patrick.net

They will pretend nothing happened and pick up where they left off once the next below average snow winter rolls in.

Tahoe got fucking pounded with snow so that Interstates 80 and 50 had to be closed for days and required chains for many more, and wine country has its rivers gushing from continuous rains.

They will pivot the same they did in the past when they cried globull warming, and then it got colder for a few years: they start talking about how the weather and climate is now so unpredictable and chaotic, and its all because of XYZ. Oddly, even though most people know that the weather has been chaotic and unpredictable their entire lives of many decades, they will lap it up due to recency bias.

"why climate change has placed us on the cliff of crisis: The recent unprecedented weather storms has made reservoirs so full they may catastrophically overflow. Dams are at their upper limits such that emergency overflow valves that are reserved for the utmost emergencies are now being opened by emergency workers, working overtime, scrambling to open them to avoid catastrophe. Experts agree that if the valves aren't opened in time, millions could die of thirst in the wake of a water system failure."

Shit like that^^

mell says

Remember when this winter started with good rains in.the west all these articles by climate "scientists" and globahomo agitprop "news" corporations about how this will be a dry winter for the drought stricken west despite initial rains.

No, I don't remember. It DOES match my own expectations having lived in the LA area for over 50 years. A wet fall, as in lots of rain before or around halloween, often DOES lead into a dryer than normal winter and spring.

mell says

Reservoirs should be full to the brim but I'm sure politicians made sure there is enough drainage and poor planning

This was talked about in the media over the last week. Snowpack in parts of the Sierras is 200% of normal for the date, which is GREAT NEWS for this spring and early summer's water needs. As for reservoirs and more importantly aquifers getting refilled and recharged, even with the current ratios of inflow/outflow after the insane rains, around half of reservoirs stand below their seasonal average to date, and fewer than half currently stand above 50% total capacity.

Rather than make up these weird narratives about what you think politicians are doing about water impoundment and inflow/outflow ratios, you can work with ACTUAL facts and data. Tell us if you find anything "wrong" with the way California's major reservoirs are being managed at present based upon these data. http://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=RES&source=patrick.net

mell says

globull warming

It's "CLIMATE CHANGE" and you just don't know the difference between climate and weather.

Automan Empire says

mell says

Remember when this winter started with good rains in.the west all these articles by climate "scientists" and globahomo agitprop "news" corporations about how this will be a dry winter for the drought stricken west despite initial rains.

No, I don't remember. It DOES match my own expectations having lived in the LA area for over 50 years. A wet fall, as in lots of rain before or around halloween, often DOES lead into a dryer than normal winter and spring.

mell says

Reservoirs should be full to the brim but I'm sure politicians made sure there is enough drainage and poor planning

This was talked about in the media over the last week. Snowpack in parts of the Sierras is 200% of normal for the date, which is GREAT NEWS for this spring and early summer's water needs. As for reservoirs and more importantly aquifers getting refilled and recharged...

Sure, plenty of purposeful wrongs. CA politicians and politics only are to blame for the faux drought. Here's a good starter:

https://californiaglobe.com/articles/water-and-drought-deceit-more-dubious-policies-california-lawmakers-continue-to-perpetrate/?source=patrick.net

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense. It's all about expanding political power and reducing civil liberties and God given rights. Nothing else.

mell says

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense.

I am. I provided a link to regularly updated info about ALL of California's major reservoirs and asked people to show what's wrong THERE with the way reservoirs are getting managed.

You came back with an advertorial/propaganda piece masquerating as a news article that cherry picks a few metrics to make a particular point.

Building more reservoirs would be helpful, but you seem to be missing the point that even in the wettest years, we can't fill the ones we have. Even if we DID fill all the above-ground reservoirs to capacity (and it's not a simple matter of "let less out"), this doesn't show the whole water picture. This doesn't show underground aquifer volume. It also suggests all non-impounded water is wasted when released for "environmental" purposes. It doesn't mention that these "environmental" purposes have monetary outcomes of their own. Preventing fisheries from collapsing, millions of dollars of fishing and processing industry and food for millions. Preventing recreational lakes and rivers from running low to dry during the summer peak use season. Millions in tourism and recreation businesses at stake, plus sheer enjoyment of the best places our state has to offer. Preventing rivers running within a mile of millions of residents from becoming stagnant smelly trickles. Preventing river deltas and estuaries and near-shore water tables from brackish and salt water intrusion, again with millions of dollars in fishery, recreation and tourism, and escalating water deionization or well abandonment and replacement.

