Michael Ramirez for January 18, 2023

Is this true?

The history of science and civilization is the effort to control nature. We are frustrated but should not be surprised that it does not submit.

Rivers run into the oceans? Who knew?

Daughter #2 and SIL#2 lived in Merced, CA, for several years while SIL#2 was with the National Park Service at Yosemite.

When we visited, there were any number of riverbeds that were completely dry. The ground itself is hardpan – completely impervious to water, little different from blacktop. So of course the rain just washes away.

The only way to replenish reservoirs and aquifers is by steady precipitation at low rates.

Which is what California hasn’t had in millennia.

fusilier

James 2:24

So Ramirez wants California to focus on capturing water in the midst of a crisis. Then he could say that they don’t care about people as much as the environment.

See Sovan’s comment about smelt for an example of the latter.

Same with every state.

Good lord! I guess you don’t have to know anything to be a critic. Most of the water EVERY WHERE on the planet winds up in the ocean.

California has an large system of reservoirs. But they can not hold all the water from winter storms because most of the water that fills them up comes from the snow the storms leave on the mountains. If we allow them to fill up now, they will overflow when the snow melts in the warmer weather. That can be disastrous. A few years ago, the Oroville Dam, one of the largest in the USA nearly collapsed when water from the snowpack filled it up too fast.

There’s this thing elementary school students study called “the Water Cycle”. It doesn’t have wheels, Michael. You should check it out.

But you do raise a good point. If California is going to keep getting blasted by atmospheric rivers they need to find a way to both protect people and save that fresh water.

Unfortunately that may inconvenience certain types of people who will yell and scream about excessive government regulation.

…think ‘snail darter’

Funny thing, Ramirez. The largest area in California that would constitute (nearly) level ground is in the Central Valley. Farmers could allow their fields to be flooded and thus not necessarily drain so much water into the ocean. It would help get water back into the acquifers. But they don’t let fields flood.

Buildings (of which California has a few) mean the ground underneath does not absorb rain much and it runs off into streets and into drains, etc. We might try the Bermuda solution. Roofs in Bermuda are made with what is essentially limestone. The gutters feed into underground cisterns. The limestone surfaces help keep the water potable. Of course retrofitting houses in this manner would be expensive, even if you only dug out cisterns and did not change the roof (where you might prefer to have solar panels for every day as opposed to limestone for now and then).

But people and businesses are short-sighted. It took years of intermittent floods for the large cache basins that now exist in Southern California to get built. One section of John McPhee’s “The Control of Nature” deals with So. California fires and floods. Great line, “It always rains most where there was a fire, earlier.” That’s not always true, but often is. The mountains are steep, they don’t hold water well. It runs down to the streams and rivers, taking debris with it. A line in the book mentions that boulders are found 20 miles from the mountains. Well, the cache basins take care of some of that, and Caltrans the rest..

Minor things like converting areas along roads to be “sponges” and absorb water are underway. Retrofitting cities is expensive and we know how much the cons like spending by government agencies, so Ramirez is just another hypocrite.

MR’s another attempt to mis-lead. Some are attempting to conserve. https://ktla.com/news/local-news/los-angeles-county-collects-33-billion-gallons-of-rainwater-in-recent-storms

Rainwater is definitely useful. However, it is the snowpack that is the most important. And, for the first time in years, the snowpack is significant.

In May 2022, CA started on the largest dam removal effort ever. 81 dams to be destroyed.

Who needs water?

Thank god the snail darters are safe. Just think what all of those reservoirs that would have captured all this unwanted rain would have done for our state.

ALL water goes to the ocean ( you …. ….. )

This is unfortunate. The state has not prepared for the complete ruining of our climate by polluters and their political enablers.

So, going back to the 60s California had plans laid down to construct dams, reservoirs and canals to harvest and store water to provide water to the state going into the 2000s and beyond. The last dam they constructed was over 40 years ago. How do I know? I grew up in the Mojave desert about 70 miles north of LA and I remember the Feather River Project digging a canal just north of our town bringing water from northern Cal. to the south. My dad was on the local water board responsible for management of the regional dam, reservoirs and water allocations to farmers, businesses and towns. He told me of those plans, so what happened? Easy. Liberal Democrats and environmentalists took power and cancelled most of those plans.

Let us consider the math. 32 trillion gallons of rain fell on California in the recent rains. (Fox News, but I believe it)

How many gallons in a cubic meter? 264.172

So that rain amounted to 121,133,201,096.255 cubic meters of water. Lets round down to 120 billion cubic meters.

! cubic kilometer of water is 1 billion cubic meters. So the volume of water is 120 cubic kilometers.

Suppose you want the water to only be 1 meter deep when stored. Then you need 120,000 sq km of area. The area of California is about 424,000 sq km. You would need 28% of the state for storage.

OK make the water 10 meters deep, now you only need 2.8% Still a lot.

A 100 meter deep Reservoir (more than one really) means 0.28% of California or 1200 sq km. That’s equivalent to a lake 30 km by 40 km and 100 meters deep.

Now you can’t realistically create just one such reservoir because the rain is spread over a vast area and pumping it all to only place is out of the question. Making reservoirs 100 meters deep means they have to be in mountain valleys. That means pumping water from the “flats” of the Central Valley to the hills. Cover the canals with solar panels and use the electricity power the pumps.

Again, that is simply not realistic. You need many reservoirs placed to minimize transport (canals eat up land area as well as reservoirs). You end up having to dedicate a lot of land to water storage and transport..

BUT HERE IS THE REAL KICKER!

Those 32 trillion gallons fell in a very short time. Redistributing it must occur on an equal or lesser time to prevent loss. That means pumps, pumps, pumps and more pumps! That means that water will be flowing much faster than in the canal systems we now have. That means a lot of power to move that water. And deep canals.

All that power, and all that land and all those pumps, canals and reservoirs mean a huge cost. And such events are not (yet) annual. So everyone has been content to not spend a huge HUGE! amount of money.

@Ramireztoons, need to keep up…this is only partially true.

1)Where did the rain/snow fall?https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/01/11/california-storms-maps-rainfall-floods/

2) Current state of California reservoirs? Almost AVERAGEhttps://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain

3) Drought monitor for comparing two weekshttps://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/CompareTwoWeeks.aspxType = State, select Californialeft = Jan 10, 2023right = Nov 1, 2022 or any other date you would like to check

AND there was a tremendous amount of water that feel in hills and mountains near the Pacific for which the natural channels do NOT LEAD to a reservoir. AND some of the reservoirs have restrictions where they must open the gates so that if there is MORE rain they can capture it before the towns and fields below don’t flood.

Guess Ramirez just watched “Chinatown” for the first time.