http://online.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-will-voters-roll-the-dice-1403799135 The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday predicted that fruit and vegetable prices will rise by 5% to 6% this year due largely to lower production in California's Central Valley. While California has just suffered one of its driest years on records, extreme environmental policies deserve much of the blame for the forecasted spike. California produces more than half of the country's fruits and vegetables, including the bulk of its lettuce, berries and tomatoes. Federal water regulators this year slashed farmers' water allocations to zero due to a prolonged bout of dry weather. As a result, farmers had to triage their crops and pump groundwater. Many reserved their limited groundwater supply for high-value nuts and fruit trees, scaling back production of row crops. All in all, California farmers fallowed about 500,000 acres of land this year. But here's the thing: much of this land could have been productive had the state stored up more water from wet years and not flushed 800,000 acre-feet into the San Francisco Bay last winter and an additional 445,000 acre-feet this spring to safeguard the endangered delta smelt. That's enough for roughly three million households to live on and to irrigate 600,000 acres of land. The problem is that federal regulators, prodded by environmental groups, have ruled that pumping at the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta threatens the smelt. Ergo, under the Endangered Species Act, the three-inch fish must be protected at almost any economic cost. After 300 smelt were ensnared in the pumps last winter, regulators ordered that a deluge of melted snowpack—which threatened to flood northern California reservoirs—be discharged into the ocean rather than exported to farmers in the Valley.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24904396/california-drought-whats-causing-it As California struggles through a run of historically dry weather, most residents are looking at falling reservoir levels, dusty air and thirsty lawns. But meteorologists have fixed their attention on the scientific phenomenon they say is to blame for the emerging drought: a vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, so stubborn that one researcher has dubbed it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge." Like a brick wall, the mass of high pressure air has been blocking Pacific winter storms from coming ashore in California, deflecting them up into Alaska and British Columbia, even delivering rain and cold weather to the East Coast. Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads. "It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go." The current high-pressure ridge is even stronger and more persistent than a similar ridge that parked over the Pacific Ocean during the 1976-77 drought, one of the driest in the 20th century.
Algore isn't. Any astrologer will do. As long as they agree with the "consensus". Anyhow, the real point of this is that we get these droughts in California from time to time. El Niño. La Niña. I've lived here since the 80s and we've had a bunch of drought years. I remember going from the Bay Area to a customer location in culver city in the early 90s. Up north, we let our lawns go brown. In culver city, they were watering the medians in the office parks. So this time the media is hyping the drought and climate change alarmism, but the drought would be pretty much the normal kind if not for wasting all that fresh water due to a few hundred fish. The fish live, but entire family businesses are going under because of the government intervention. It's not caused by global warming. It's caused by government policy, diverting the water to where it's already wet. Just crazy.
Yeah. Before government started interfering, the waters would just naturally be stored up in giant natural lakes behind giant natural dams in wet years. barfo
I wonder how the smelt survived before the damns on the Sacramento were built in the late 30's. That river use to dry to nothing so the old timers say. Perhaps the modern biologist have erred again.
I wonder what Al Gore's lawn in Montecito looks like? Pretty damn green is my guess. I'll bet the pool is full as well.
And before the government got involved in the food supply, we weren't so obese. Your government at work.
For American palates, yes. Overripe fruit, bursting with jammy berry flavor. Not as structured and not terribly complex. Wine that will peak in its early years. That's what the general American pallet desires. For that, yes. So, the vintage will likely get solid scores (because the reviewers put everything on the California scale), and the wines should sell well, but for big wine enthusiasts, I am frankly not terribly excited for the 14.5-15% Oregon Pinot Noir.
You're like my friend in college... he was from Connecticut, and every time we went out for pizza, he'd just complain about Pizza In Oregon.
Here are some pretty shocking before and after drought photo's. http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexnaidus/california-drought-images#1574oan
The pictures are deceiving. From the OP: 1.25M acre feet of fresh water dumped into the ocean. That water would have/should have made much of the state look green from satellite and filled the reservoirs, etc.
Typical libertarian whining about what government should have done to make things better for them. When will you learn to store your own water instead of relying on the government to do it for you? barfo