A half-century and more ago, California was one of the most well-run states in the country, with various water projects that helped to mitigate for its low-rainfall. That became the foundation for its prosperity.
....
Low rainfall (for some regions) but abundant snow for the state overall: which is what the reservoirs and canals were designed for: the drought years mess with all of that. With normal rainfall and snow in the Sierra or even some excess the established system of reservoirs (now often shockingly low to empty) will retain the water for future use. In normal years the system is more of a DVR for timeshiftimg, holding the spring snowmelt, the dominant precipitation in California, for timed release across the entire growing season.
El Nino shunts most storms systems further south. The Bay Area wont' feel this.
In continental terms the Bay Area IS "south", or at least right on the border, and the Sierra just east of it with it's already above normal snowfall this year and every El Nino year reflects that. Though I am still puzzled about whether this is anything more than the issue of the day to hop on as I just don't see an oceanic tidal area such as the bay getting much if any impact from rainfall beyond the usual issues of local storm runoff, but certainly NOT bay seawater level rise leading directly to coastal flooding.
Is the proposition really that the Sacramento will flood fast enough to overcome the drainage OUT the Golden Gate into the Pacific and cause flooding in the South bay? I'd have to see that modeled really carefully. But the Sacramento IS the outlet for the entire Sierra chain, that does stretch a long ways "south".
A half-century and more ago, California was one of the most well-run states in the country, with various water projects that helped to mitigate for its low-rainfall. That became the foundation for its prosperity.
Then a madness descended upon the state. It now spends huge sums for high-speed train projects that'll never be finished and aren't high-speed anyway. It spends little on water projects. California now has a decaying infrastructure, lousy schools, and high rates of crime and poverty.
Will California be able to prevent this flooding? Probably not. Will it be able to store this over-abundant water for drier times? Almost certain not. This is California. It does almost nothing right.
And what's the key reason? California not only shifted from a two-party state to a one-party state. It became utterly dominated by the Democratic party. Take it from someone who grew up in a segregated South that always voted Democratic, there no move as stupid as that one.
So look for flooding in the Silicon Valley, lots of flooding, flooding that a little investment could have prevented. After all, this is California, the worst managed state in the union. Worst of all, it's highly unlikely to change. It's not only broken. It's not going to be fixed.
California's massive irrigation of the desert, subsidized by the government, did provide a big boost in ag productivity. But now California faces major competition from ag imports, and all of the subsidized "Big Farm" getting cheap water from the government at below cost rates are facing competition from people who want to drink water. So the massive subsidy of farming in California wasn't really the genius long term investment you seem to think it was.
On the other hand, CA is becoming a massively popular place to live, and that requires transportation infrastructure. There's no very little potential for building or upgrading more freeways, and HSR has proven to be an extremely effective investment for every other advanced nation worldwide. Even Mexico is building HSR. Conservatives who support water subsidies to farmers oppose HSR because they think it's expensive, and because they apparently don't plan to ride trains. Fortunately, the conservative obstructionists have only harmed HSR and delayed it, increasing its costs, without being able to stop it. That's important, because without HSR the state will face far higher expenses in trying to incrementally expand its freeways and airports.
If you think California is badly managed in comparison to the welfare/red states, you need to do some research. In fact, the biggest problems CA has stem directly from conservative obstructionism, which has frozen tax rates from homeowners even as their real world property assessments skyrocket. This sort of manipulation of the market has caused most of CA's problems (and is the main reason why the state can't build all kinds of needed infrastructure).
Also, if you're going to talk about Democrats and the Segregated South, remember that all those racist Democrats jumped ship to support Nixon after the Democrat Party took a stand for Civil Rights, and those racists are now Republicans. A Party affiliation doesn't make you racist, but having a majority of racist members does change the nature of your Party. That's why the Republican party is now marching to the grave to the tune of the Confederacy and propping up all of these insane old white men grousing about how they hate immigrants and people of color, attracting nobody apart from racist, hateful members of the Klan and other right wing radical fundamentalists who, like you, hate the "government."
California's massive irrigation of the desert, subsidized by the government, did provide a big boost in ag productivity. But now California faces major competition from ag imports, and all of the subsidized "Big Farm" getting cheap water from the government at below cost rates are facing competition from people who want to drink water. So the massive subsidy of farming in California wasn't really the genius long term investment you seem to think it was.
