Western USA Drought

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tonyedgecombe
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by tonyedgecombe »

@Riggerjack Perhaps your politicians should stop spending their time telling people how bad government is and instead try and fix these issues which seem to be peculiar to America.

Riggerjack
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Riggerjack »

Well, Tony, that's an idea. To hear them talking about it, one would think it's on the agenda.

Personally, I don't think it's possible, regardless of who holds office. The issues we have, we have inherited. They were created when trying to fix other problems, and those solutions were made using assumptions of unlimited growth, and management techniques that peaked at photocopies and printing presses.

We can't solve problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

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Seppia
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Seppia »

Riggerjack wrote:
Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:42 am
My issue is scale, control, miscommunication and misdirection. All of these factors come into play when government and corporations rub together. Italy simply doesn't have the scale to run into the problems I am talking about, at the level I am talking about. What little it has, seems like more than it can deal with. But I am an ignorant American, and only know what I have been told about Italy.
I do not understand. I was talking about Europe, which is roughly comparable in size, population and climate to the USA.
Riggerjack wrote:
Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:42 am
As to whether the state should be investing in projects that take 30 years to break even, this just shows me I don't understand your point. That now it has broken even tells me it was far from an ideal resource allocation, so far from ideal, in fact, that government was required to make it happen. You wouldn't have spent YOUR money that way, how does being forced to spend your money make it a better investment? Everything is a trade-off. What wasn't done with those Euros?
This is where we fundamentally seem to disagree.
Subsidizing services for those who cannot pay for them is the whole point of paying taxes.
If you had to charge people for public road usage, most people could not afford them.
You talk about the $9 ride that has an operating cost of $54, but what about the $0 roads people in the USA use every day? these do have a cost right?
How long did it take the government to break even on the construction of the highway network in the USA (assuming they do)?

Riggerjack
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Riggerjack »

No, nobody breaks even on roads. We pay a consumption tax on gas at national, state,and local rates, and a bit comes from tolls, but out west, we aren't very tolerant of tolls...
I do not understand. I was talking about Europe, which is roughly comparable in size, population and climate to the USA.
Well, yes and no.

The EU has several cultural/historical factors that make a difference.

First, each nation was complete before the Union, so the amount of central solutions is limited by national interests in ways that are foreign to Americans. Think of how much gets done at the EU level, which would be roughly comparable to Federal level, here. And how smooth and efficient those regulations are. Structurally, the EU is similar to the way the states would be set up had the civil war gone the other way. The EU is inherently a more localized structure than what we use.

Also, post war Europe was shaped by different forces (rebuilding is different from building). Our lives are far more centralized, built on systems designed around industrial scale, and designed to be administered at that scale. At a time when the advantage of efficiency of scale was the biggest idea around, and when we hadn't worked out the costs of logistics and coordination.

We now have the tech to allow for smaller, more efficient, better coordinated systems. But we choose to pretend the two choices are a centralized capitalist system, or a centralized socialist system. Like there's a lot of difference... :roll:

Try to remember that I was the one beating up on our system in detail, to start this derailing...

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by ZAFCorrection »

http://theconversation.com/in-fire-pron ... nce-119451

Someone proposed the affordable care act for wildfire insurance. Also like the affordable care act, detailed cost controls are to be specified at a later date.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@ZAFCorrection: A cost controls measure that would work, imo, is to handle it like the they are starting to handle it like coastal cities in the SE in path of hurricanes: take the buyouts or risk your livelihood on being uninsured. Reason for that is at a certain point it becomes a burden for the state to actually support these problems especially as environmental disasters become more common.

Campitor
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Campitor »

The US helps subsidize European defense and healthcare. Without the USA helping in this respect, many social programs may not exist in Europe. It's easy to have universal <insert socially desirable program here> when the military defense and pharmaceutical/biomedical R&D is being subsidized by US activity. If Europe suddenly had to foot 100% of its R&D and NATO budget, would they still be able to provide the services to their citizens without any cutbacks or increase in taxes when faced with a 400 to 500 billion increase in defense spending and a 97 to 150 billion medical R&D hole?

