Is Human-Caused Climate Change Guilty for California's Drought?

[Sonicron]

Correction: Climate change guilty of overall global increase in extreme weather occurrences.

Climate change has always existed - it's why we had ice ages even before humanity was around to muck about with the planet. However, what we're doing certainly isn't helping to stem the global tide of atmospheric extremes.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Actually, it was California's inability to look at itself and think "You know? A series of desalinization plants along the coast would work wonders.". True, they're expensive to build, but the process has been around a long time. Could've taken care of this YEARS ago.

The issue with Desalinization is not so much the initial installment cost (which is substantial, don't get me wrong), but sustained costs.

Desalinization requires a huge amount of energy to operate because water is an incredible thermal capacitor and you need to heat water to steam to separate the solubles.

Cross-multiply that by your required supply, and it's only going to amount to a tiny trickle (at feasible costs), or hardcore deficit spending. (A bit of Google-fu finds figures that suggest the average cost to be 2000 USD per acre-foot annually; or 1300-2000 dollars a year for residential)

With strict conservation (no outdoor pools, no lawn watering), I wager that cost could be paired down, but it's still cold comfort for agriculture and industry, which require gobs of water commitment to operate.

The drought along the West Coast has gone far beyond the capabilities of California. It's a Federal Government problem now, and we all know that nothing will happen.

Quite true. It wouldn't be the first time California's antics have impacted the rest of us.
Deregulation was the reason I had to move, and a big proponent of that change started in Cali (and caused their energy crisis back in 2000-2001).

 

[FalloutJack]

$$$

That doesn't surprise me at all. However, it is both the price of giving an area which is not normally fluid-y some frigging water, and the absolute best option when you consider how much of your backyard (so to speak) is ocean. Suffice to say, it's a utility and therefore would probably be taxed to pay for, but it's much more reliable than the weather and mountain snow. The ocean has always been there. They should've cultivated it.

 

[Stupidity]

Read the source and you will note they say there would have been a bad drought with or without climate change. They are not disputing that. What they are saying is that it is going to be worse because of it.

(Minus points for Escapist for bad journalizm, since the title kind of implies that there would not have been a drought without climate change.)

I realized that they were only saying it would make it worse. What annoys me is that "Worse" is impossible to quantify. What does worse than a possible centuries long mega drought even mean? We have no idea how bad its going to get or how bad droughts of this kind usually are. Were also talking about time scales on a geological scale, the shear number of factors and time involved makes it hard to pin down numbers. All we really know is that droughts much much worse than the current one have happened many time before humans settled the continent.
The article is riddled with "Like, Likelihood, Probably, odds and maybe."

You get no useful data from the original article, it exists only to grab attention by trying to make people feel bad and promote a anti republican agenda (I'm not American, I'm just calling it like I see it).

 

[sXeth]

Climate change helped.

Also, its a desert. A DESERT. (yes not the entire state, but the main part dealing with drought).

Oh, and because we insist on ignoring our population crisis. This half-desert locale happens to hold more people then 122 other countries have. There are more people jammed into the state of California then the entirety of Canada.

And then its a surprise (but not really) that the land won't support this.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Actually, it was California's inability to look at itself and think "You know? A series of desalinization plants along the coast would work wonders.". True, they're expensive to build, but the process has been around a long time. Could've taken care of this YEARS ago.

The issue with Desalinization is not so much the initial installment cost (which is substantial, don't get me wrong), but sustained costs.

Desalinization requires a huge amount of energy to operate because water is an incredible thermal capacitor and you need to heat water to steam to separate the solubles.

That's why more practical desalination equipment is built around reverse osmosis across a semi-permeable membrane.
Granted, that's not cheap either, and the membrane can break down rather quickly, but the energy requirements are more reasonable, being basically that of forcing the water through a membrane at high pressure.

Running high pressure pumping equipment requires a lot less energy than evaporative methods.

I don't know if large-scale reverse osmosis installations are feasible with current technology, (but small scale installations are common on small ocean-going craft), but they certainly don't demand the kind of energy evaporating and then re-condensing the water would.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination

You-ll note several methods, all of which try to avoid naively boiling water without some tricks to it.
(one other one worth mentioning looking at that page is low pressure evaporation. Water evaporates at much lower temperatures if you reduce the pressure, thus also reducing the energy involved)

Large-scale desalination is feasible, given what that page suggests. Several countries do it on a massive scale.