On the other hand, CA is becoming a massively popular place to live, and that requires transportation infrastructure. There's no very little potential for building or upgrading more freeways, and HSR has proven to be an extremely effective investment for every other advanced nation worldwide. Even Mexico is building HSR. Conservatives who support water subsidies to farmers oppose HSR because they think it's expensive, and because they apparently don't plan to ride trains. Fortunately, the conservative obstructionists have only harmed HSR and delayed it, increasing its costs, without being able to stop it. That's important, because without HSR the state will face far higher expenses in trying to incrementally expand its freeways and airports.
If you think California is badly managed in comparison to the welfare/red states, you need to do some research. In fact, the biggest problems CA has stem directly from conservative obstructionism, which has frozen tax rates from homeowners even as their real world property assessments skyrocket. This sort of manipulation of the market has caused most of CA's problems (and is the main reason why the state can't build all kinds of needed infrastructure).
Also, if you're going to talk about Democrats and the Segregated South, remember that all those racist Democrats jumped ship to support Nixon after the Democrat Party took a stand for Civil Rights, and those racists are now Republicans. A Party affiliation doesn't make you racist, but having a majority of racist members does change the nature of your Party. That's why the Republican party is now marching to the grave to the tune of the Confederacy and propping up all of these insane old white men grousing about how they hate immigrants and people of color, attracting nobody apart from racist, hateful members of the Klan and other right wing radical fundamentalists who, like you, hate the "government."
Subsidies have always been a bad idea. Distorting markets for political means is economically harmful and results in misallocations of capital, political favoritism and corruption and 10 times out of 10 the taxpayer gets the shaft.
A half-century and more ago, California was one of the most well-run states in the country, with various water projects that helped to mitigate for its low-rainfall. That became the foundation for its prosperity.
Then a madness descended upon the state. It now spends huge sums for high-speed train projects that'll never be finished and aren't high-speed anyway. It spends little on water projects. California now has a decaying infrastructure, lousy schools, and high rates of crime and poverty.
Will California be able to prevent this flooding? Probably not. Will it be able to store this over-abundant water for drier times? Almost certain not. This is California. It does almost nothing right.
And what's the key reason? California not only shifted from a two-party state to a one-party state. It became utterly dominated by the Democratic party. Take it from someone who grew up in a segregated South that always voted Democratic, there no move as stupid as that one.
So look for flooding in the Silicon Valley, lots of flooding, flooding that a little investment could have prevented. After all, this is California, the worst managed state in the union. Worst of all, it's highly unlikely to change. It's not only broken. It's not going to be fixed.
California's massive irrigation of the desert, subsidized by the government, did provide a big boost in ag productivity. But now California faces major competition from ag imports, and all of the subsidized "Big Farm" getting cheap water from the government at below cost rates are facing competition from people who want to drink water. So the massive subsidy of farming in California wasn't really the genius long term investment you seem to think it was.
On the other hand, CA is becoming a massively popular place to live, and that requires transportation infrastructure. There's no very little potential for building or upgrading more freeways, and HSR has proven to be an extremely effective investment for every other advanced nation worldwide. Even Mexico is building HSR. Conservatives who support water subsidies to farmers oppose HSR because they think it's expensive, and because they apparently don't plan to ride trains. Fortunately, the conservative obstructionists have only harmed HSR and delayed it, increasing its costs, without being able to stop it. That's important, because without HSR the state will face far higher expenses in trying to incrementally expand its freeways and airports.
If you think California is badly managed in comparison to the welfare/red states, you need to do some research. In fact, the biggest problems CA has stem directly from conservative obstructionism, which has frozen tax rates from homeowners even as their real world property assessments skyrocket. This sort of manipulation of the market has caused most of CA's problems (and is the main reason why the state can't build all kinds of needed infrastructure).
Also, if you're going to talk about Democrats and the Segregated South, remember that all those racist Democrats jumped ship to support Nixon after the Democrat Party took a stand for Civil Rights, and those racists are now Republicans. A Party affiliation doesn't make you racist, but having a majority of racist members does change the nature of your Party. That's why the Republican party is now marching to the grave to the tune of the Confederacy and propping up all of these insane old white men grousing about how they hate immigrants and people of color, attracting nobody apart from racist, hateful members of the Klan and other right wing radical fundamentalists who, like you, hate the "government."
The bay is openly connected to the Pacific Ocean, it's all tidal. Storm surge from off the Pacific from the equivalent of Superstorm Sandy I can see, but runoff from general area heavy precipitation? Not in my view, El Niño precipitation won't raise the Pacific level and rain into the bay will flow out the Golden Gate. The Sacramento and other inland river systems might have challenges depending on how much of their drainage systems haven't been put behind currently mostly empty reservoirs which will catch the runoff long before it even reached the bay.
