From Far Too Little to Far Too Much: California’s Water Woes
File this one under dire news…
Less than two weeks after the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who despite all my fears has turned out being one of the better governors out there — I may just yet change my mind about actors going into politics) declared a state of emergency in the state of California due to drought, a new report details that California will be hit hard by rising sea-levels in the next century.
Maybe California should start building more desalination plants like the proposed Poseidon desalination plant below.
First, it is true that California is suffering under drought conditions. The US Drought Monitor shows an improvement this past week, but that improvement is from “exceptional drought” to “severe drought.” Click here to go to a nifty 12-week animated drought map of the US. But for the month of January and February, the northern “ice cap” of the High Sierra’s presented a dangerous situation for a state that must support not only a huge population, but also a major agricultural region in the Central Valley.
California’s state water board is busy crunching the data on conservation efforts underway, including the Governor’s request for voluntary residential reduction in usage and if need be, the state may have to impose water rations.
Secondly, the Pacific Institute has released a report on possible impacts of sea-level rise on the California coastline, a popular spot for not only residential areas but also waste dumps. If the dire predictions of the IPCC come true, California could expect losses in the billions when it comes to property and infrastructure lost.
And the bad news is that most of the available climate models used by the Pacific Institute do not take the possible melting of Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets into account, so the estimates of a 1.5 meter rise in sea levels may be a little on the low side.
Geez, poor California…If an earthquake doesn’t destroy the coastline, global warming will.
governator, California, Schwarzenegger, drought, state of emergency, sea levels, global warming, agriculture, infrastructure, climate change, Greenland, Antarctica, water, rationing, Pacific Institute, High Sierras, earthquake
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