How many of these things, if any, have you specifically factored in to your estimation of how well California manages water resources? Again, given current actual reservoir stats, what would you do differently than this, why, and what outcome would you expect and in what time frame?

Automan Empire says

Building more reservoirs would be helpful, but you seem to be missing the point that even in the wettest years, we can't fill the ones we have.

On my drive through the central valley recently, I saw several signs from farmers pleading that more reservoirs be built, and that we don't dump rainwater into the ocean.

Automan Empire says

mell says

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense.

I am. I provided a link to regularly updated info about ALL of California's major reservoirs and asked people to show what's wrong THERE with the way reservoirs are getting managed.

You came back with an advertorial/propaganda piece masquerating as a news article that cherry picks a few metrics to make a particular point.

Building more reservoirs would be helpful, but you seem to be missing the point that even in the wettest years, we can't fill the ones we have. Even if we DID fill all the above-ground reservoirs to capacity (and it's not a simple matter of "let less out"), this doesn't show the whole water picture. This doesn't show underground aquifer volume. It also suggests all non-impounded water is wasted when released for "environmental" purposes. It doesn't men...

Wouldn't even know where to begin. Def build more reservoirs, weather is unpredictable and to expect similar rainfall each year is asinine but more like deliberate mismanagement. Nothing to do with climate change or globull warming, it's always been the weather. 2nd move to non potable water sources for toilets and showers etc. Don't give me the complexity or cost argument, we have built everything via private enterprise that's technically possible, many cities in Europe use that system, and we spend more money on transgender bathrooms and illegals every year. Politicians are simply not interested in admitting there is no water crisis and never has been, for their own self interest. The reason private enterprise hasn't tackled this is because they would never make money after the moron governors and municipalities are done with their "regulations". And then come the ambulance chasers because a kid drank out of the toilet. Lowest common denominator, typical leftoid playbook. Maximizes crisis and political power.

I heard about the story about fish and the rainwater going out to sea.

Someone sued the state over a little fish called a topsmelt, that they had to divert water down the river and less to the valley so the topsmelt would thrive.

Nobody eats them or fishes for topsmelt as far as I know.

clambo says

I heard about the story about fish and the rainwater going out to sea.

Someone sued the state over a little fish called a topsmelt, that they had to divert water down the river and less to the valley so the topsmelt would thrive.

Nobody eats them or fishes for topsmelt as far as I know.

Yep the smelt scandal

clambo says

Nobody eats them or fishes for topsmelt as far as I know.

Aren't they what spotted owls eat?

Do they need to have a DIRECT human benefit to care when human activity causes their populations to crash? Smelt are an ocean schooling fish, and have an important place low in the marine food chain. The problem humans are causing for smelt is, we remove so much of the natural flow of rivers that it affects the salinity of entire bays and estuaries, impacting the niche they've evolved to thrive within over thousands of years in 3 human generations of large scale dam building.

By the way, did you know that thanks to water impoundment at higher latitudes, human activity has actually sped up the rotation of the earth?

Humans have achieved near god level power to manipulate the planet, affecting every living thing in the biosphere. In practice, humans have been rather shitty Gods in our stewardship of Eden.

Also, I couldn't find a match to "topsmelt lawsuit" aside from the City of San Diego being allowed to proceed with a lawsuit with Monsanto over PCB disposal that contaminated San Diego Bay fish species in a serious and long term way. Another externalized cost borne by generations of people who didn't profit from the shitty short-term decisions, courtesy of Laissez-Faire Capitalism.

I dunno. I read a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" maybe 15 years ago. The author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better for decades now, pretty much our whole lives.

Patrick says

he author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better

I'd be interested to hear if they're actual benefits from an environmental point of view, or industrialist-fellating excuses for continuing to externalize costs? A common "shitty" environmental claim runs, "There's more forest in the US than 100 years ago" True because mechanized agriculture has made small subsistence farms obsolete to revert to wildlands, but clearcutting natural old growth forests and replacing them with monocrops of commercially favorable species is not equivalent forest land to what stood 100 years ago. Hence the endangerment of the Spotted Owl that industry-fellaters joke about, because of the widespread actual destruction of its old growth habitat.