What is "your view" based on? Do you think FEMA and NOAA are issuing warnings and accessing risk based on conjecture?
The super storm precipitation isn't runoff from the mountains coming down the Sacramento River, it's rain falling on the Bay Area, with San Mateo and Santa Clara counties getting most of it. Last winter, in the middle of drought, a flash rain in SF caused lots of flooding. A 100 or 150 year event would dump rain that parched earth (somewhat ironically) has a hard time absorbing rapidly. That water, flowing toward the Bay, is the problem for this weather pattern, not the Bay filling up from snow melt and rising. However, a rise in ocean levels also threatens the low shoreline of the Bay, and that's right were Facebook and Google are. So they're in a prime location to be hit from both directions: flash storm runoff and rising tides.
Yeah that story is largely hogwash. Pepsi and Coke's bottled water brands are just filtered/mineralized water from local sources. Neither ships CA water to somewhere else. That's pure stupid. As for the rest, any amount of bottled water sourced in CA is insignificant compared to the water pumped into the desert to grow crops (including almonds, which demand massive quantities of water). Ag demands far more water than all city use combined, because it's literally dumped on the ground in the desert to grow things that wouldn't otherwise grow there.
Farmers might be mad that somebody else is in contention for their water supplies, but bottling water for human drinking is far more efficient use of water in a drought than dumping in the desert to grow stuff that's cheaper to grow elsewhere where rain happens.
What is "your view" based on? Do you think FEMA and NOAA are issuing warnings and accessing risk based on conjecture?
The super storm precipitation isn't runoff from the mountains coming down the Sacramento River, it's rain falling on the Bay Area, with San Mateo and Santa Clara counties getting most of it. Last winter, in the middle of drought, a flash rain in SF caused lots of flooding. A 100 or 150 year event would dump rain that parched earth (somewhat ironically) has a hard time absorbing rapidly. That water, flowing toward the Bay, is the problem for this weather pattern, not the Bay filling up from snow melt and rising. However, a rise in ocean levels also threatens the low shoreline of the Bay, and that's right were Facebook and Google are. So they're in a prime location to be hit from both directions: flash storm runoff and rising tides.
So your interpretation is the flooding concern is simply local storm runoff and not connected to bay sea level rise at all? I didn't expect that just from all the areas being bay coastline, but then along the bay shore is the lowest elevation land, though with the surrounding hills so close I'd have expected the local rainfall amounts, even in an El Niño year, to be relatively modest volumes.
Partly, though not exclusively, a view formed from a couple of handfuls of graduate oceanography classes I've taken at Scripps Institute of Oceanography while an undergraduate at UC San Diego. Alongside the observation the bay IS a tidal water body and so hydrologically connected to the Pacific Ocean and a saltwater one at that as evidenced by the salt works in the South Bay, so the Sacramento doesn't dominate.
Well I expect there will be further information in the original material.
ETA: lol, yeah and that reveals in the SF Business iInsider article written by a reporter whose never even seen the exterior of SIO; there's a cobble of FEMA coastal flooding vulnerability maps generated for illuminating vulnerable areas to storm surge and climate change induced sea level rise and a business group spokespersons view "godzilla" El Niño would threaten those highlighted areas. A function those maps were not generated to address. They're for coastal flooding from storm surge where as a storm cell approaches land it pushes the sea in front of it in a bilge that acts as another component of the ocean Ruffles, raising coastline sea level and overwhelming low lying areas, flooding them with seawater, not rainwater. sea level rise is specifically mentioned. Not local heavy rainfall or snowmelt from an El Niño , Godzilla or Mothra sized.... Essentially imposing the sort of widespread damage Superstorm Sandy imposed on parts of the Jersey Shore and New York City. Rain that fell in the Hudson River drainage had no part in the flooding. FEMA is generating those sorts of vulnerability maps for many coastal areas for multiple purposes including guiding insurance coverage and local planning.
Comments
Oh that's bad!
I know, I know. I went against my better judgement. It was just too funny to pass up.
A half-century and more ago, California was one of the most well-run states in the country, with various water projects that helped to mitigate for its low-rainfall. That became the foundation for its prosperity.
....
Low rainfall (for some regions) but abundant snow for the state overall: which is what the reservoirs and canals were designed for: the drought years mess with all of that. With normal rainfall and snow in the Sierra or even some excess the established system of reservoirs (now often shockingly low to empty) will retain the water for future use. In normal years the system is more of a DVR for timeshiftimg, holding the spring snowmelt, the dominant precipitation in California, for timed release across the entire growing season.
