sell their own water or even bring down water all the way from Alaska.
I tried to find it quickly but can't. I seem to remember hearing on the radio about some 100 year contract to sell water cheaply from BC or Alberta to CA. So potentially it's one of those scrapped plans or maybe they figured how bad the plan was just buried it. I can easily find propaganda trying to co Vince us that Canada has so much water and that it magically renews itself that it would be stupid not to sell it. Over and over.
Which is in stark contrast to my experience here. We have had less and less snow in recent years. We've had rivers running lower. We've had watering bans and lawns looking like we are in Arizona (yes, an exeggeration to make a point) more often in recent years. This year is an exception with more normal sun/rain cycles returning after a really dry spring (lawns recovered - who cares - some crops not so much, other are doing much better than in recent years)
Not sure if this is still the case under USMCA, but as I recall, Canadians have been very against selling water into the US because under NAFTA once they started, they couldn’t stop. Well, whether that was ever true or not, that was the reason I heard cited.
This doesn't sound right. The pipeline would be longer than the Alaska Pipeline, but carry a commodity that retails for 3 2-3 cents per gallon, not $3.50.
> This doesn't sound right. The pipeline would be longer than the Alaska Pipeline, but carry a commodity that retails for 3 2-3 cents per gallon, not $3.50.
That's a gasoline price, but don't they typically pump crude through pipelines? So more like $1.50 a gallon, based on my calculations.
How much of the cost of an oil pipeline is tied up in fighting opposition to it getting made and mitigation against the catastrophic effects of leaking oil? Surely a water pipeline would be cheaper to build, given the lower risks involved and the obvious benefits to everyone living near its path.
I didn't know before trying to find online sources for what I remember hearing on the radio. But apparently there were/are some pretty crazy schemes people thought up out there.
60 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadWe know that this climate change will cause extreme weather events.
We know that this climate change will have unforeseen consequences that we never imagined.
Then we have you, demanding that we prove that any individual event is purely caused by climate change to imply we should all bury our heads in the sand. This way lies madness and great suffering.
The idiom is "putting words in my mouth". https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/putting+words+in+my+mou...
It would be foolish to expect correct scientific predictions and consensus in all details before it happens.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/02/canadian...
The climatologists are saying warming increases the likelihood of these extreme events. The problem is the models said they shouldn't be happening yet. So maybe something additional is going on.
The issue now is the media is going to report any bad weather as climate related, which is no better than claiming there is no global warming because one experienced a colder winter than normal.
> “Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist"
Also note this article is from January 2014.
> Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources
> Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms.
> Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said.
I feel that whenever people bring up that fact, there's an implicit point that water problems should be solved by reducing agriculture, but doesn't California's agriculture industry produce a huge fraction of the high-value fruit and vegetables that people eat?
What’s not clear to me is whether or not we have to grow our fruits and vegetables in California. Certainly one of the issues is that for huge swaths of our farmland elsewhere we tend to grow mono crops which are often inedible to humans (such as most of our corn). Perhaps we could grow more fruit and edible vegetables there?
> California’s $6 billion almond industry, which produces roughly 80% of the world's almonds.
> California almond production grew from 370 million pounds (nearly 168 million kilograms) in 1995 to a record 3.1 billion pounds (1.4 billion kilograms) in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During that period, land planted with almond trees grew from 756 square miles (1,958 square kilometers) to 2,500 square miles (6,475 square kilometers).
[0]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-d...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545...
I think some context can be helpful here. As a nation, we're happy -- hell, our elites (yes, we on HN) practically begged -- to spend $6.4 trillion dollars over 20 years to have fun foreign adventures in the sand, playing guardian of freedom and feeling real nice about it [1].
$1bn for 7% of the water needs for a major (and growing) US metro area sounds like a bargain to me. For a measly $14bn we'd cover the whole city. Defund the Pentagon, turn it into a WeWork, and let's do fun, neat stuff with our civilization. If we're gonna throw piles of money at things with low ROI, why not throw it at fusion and desalination instead of drone striking children at Pakistani weddings? 100% sincere here, not being cheeky.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on...
The progressive wing is against desalination plants and dams. They say that they are anti environment. They push for conservation.
The problem is that since 80% of the water is used by agriculture all the conservation efforts won't be enough. You can't reapportion the water because of water rights. The agricultural interests won't give up theirs.
Thus you end up doing nothing much and hoping for rainy seasons.
Other longstanding California issues: wildfires, insufficent power generation, bad schools, expensive housing.
Yes absolutely, flooding a huge area for a dam can potentially destroy habitat for both humans and animals and will create greenhouse gases from dying plant matter and such. Agreed. What is the alternative? Burn a bunch of coal? That btw does the same but is not renewable. Look up "Garzweiler 2" in Germany.
Wind is curious. Destroying the view? Really? You care about 30 wind turbines destroying the view more than coal combustion particles in the air killing people slowly and painfully? That said, if you look at the "total possible wind capacity" in Germany for example it is laughable compared to the energy needs. As in the solar potential at max built out capacity ignoring all 'view' concerns is in the low Gigawatthours territory. Energy consumption in Germany is in the hundreds of Terwatthours. As in over 500 TWh, so over 500000 GWh. Installable wind capacity less than 15 GWh with estimates around half of that actually usable due to 'view concerns' and such. Other countries will have better ratios for sure.
Map of general area and power plants
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler#/media/Datei:Rheini...
How the updraft of one such power plant looks from the air
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:FrimmersdorfWolke.JPG
Memories from around 30 years ago have them always soaring there.
This is the case for most developed areas.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-water-st...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/desalination-advances-calif...
I tried to find it quickly but can't. I seem to remember hearing on the radio about some 100 year contract to sell water cheaply from BC or Alberta to CA. So potentially it's one of those scrapped plans or maybe they figured how bad the plan was just buried it. I can easily find propaganda trying to co Vince us that Canada has so much water and that it magically renews itself that it would be stupid not to sell it. Over and over.
Which is in stark contrast to my experience here. We have had less and less snow in recent years. We've had rivers running lower. We've had watering bans and lawns looking like we are in Arizona (yes, an exeggeration to make a point) more often in recent years. This year is an exception with more normal sun/rain cycles returning after a really dry spring (lawns recovered - who cares - some crops not so much, other are doing much better than in recent years)
That's a gasoline price, but don't they typically pump crude through pipelines? So more like $1.50 a gallon, based on my calculations.
I suppose if they built such a pipeline, they'd have to charge a lot more than 2-3 a gallon for the water. Though as a project, it seems less ambitious than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran....
Edit: I wonder if this was the (defunct) North American plan that was being referred to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Pow...
(this is old stuff, what I remember from the radio was pre-pandemic drive to the office radio reporting of recent events at the time)
https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system...