I'm all for protecting the environment, but again, we have landed on Mars, been to the moon (some may dispute that), built EVs, autopilots, quantum computing, but we can't build mechanically separated septic systems to save a shit ton of drinking water, nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Elon has some ideas) reservoirs, that tech is stuck in the stone ages. Instead we punish the citizens with lo-flo shit, sky high water costs and carbon tax. Nothing to do with politicians, got it. I'd also like to see the Thorium reactor getting done by us instead of China beating everyone to it

mell says

nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Eln has some ideas) reservoirs,

Americans currently use the ENTIRE flow of the Colorado River. We grudgingly dole out just enough to Mexico to meet old treaties. A planned pulse flow allowed the Colorado River to flow all the way to the sea ONE TIME in 2014, a sight residents hadn't seen for literally decades. There's literally not enough water falling on its entire watershed to keep Lake Powell full and the mighty Colorado flowing all the way to the ocean.

California's rivers are approaching this too, hence the suits over what people dismiss as trivial things like the smelt. Humans are already taking so much water out of rivers all down the coast that it affects the salinity of large coastal features like bays and estuaries, and is causing seawater intrusion into coastal freshwater aquifers also feeding human demand.

Capturing storm pulses using more reservoirs isn't the solution. The problem is, if we doubled our capacity by stacking new reservoirs in the major river systems, there isn't enough water coming in to get and keep them full at this point, to meet human demand for fresh water all the way between rainy seasons.

Earth could be a utopia for thousands of generations to come with population numbers stable in the millions. Instead we're gonna rat-utopia our way into an almost unfixable oblivion in another 1-3 generations, sadly. That's one reason I elected not to have children myself.

Automan Empire says

Earth could be a utopia for thousands of generations to come with population numbers stable in the millions. Instead we're gonna rat-utopia our way into an almost unfixable oblivion in another 1-3 generations, sadly. That's one reason I elected not to have children myself.

And vote for Biden?

I think I agree with Automan Empire.

A vast population doesn’t improve anything, and I keep seeing too much development and crowding in the places where I liked to live.

Lately I’m visiting in Baja California Sur Mexico and I got fed up with the bottles that my girlfriend threw in the trash, and if she had girlfriends over they generated 20 beer bottles or more.

I located a recycling place on the road to Cabo San Lucas, driving was a pain in the ass but I felt good that even after New Years we have generated only one kitchen sized trash can, and a big bin full of bottles.
The key is to rinse the beer bottles out or they stink.

I suggested to the girl that she started a little business and go to the expats and recycle their bottles and cans for a small fee, $10/week. The Canadians might not go for it as they are famously cheapskates, so maybe I am nuts.

Her reaction was funny; “Why are you thinking of ways for me to work?”

Automan Empire says

mell says

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense.

I am. I provided a link to regularly updated info about ALL of California's major reservoirs and asked people to show what's wrong THERE with the way reservoirs are getting managed.

You came back with an advertorial/propaganda piece masquerading as a news article that cherry picks a few metrics to make a particular point.

I for one don't believe any official narrative coming out of California about anything. They don't have enough water, because they would rather blame and tax people/entities, than solve problems. In utter woids, California has a water crisis because they don't do a damn thing about it.

Californians are more optimistic and trust the science of harvesting water from the lunar polar caps, than they are about creating reservoirs and capturing the rain water.

Liberals would much rather hype the severity of a crisis than solve them.

California has an interesting two part water supply system; it’s largely to supply Southern California (a desert) and the Central Valley with the aqueducts and pipes that go hundreds of miles.

Meanwhile, places like Santa Cruz County depend on rainfall. Towns along the coast are considering desalination plants which will produce very expensive water.

Around Castroville, Monterey County, they are pumping reclaimed sewage water into the ground to keep out seawater from intruding inland.

clambo says

I think I agree with Automan Empire.

A vast population doesn’t improve anything, and I keep seeing too much development and crowding in the places where I liked to live.

Then get your booster.

Patrick says

I dunno. I read a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" maybe 15 years ago. The author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better for decades now, pretty much our whole lives.

Has it been getting better in China and India?