El Nino shunts most storms systems further south. The Bay Area wont' feel this.
In continental terms the Bay Area IS "south", or at least right on the border, and the Sierra just east of it with it's already above normal snowfall this year and every El Nino year reflects that. Though I am still puzzled about whether this is anything more than the issue of the day to hop on as I just don't see an oceanic tidal area such as the bay getting much if any impact from rainfall beyond the usual issues of local storm runoff, but certainly NOT bay seawater level rise leading directly to coastal flooding.
Is the proposition really that the Sacramento will flood fast enough to overcome the drainage OUT the Golden Gate into the Pacific and cause flooding in the South bay? I'd have to see that modeled really carefully. But the Sacramento IS the outlet for the entire Sierra chain, that does stretch a long ways "south".
A half-century and more ago, California was one of the most well-run states in the country, with various water projects that helped to mitigate for its low-rainfall. That became the foundation for its prosperity.
Then a madness descended upon the state. It now spends huge sums for high-speed train projects that'll never be finished and aren't high-speed anyway. It spends little on water projects. California now has a decaying infrastructure, lousy schools, and high rates of crime and poverty.
Will California be able to prevent this flooding? Probably not. Will it be able to store this over-abundant water for drier times? Almost certain not. This is California. It does almost nothing right.
And what's the key reason? California not only shifted from a two-party state to a one-party state. It became utterly dominated by the Democratic party. Take it from someone who grew up in a segregated South that always voted Democratic, there no move as stupid as that one.
So look for flooding in the Silicon Valley, lots of flooding, flooding that a little investment could have prevented. After all, this is California, the worst managed state in the union. Worst of all, it's highly unlikely to change. It's not only broken. It's not going to be fixed.
California's massive irrigation of the desert, subsidized by the government, did provide a big boost in ag productivity. But now California faces major competition from ag imports, and all of the subsidized "Big Farm" getting cheap water from the government at below cost rates are facing competition from people who want to drink water. So the massive subsidy of farming in California wasn't really the genius long term investment you seem to think it was.
On the other hand, CA is becoming a massively popular place to live, and that requires transportation infrastructure. There's no very little potential for building or upgrading more freeways, and HSR has proven to be an extremely effective investment for every other advanced nation worldwide. Even Mexico is building HSR. Conservatives who support water subsidies to farmers oppose HSR because they think it's expensive, and because they apparently don't plan to ride trains. Fortunately, the conservative obstructionists have only harmed HSR and delayed it, increasing its costs, without being able to stop it. That's important, because without HSR the state will face far higher expenses in trying to incrementally expand its freeways and airports.
If you think California is badly managed in comparison to the welfare/red states, you need to do some research. In fact, the biggest problems CA has stem directly from conservative obstructionism, which has frozen tax rates from homeowners even as their real world property assessments skyrocket. This sort of manipulation of the market has caused most of CA's problems (and is the main reason why the state can't build all kinds of needed infrastructure).
Also, if you're going to talk about Democrats and the Segregated South, remember that all those racist Democrats jumped ship to support Nixon after the Democrat Party took a stand for Civil Rights, and those racists are now Republicans. A Party affiliation doesn't make you racist, but having a majority of racist members does change the nature of your Party. That's why the Republican party is now marching to the grave to the tune of the Confederacy and propping up all of these insane old white men grousing about how they hate immigrants and people of color, attracting nobody apart from racist, hateful members of the Klan and other right wing radical fundamentalists who, like you, hate the "government."
California's massive irrigation of the desert, subsidized by the government, did provide a big boost in ag productivity. But now California faces major competition from ag imports, and all of the subsidized "Big Farm" getting cheap water from the government at below cost rates are facing competition from people who want to drink water. So the massive subsidy of farming in California wasn't really the genius long term investment you seem to think it was.
On the other hand, CA is becoming a massively popular place to live, and that requires transportation infrastructure. There's no very little potential for building or upgrading more freeways, and HSR has proven to be an extremely effective investment for every other advanced nation worldwide. Even Mexico is building HSR. Conservatives who support water subsidies to farmers oppose HSR because they think it's expensive, and because they apparently don't plan to ride trains. Fortunately, the conservative obstructionists have only harmed HSR and delayed it, increasing its costs, without being able to stop it. That's important, because without HSR the state will face far higher expenses in trying to incrementally expand its freeways and airports.