 

[Jake Martinez]

Hey guys, they're on this.

California is currently building (and has almost completed) one of the worlds largest desalination plant [http://carlsbaddesal.com/] down in San Diego. Now, while this won't immediately address the issue that California is seeing over the industrial use of water in farming (wrong part of the state for that...) the thing that is important is that in order for this plant to be even built it had to survive something like 15 legal challenges. The fact that everything is clear and ready to come online means that one of the biggest barriers (other than cost) for using technology to solve the drought problem is over and the path is clear for other projects to start.

The other thing people have to remember is that nothing will likely be done about this until the cost of not doing something about it surpasses the cost of building and running the plant. California's middle belt drought problem is entirely due to commercial farming and not due to people watering lawns or taking showers. So as much as people like to complain about why there is a lack of water along the Grapevine, in the end it doesn't matter because there is no near term solution other than moving water from somewhere else to there. Once the cost of moving water from out of state (like say, the colorado river) becomes too high then they'll probably build a plant (and keep complaining all along the way).

If the drought is caused by climate change or not is pretty much a moot point. Take for instance where I live - I moved to Australia a few years ago and the year after the region I lived in came out of a massive drought. A couple of years after that we went completely the other way with massive flooding that actually put the city I live in under water. I can raise my finger in the air and go "Eureka! Climate change caused this!" and ultimately it doesn't mean a damn thing because it's not going to change the weather...

I'm not saying that these aren't large problems, I'm just pointing out that the "why" of it happening isn't nearly as important as the "what are you going to do about it" part.

 

[Rattja]

Reading stuff like this is both funny and depressing at the same time.
It's like, we know that environments and such can and will change, and yet surprised when they do.
Where I live, we have a place that used to be a port/harbor during the viking age, but now is somewhat far from the sea and farmed land. Point being things change, as everything, even the temperature is subject to change no matter what we do. We may have some effect on it, but to think we can stop this change is ridiculous.

What we should do is what we have always done and what humans are superior at, and that is adapt. If you can't do that, move.

The way I see it, some places we are just not meant to live as we need certain things like water to stay alive. If you want to stay and live in a place with no water.. well.. good luck to you, but I just cannot feel sorry for you.

 

[rcs619]

I think the important thing to remember is that climate change doesn't inherently *cause* anything. This isn't a disaster movie where climate change will suddenly cause the apocalypse. It's a lot more gradual process, which is partly why it's such a hard issue to get people to care about.

What climate change does do, is accentuate weather patterns. Summers become hotter, winters become harsher, droughts (which California was already prone to) become more intense, hurricanes become more common and/or powerful, and so on and so forth. It's not going to be some super-storm or heat-wave caused by global warming that winds up killing us, it's more than likely going to be crop failure. If the climate changes enough to where major crops begin to fail (corn especially for the US), you're talking unprecedented disaster. Most of our food, and most of our food animals, uses corn in one stage of the manufacturing process or another.

So, yeah, that's kind of the big thing about climate change. It isn't some big, apocalyptic weather event that wipes out a city... it's all these little changes. All these various different weather patterns getting more intense and more off the rails, until something fails in our infrastructure or agricultural base. It won't wipe out humanity, but a lot of people can still die or get hurt, and our overall standard of living as a species begins to drop.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

Farms? I thought it was the laughable notion of everyone wanting green lawns in the middle of a desert.

Compared to farming everything else is small potatoes.

That said, California still has about 20% margin ... if it doesn't mind running the delta completely dry.

 

[Strazdas]

Global warming has caused Sacharan dessert to expend for miles. Of course it had an effect on this drought. the question is only "how big".

As a Californian, I don't care about blame, just use some fancy science to make it rain already!

The technology to make clouds form and rain is actually available since cold war. Soviets used it sometimes. The reason you dont really hear about it is because it is VERY bad for eviroment and noone wants to use it as anything but last resort before abandoning earth. Except, of course, Soviets, that used it from time to time.

 

[username sucks]

As a Californian, I don't care about blame, just use some fancy science to make it rain already!

The technology to make clouds form and rain is actually available since cold war. Soviets used it sometimes. The reason you dont really hear about it is because it is VERY bad for eviroment and noone wants to use it as anything but last resort before abandoning earth. Except, of course, Soviets, that used it from time to time.

I was just making a joke, but thanks for the information! I'll treasure it as I dry up and become a raisin.