The media neglects to mention an essential fact about California, so I will note the state is home to three deserts: the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin Desert.
Unfortunately, city planners and other “experts” failed to account for the limited water resources as the population expanded during the relatively wet period in California’s climate history. Furthermore, the state’s politicians have neglected to develop and maintain the state’s critical water infrastructure (and are poised to initiate a vast dam removal project).
Now, Californians are enduring water restrictions. The following guidelines from Los Angles offer an example of the inanity.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power placed restriction on their customers in May by reducing lawn watering to two-days per week in hopes of reducing water usage by 35%.The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to about 40% of the state’s population, declared a water shortage emergency last month and called for millions of people to reduce watering their yards to just one day a week.Street addresses in odd numbers will be limited to watering on Mondays and Fridays, while those ending in even numbers can water on Thursdays and Sundays.Those who don’t comply with the new rules will initially receive a warning but could see escalating fines for continuing violations, Martin Adams, the LADWP’s general manager and chief engineer, told the Times.
One of the areas hit hard by the drought is the state’s farms. This is especially troubling as we enter an era of food scarcity concerns. Commenting on the poor state handling of the drought and its impact on California agriculture, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blasted for mishandling the problem during his time in office.
“I think Gavin Newsom has failed when it comes to water,” McCarthy, who represents a district in California’s Central Valley, said….[F]armers’ yields and, consequently, their businesses, are suffering, said Sam Parnagian, a third generation California Central Valley farmer. Over one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown in California, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.”You’ll go see tens of thousands of acres that used to have nuts, almonds, pistachios, and they’re just bare,” Parnagian told Fox News. “It’s just all dust.”
This is a grave matter, especially for those who love pasta and french fries. The poor planning and negligence in accommodating agricultural needs mean a looming tomato shortage.
California leads the world in production of processing tomatoes — the variety that gets canned and used in commercial kitchens to make some of the most popular foods. The problem is the worst drought in 1,200 years is forcing farmers to grapple with a water crisis that’s undermining the crop, threatening to further push up prices from salsa to spaghetti sauce.“We desperately need rain,” Mike Montna, head of the California Tomato Growers Association, said in an interview. “We are getting to a point where we don’t have inventory left to keep fulfilling the market demand.”Lack of water is shrinking production in a region responsible for a quarter of the world’s output, which is having an impact on prices of tomato-based products. Gains in tomato sauce and ketchup are outpacing the rise in US food inflation, which is at its highest in 43 years, with drought and higher agricultural inputs to blame.
Now climate “experts” are ranting about projections for a future disaster: California “mega-floods.”
A new study by Science Advances shows climate change has already doubled the chances of a disastrous flood happening in California in the next four decades. And experts say it would be unlike anything anyone alive today has ever experienced.Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA and a researcher involved in the study, describes a megaflood as, “a very severe flood event across a broad region that has the potential to bring catastrophic impacts to society in the areas affected.” He said a megaflood is similar to the 1,000-year flash flood events seen this summer in the St. Louis area and Kentucky, but across a much wider area, such as the entire state of California.These massive floods, which experts say would turn California’s lowlands into a “vast inland sea,” might have previously happened once in a lifetime in the state. But experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of these catastrophic disasters, causing them to occur more like every 25 to 50 years.
It’s scientific insanity, a condition that allows politicians to use “facts” to enact or ignore policies at will.
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