California's Drought Isn't Due To Global Warming, But Politics

IDB ^ | 02/15/2013

[SeekAndFind]

President Obama visited California's drought-hit Central Valley Friday, offering handouts and blaming global warming. But the state's water shortage is due to the left's refusal to deal with the state's water needs.

Following legislative action last month by Speaker John Boehner and California's Central Valley Representatives David Valadao, Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy, whose Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act was designed to resolve the long-standing problem of environmental water cutbacks that have devastated America's richest farmland, Obama is grandstanding in California, too.

His aim, however, is not a long-term solution for California's now-constant water shortages that have hit its $45 billion agricultural industry, but to preach about global warming. Instead of blaming the man-made political causes of California's worst water shortage, he's come with $2 billion in "relief" that's nothing but a tired effort to divert attention from fellow Democrats' dereliction of duty in using the state's water infrastructure.

The one thing that will mitigate droughts in California — a permanent feature of the state — is to restore the water flow from California's water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. That's just what House Bill 3964, which passed by a 229-191 vote last week, does.

But Obama's plan is not to get that worthy bill through the Senate (where Democrats are holding it up) but to shovel pork to environmental activists and their victims, insultingly offering out-of-work farmers a "summer meal plan" in his package.

"We are not interested in welfare; we want water," Nunes told IBD this week.

[FBD]

Good points. The water in the lake will come back. The farmland and the farmers might not, if run out of business due to lack of water.

[FBD]

What was your friend’s response to this letter?

[alrea]

There should be riots ever this. The solution is easy, short term, and has been done before.

[alrea]

they'll subsidize exactly the same way they are doing now using your tax dollars to feed, clothe, educate, and medicate their brainwashed children up to speed, you know, until things are "fair."

Makes more sense in 2014.

[morphing libertarian]

new water source in north san diego county

Instead of the high speed train we should be building 5-6 of these plants.

Here’s some info on desalinization

http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/desalination_report3.pdf

Carlsbad Cal is building a plant which is slated to open in 2016, 16 years after the proposal was approved by the city. Administrative hearings and court processes in which environmental groups got several bites of the apple trying to shoot it down.

It will suppjy up to 10% of the county’s water.

What happens to the salt?

The desalination plant typically uses three kilograms of seawater to produce 1 kilogram of fresh water. The extracted salt dissolves in the excess sea water used in the process to form so-called brine. The brine is returned to the sea where it is diluted again in its natural medium.

Can salt be recovered?

The usual desalination processes do not provide for such recovery. Whereas they concentrate seawater 1.5 times, recovery of salt would require seawater to be concentrated ten times. Under such conditions the first crystals would appear in the brine. This would require a lot of energy and cannot be justified on an economic standpoint. Today whenever a large surface area is available close to a sunny seashore, salt pans, which make use of solar energy, are still the best method of salt production.