If you think California is badly managed in comparison to the welfare/red states, you need to do some research. In fact, the biggest problems CA has stem directly from conservative obstructionism, which has frozen tax rates from homeowners even as their real world property assessments skyrocket. This sort of manipulation of the market has caused most of CA's problems (and is the main reason why the state can't build all kinds of needed infrastructure).
Also, if you're going to talk about Democrats and the Segregated South, remember that all those racist Democrats jumped ship to support Nixon after the Democrat Party took a stand for Civil Rights, and those racists are now Republicans. A Party affiliation doesn't make you racist, but having a majority of racist members does change the nature of your Party. That's why the Republican party is now marching to the grave to the tune of the Confederacy and propping up all of these insane old white men grousing about how they hate immigrants and people of color, attracting nobody apart from racist, hateful members of the Klan and other right wing radical fundamentalists who, like you, hate the "government."
Subsidies have always been a bad idea. Distorting markets for political means is economically harmful and results in misallocations of capital, political favoritism and corruption and 10 times out of 10 the taxpayer gets the shaft.
And then there's this.
http://motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/bottled-water-california-drought
The bay is openly connected to the Pacific Ocean, it's all tidal. Storm surge from off the Pacific from the equivalent of Superstorm Sandy I can see, but runoff from general area heavy precipitation? Not in my view, El Niño precipitation won't raise the Pacific level and rain into the bay will flow out the Golden Gate. The Sacramento and other inland river systems might have challenges depending on how much of their drainage systems haven't been put behind currently mostly empty reservoirs which will catch the runoff long before it even reached the bay.
What is "your view" based on? Do you think FEMA and NOAA are issuing warnings and accessing risk based on conjecture?
The super storm precipitation isn't runoff from the mountains coming down the Sacramento River, it's rain falling on the Bay Area, with San Mateo and Santa Clara counties getting most of it. Last winter, in the middle of drought, a flash rain in SF caused lots of flooding. A 100 or 150 year event would dump rain that parched earth (somewhat ironically) has a hard time absorbing rapidly. That water, flowing toward the Bay, is the problem for this weather pattern, not the Bay filling up from snow melt and rising. However, a rise in ocean levels also threatens the low shoreline of the Bay, and that's right were Facebook and Google are. So they're in a prime location to be hit from both directions: flash storm runoff and rising tides.
And then there's this.
http://motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/bottled-water-california-drought
Yeah that story is largely hogwash. Pepsi and Coke's bottled water brands are just filtered/mineralized water from local sources. Neither ships CA water to somewhere else. That's pure stupid. As for the rest, any amount of bottled water sourced in CA is insignificant compared to the water pumped into the desert to grow crops (including almonds, which demand massive quantities of water). Ag demands far more water than all city use combined, because it's literally dumped on the ground in the desert to grow things that wouldn't otherwise grow there.
Farmers might be mad that somebody else is in contention for their water supplies, but bottling water for human drinking is far more efficient use of water in a drought than dumping in the desert to grow stuff that's cheaper to grow elsewhere where rain happens.
Partly, though not exclusively, a view formed from a couple of handfuls of graduate oceanography classes I've taken at Scripps Institute of Oceanography while an undergraduate at UC San Diego. Alongside the observation the bay IS a tidal water body and so hydrologically connected to the Pacific Ocean and a saltwater one at that as evidenced by the salt works in the South Bay, so the Sacramento doesn't dominate.
Well I expect there will be further information in the original material.
ETA: lol, yeah and that reveals in the SF Business iInsider article written by a reporter whose never even seen the exterior of SIO; there's a cobble of FEMA coastal flooding vulnerability maps generated for illuminating vulnerable areas to storm surge and climate change induced sea level rise and a business group spokespersons view "godzilla" El Niño would threaten those highlighted areas. A function those maps were not generated to address. They're for coastal flooding from storm surge where as a storm cell approaches land it pushes the sea in front of it in a bilge that acts as another component of the ocean Ruffles, raising coastline sea level and overwhelming low lying areas, flooding them with seawater, not rainwater. sea level rise is specifically mentioned. Not local heavy rainfall or snowmelt from an El Niño , Godzilla or Mothra sized.... Essentially imposing the sort of widespread damage Superstorm Sandy imposed on parts of the Jersey Shore and New York City. Rain that fell in the Hudson River drainage had no part in the flooding. FEMA is generating those sorts of vulnerability maps for many coastal areas for multiple purposes including guiding insurance coverage and local planning.