Placing Recent Droughts in a Long-Term Context with Tree-Ring Reconstructions of Precipitation

Friend of mine sent me this whilst discussing the California water disinformation MSM campaign. Mods please tell me how to correct the info present in this thread if its needed.

treeflow.info

So to give credit where its due....

Connie Woodhouse

Department of Geography and Regional
Development, University of Arizona

Southern California Workshop on
Water Conditions and Drought
Preparedness
Ontario CA, Oct. 28, 2008

Records from rain
gages in Southern
California extend
back 125 years, at
best.
These records
document extreme
dry years and
persistent drought.
How representative
are these records
and the drought
events they contain?

In these records you can see there is cyclical drought in the State of California and the one being experienced now is nowhere near as bad as one in the past, and only 100 years ago!



From this we can conclude that we are experiencing nothing even close to the worst, recent drought in California. Now this leaves me with a few questions...

How are we planning for the future?

Are the aqueducts in California allowing to much water to evaporate with the flood irrigation system?

Should we really have massive population centers in desert climates?

reply to post by onequestion

Should we really have massive population centers in desert climates?

Good question.

I guess if you like drinking 'recycled' water, why not live in a big city in the desert?

I does seem silly to build beyond the limits of resources.

They just have too many people and too much agriculture there for the water they have. People need to quit watering lawns and reduce the production of foods. They have lowered the amount of cattle by about a third according to the news this morning and they said citrus production should be off by a quarter. This will drive the price of these commodities up in the future. This is said to be caused by drought related problems.

Normal or not, California will need to start conserving water better, the whole country should. The people in this country wasting a third of the food does not help. We are not the only nation facing this problem in the world. It doesn't matter if it is a natural cycle, it has to be dealt with and they need to lower water usage and waste.

The graphs and other information shown shows it has happened before and that they probably dealt with the problem somehow before. The thing is, they had more water resources before, they have depleted those reserves mostly...from wasting it or desire to exploit the water for profits.

Too many damned people. But try to promote the notion of more stringent governmental population control (yeah, yeah, I know industrialized countries already have population shrinkage, but that's not the problem, is it?), or limiting populations with controlled pandemics, and you get called every kind of Hitler there is.

Fortunately for me, I don't see any severe problems happening until after I'm dead. Hah hah!

reply to post by onequestion


Nothing like tree rings for the long term picture.

reply to post by onequestion


Thank you S/F for putting things in perspective . I hope somebody's planning for the future.

Hohokam people who lived near where I am did not... and , their awesome irrigation ( flood irrigation ) systems failed
- and the survivors had to become hunter/gatherers again... so much for progress !

' City in the desert ' thing ? Babylon and Cairo ( rivers ) , Damascus ( more complicated ) , Rome ( semi-arid and prone to severe drought )... there are examples of success. Will we learn by example ? Damn... sorry to be so depressing.

Thanks for the info.

Personally I am done with drought threads. People here want to see a conspiracy behind it so badly they ignore reality. Currently due to the State Water Agency cutting flows to some very serious monied folks (do some research into Paramount Farms and the Westmorelands water district) are putting out a bunch of BS propaganda in an attempt to keep the money rolling.

These Almond "Farmers" get more water every year than they use and they get it cheap due to promised allotments. They then sell it back to California at a tremendous profit.

Ask yourself these two questions. Who profits from a "manufactured" drought? Who profits from Almonds and water?

These questions are easily answered, do the research.

My uncle has been in meetings for three weeks due to this "exaggerated drought" and I can tell you almost first hand that this is the real deal.

This is the last time I try to convince a bunch of ATSers of this truth though as it is simply frustrating to hear BS about something I am more than familiar with. The last Christmas dinner I sat with people at my uncles house that know more about this states water issues than anyone here can hope to know.

Turn off the damn taps, stop washing your cars and watering your lawns and take shorter showers. It ain't that hard to do.

Mamatus
Personally I am done with drought threads. People here want to see a conspiracy behind it so badly they ignore reality. Currently due to the State Water Agency cutting flows to some very serious monied folks (do some research into Paramount Farms and the Westmorelands water district) are putting out a bunch of BS propaganda in an attempt to keep the money rolling.

These Almond "Farmers" get more water every year than they use and they get it cheap due to promised allotments. They then sell it back to California at a tremendous profit.