Automan Empire says

mell says

nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Eln has some ideas) reservoirs,

Americans currently use the ENTIRE flow of the Colorado River. We grudgingly dole out just enough to Mexico to meet old treaties. A planned pulse flow allowed the Colorado River to flow all the way to the sea ONE TIME in 2014, a sight residents hadn't seen for literally decades. There's literally not enough water falling on its entire watershed to keep Lake Powell full and the mighty Colorado flowing all the way to the ocean.

California's rivers are approaching this too, hence the suits over what people dismiss as trivial things like the smelt. Humans are already taking so much water out of rivers all down the coast that it affects the salinity of large coastal features like bays and estuaries, and is causing seawater intrusion into coastal freshwater aquifers also feeding human demand.

And the reason why we need to waster perfectly good potable water by dumping into the ocean is?

Onvacation I don’t get your attempt at humor.

So you like crowds but wish me harm, interesting.

I post from boredom but I don’t troll here.

clambo says

Onvacation I don’t get your attempt at humor.

So you like crowds but wish me harm, interesting.

I post from boredom but I don’t troll here.

Cause I'm not funny.

I don't wish you harm but if you want to lower the population, get the booster.

That's the government's plan.

zzyzzx says

And the reason why we need to waster perfectly good potable water by dumping into the ocean is?

I don't think you're comprehending the issue here.

Humans already use the ENTIRE FLOW OF THE COLORADO RIVER WATERSHED. The lower parts of the river have been dry and dead most years for half a century running. Americans don't care because the terminus is in Mexico. Americans seeing the same happen to the lower 40 miles of the Sacramento river would be outraged rather than act as blase as you do ITT, as would water districts and residents along the coast where ground water would rapidly become too saline to ever use domestically again.

Humanity can't simply reservoir our way out of this. If there was a PLACE to build another Lake Oroville, it wouldn't catch enough storm pulse to make a difference in summer-fall water demand, and there doesn't appear to be enough water being released from the dam to have both a healthy Sacramento river year round and also millions of acre-feet of impounded water.

clambo says

Onvacation I don’t get your attempt at humor.

Politics as sportsball. It appears he literally can't imagine someone rationally not agreeing with his existing worldview, so he has to invent a twisted caricature of those who disagree as "mindless Biden voters" then get pissy when people don't even respond because he's so far off in the weeds from their actual views.

mell says

Reservoirs should be full to the brim but I'm sure politicians made sure there is enough drainage and poor planning so they can keep promoting state of emergencies and fuck over their constituents.

It's much less subtle than that. In NorCal this past year, they were literally taking a page from Chinatown and dumping water into the ocean.

I know for a fact two years ago we got a shit ton of rain, and this year we've also done just fine. There is no drought, we just happen to live high desert area.

Definitely seems colder this year than last year. I remember last winter we hardly ever closed our windows due to it getting stuffy, but this winter, despite moving to a southern facing unit(more sun), our windows have been closed almost all winter so far.

Automan Empire says

It appears he literally can't imagine someone rationally not agreeing with his existing worldview, so he has to invent a twisted caricature of those who disagree as "mindless Biden voters" then get pissy when people don't even respond because he's so far off in the weeds from their actual views.

I have several times asked you point blank what are your views to end this miscommunication that you intentionally foment by being obtuse about your views. You refuse to reveal your viewpoints, so stop complaining about people speculating on what they may be. It's YOUR fault that you're "misunderstood" - you want to be misunderstood, rather than just explaining your position and viewpoint.

I can understand his frustration with you, but I don't understand why he continues to interact with you. In my opinion, it's a waste of time.

Automan Empire says

Humanity can't simply reservoir our way out of this. If there was a PLACE to build another Lake Oroville, it wouldn't catch enough storm pulse to make a difference in summer-fall water demand, and there doesn't appear to be enough water being released from the dam to have both a healthy Sacramento river year round and also millions of acre-feet of impounded water.

Wasn't there a plan to siphon water from the Mississippi to someplace out west?

https://www.deseret.com/2012/5/13/20502414/the-fight-for-water-can-the-mighty-mississippi-save-the-west

In the Mississippi River scenario, 675,000 acre-feet of water would be diverted from the nation's largest river downstream of where it meets up with the Ohio River. From there, the water would be conveyed via tunnel, canal and a monstrous pipe 775 miles long and 144 inches in diameter to dump into the Navajo River in southwestern Colorado.