Ask yourself these two questions. Who profits from a "manufactured" drought? Who profits from Almonds and water?

These questions are easily answered, do the research.

My uncle has been in meetings for three weeks due to this "exaggerated drought" and I can tell you almost first hand that this is the real deal.

This is the last time I try to convince a bunch of ATSers of this truth though as it is simply frustrating to hear BS about something I am more than familiar with. The last Christmas dinner I sat with people at my uncles house that know more about this states water issues than anyone here can hope to know.

Turn off the damn taps, stop washing your cars and watering your lawns and take shorter showers. It ain't that hard to do.

OP seems to point out no conspiracy ( or I missed it )... just the natural cycle of things .

Now, sit back - Junior Citizen... let me tell about about my uncles.

"From this we can conclude that we are experiencing nothing even close to the worst, recent drought in California. Now this leaves me with a few questions"...

I should have said attempts to minimize it. The conspiracy lies in the amount of money corporations like Paramount Farms is spending on trying to minimize people perceptions of the current drought emergency. Fake data has been hitting the internet for at least a month now.

Follow the money.

Almonds are a major part of the farming portfolio of Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who own brands such as Wonderful Pistachios, Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice and Halos mandarin oranges. The couple's Paramount Farming Co. has been expanding its almond acreage in Kern and Madera counties to meet growing global demand for the tree nut. It farms 46,000 acres of almond orchards, a space the size of 13 Los Angeles International airports that produces 6% of the state's almonds.

Link to story.

Then when you get bored of that look into how much Stewart Resnicks family made off selling California back it's water. They are very well connected, based out of Los Angeles and party with the like of former Governor Schwarzenegger. The Resnicks play politics extraordinarily well, always at a profit.

I posted this in another thread but it bares repeating.

A. Growing food in a dessert is kind of dumb.

B. Herds of water guzzling cattle in a dessert, who would have thought, eh!

C. Building cities in a dessert with millions upon millions of people is also kind of dumb.

D. Using well and bore water like there is no tomorrow is just stupid.

Not having desalination plants considering A, B C and D is just, well, American Politics.


The problem is not only the water conditions.

Since the 1950s Cali has had an almost 4 fold increase in population. In numbers that is another 28 million people all using water like it is an unlimited resource.

Once the dams went in people started doing some really silly things for an arid desert area. Things such as raising cattle, irrigation farming not to mention backyard swimming pools and such like.

But 38 million people need a lot of water and the citizens of Cali seem to ignore the fact that they live in a dessert.

It will not end well. Well and bore water is not being replenished and this is likely to be the real killer.

I am not sure there is a solution to the short term problem. There are just too many people combined with stupid uses in this environment. Not to mention that the State is Broke!

P

Really how stupid, really stupid can you be!

If you try real hard it seems you can be really really stupid.

The California rice industry annually produces more than 2 million tons of rice making it the second largest rice growing state in the nation behind Arkansas.

In a dessert!

I would love to say, Only In America, but sadly other people can be just as dumb.

P

reply to post by pheonix358


First off, Cali hasn't had a serious dry in a while. It's deceptive that way. Secondly, they used to have far more in the way of dams, but the environmentalists have been destroying those as quickly as they can. A lot of water storage has been removed in recent years to restore natural water flow.

ketsuko
reply to post by pheonix358

 

First off, Cali hasn't had a serious dry in a while. It's deceptive that way. Secondly, they used to have far more in the way of dams, but the environmentalists have been destroying those as quickly as they can. A lot of water storage has been removed in recent years to restore natural water flow.

Human stupidity knows no bounds.

Perhaps they are the ones that should die of thirst first.

Mark my words, 38 million is one heck of a lot of people if they get real thirsty like.

Just drinking water alone per day is an awful lot let alone the amount required for washing and sanitation.

If it gets bad enough you can run out of water really fast.

P

onequestion
Friend of mine sent me this whilst discussing the California water disinformation MSM campaign. Mods please tell me how to correct the info present in this thread if its needed.



Are the aqueducts in California allowing to much water to evaporate with the flood irrigation system?

The LA aqueducts from Owens valley to LA loses over 1 million gal a day in just leaks from old unsealed concrete lining cracked by the many calif earthquakes to unlined tunnels.

One guy was growing pot on a hill side that was wet from one leak.

reply to post by ANNED


Its almost like noone cares its all bandaids.