The Navajo would then deliver that water to the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, for use by agricultural users in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Those users would then be taken off the Colorado system and the savings in water would flow downstream to other cities that need to grow in the future.

Ludicrous? Not to Mulroy and others staring straight into the bottom of a dry water barrel.

"Well, you know a lot of people laugh about that," she said. "But you have to remember that Hoover Dam was built as a flood control project. And one man's flood control project is another man's water supply."

The Mississippi has a storied history of flooding — in 1927, in 1937 and in 1973. Then came last year, when seven states were awash and 130,000 acres of farmland were deliberately inundated to save a town.

Mulroy said there are lessons to be learned, and more importantly, that the excess water could come to the basin states.

"Why can't it fuel fields farther to the west. … Why can't we put that water to beneficial use?" she questioned. "It would make far more sense to capture that and begin to put it to use where it is needed here in this country."

As the bureau works through the proposals and completes its analysis in the coming months, nothing is out of reach as it approaches the caretaking of the Colorado River much like a nutritionist might.

Sierra Club agitprop?

richwicks says

It's YOUR fault that you're "misunderstood" - you want to be misunderstood, rather than just explaining your position and viewpoint.

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint. One or two bad faith posters and their manipulative presuppositions have now created a situation where completely unrelated posters find ME annoying and in bad faith for consistently refusing to engage their shitposts.

These are classic bullying techniques. In person we could sort it quickly. Online I can't be arsed and will sooner disengage from or completely leave a community that tolerates bullies and demagogues in their midst. I expected better of YOU, Richwicks, than to act like a burned out teacher who can't be arsed to sort out a real conflict between her charges, so punishes the victim and bully alike which the bully relishes as a win state and the victim adopts a rightful "fuck this shit I'm out" mentality toward the entire space.

Automan Empire says

richwicks says

It's YOUR fault that you're "misunderstood" - you want to be misunderstood, rather than just explaining your position and viewpoint.

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint.

I don't believe you but I could be incorrect about this. Point to your post(s) where you've done this. Just give me the link. A link like this:

https://www.patrick.net/post/1340402?80#comment-1808074

See? That's when I tried, then ultimately decided "fuck it":

https://www.patrick.net/post/1340402?80#comment-1808433

You intentionally frustrate people in my opinion. I just got tired of it, but it keeps coming up over and over again.

You're now violating the same rule of discourse the troll did. ONUS PROBANDI. The burden of proof is on the claimant. It is not for me to "disprove" what the troll established using a consistent false narrative.

That other members of the community have now accepted the troll's narrative as fact and are now demanding that I step up and prove their claim wrong, is the EXACT state of affairs that Onus Probandi intends to make impossible. Good job, ignoring the rules of discourse, and joining a troll in insisting that I am responsible to initiate action to disprove the troll's prior claims. This casts ALL discourse by ALL said participants in a disingenuous light, one that does not incentivize my future participation and bonds to the "community."

Look at yourself. You're angry at ME for refusing to participate in a belligerent discussion. You're blaming ME for not engaging the troll. You're declaring ME frustrating for refusing to answer annoying troll JAQoffs. You're giving ME a burden of proof to meet, to refute an unproven claim, leaving said unproven claim alone which means tacitly accepting some truth value to it.

Automan Empire says

"mindless Biden voters" then get pissy

Yup.

richwicks says

I can understand his frustration with you, but I don't understand why he continues to interact with you. In my opinion, it's a waste of time.

You can't waste time or money, but you can misuse them.

I ask pertinent questions that automan won't answer for entertainment and to highlight his hypocrisy.

The problem with "global warming" is that climate modelling has been so wrong for so long time that I simply can't take the proponents of AGW seriously any more.
And mind you humans DO have effect on climate. It is not clear how much though.

Automan Empire says

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint

No. You never explained why you voted for Biden.

Or did I miss your response?

Automan Empire says

These are classic bullying techniques. In person we could sort it quickly. Online I can't be arsed and will sooner disengage from or completely leave a community that tolerates bullies and demagogues in their midst. I expected better of YOU, Richwicks, than to act like a burned out teacher who can't be arsed to sort out a real conflict between her charges, so punishes the victim and bully alike which the bully relishes as a win state and the victim adopts a rightful "fuck this shit I'm out" mentality toward the entire space.

OK