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/ ... -u-s-help/
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17317/

In regards to the Western drought, my western brethren have my sympathies. But if I'm being honest, the west is an arid/semi-arid region and has always been susceptible to droughts and fires. I live in the northeast and I expect blizzards, northeasters, and black ice. Droughts happen in the west and Blizzards happen in the east. Either we build the needed infrastructure to weather these events (pun intended) or we drink a cup of stoic-juice and work to mitigate it by means within our individual control.

George the original one
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by George the original one »

Campitor wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 12:31 am
But if I'm being honest, the west is an arid/semi-arid region and has always been susceptible to droughts and fires.
Man, that's news to those of us living in the temperate rain forest of western Oregon & Washington! My county averages 87" of rainfall per year.

George the original one
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by George the original one »

By the way, it's interesting to note how climate change is affecting annual rainfall amounts. Nice maps here: https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/ ... -us-states
https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/ ... cip-events

theanimal
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by theanimal »

They left out AK and HI. I can't speak for HI but Southcentral and southeast AK are experiencing less rain. Southeast experienced first official drought this year (note: this area is a rainforest!). Interior and Northern AK have higher rainfall totals.

Campitor
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Campitor »

George the original one wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:00 pm
Man, that's news to those of us living in the temperate rain forest of western Oregon & Washington! My county averages 87" of rainfall per year.
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/ ... tation.php - Depending where you live, average rain fall is 10". I know the Pacific Northwest contains one the largest temperate rain forests in the world but that doesn't negate the fact the most of the Western USA is an arid or semi arid zone: https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/ ... tation.php. Expect droughts and fires - its been happening for 3000 years.

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/E535:

Mean annual temperature (MAT) and summer drought (drought-area index, DAI) were summarized in a similar fashion to the charcoal data (see Methods) and also show a general downward trend, at least until the early 1800s (Fig. 2 A–D). The long-term decline in fire is also evident for the 1,500 y prior to the beginning of the joint record at 500 CE (Fig. 3). Superimposed on this trend are several large and generally parallel variations in biomass burning and fire frequency (i.e., “fire activity”) during the past 2,000 y (Fig. 2 C and D). Fire activity was high at 1000, 1400, and 1800 CE, and low at 900, 1600, and 1900 CE. The rise in fire at 1000 CE occurred at the beginning of the MCA, when temperatures (MAT) and drought area (DAI) were both high. Biomass burning remained high for at least two centuries during the MCA (from 750 to 1000 cal y CE), whereas fire frequency declined at 1100 CE. Another increase in fire activity occurred at the beginning of the LIA around 1400 CE, when drought increased rapidly. Biomass burning reached its late Holocene minimum during the LIA, and fire-episode frequency was also low at this time, although it is presently lower. The decline in fire activity during the LIA occurred as drought declined and temperatures reached their 1,500-y minimum (Fig. 2 E and F). Similar trends and centennial-scale variability in climate and fire until the 1800s suggests that baseline levels of fire activity in the West were predominantly controlled by climate.

And the wetness of your area won't protect you from the Cascade earthquake that hits Oregon every 500 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake.

Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA's Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, put it quite dramatically: "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast."[18]

Recent findings conclude that the Cascadia subduction zone is more complex and volatile than previously believed. In 2010, geologists predicted a 37 percent chance of an M8.2+ event within 50 years, and a 10 to 15 percent chance that the entire Cascadia subduction zone will rupture with an M9+ event within the same time frame.[19][20] Geologists have also determined the Pacific Northwest is not prepared for such a colossal quake. The tsunami produced could reach heights of 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 m).[21]


Nature is ruthless - stuff happens. Fires and droughts, blizzards and northeasters, floods and tornadoes. Everyone gets a turn in the pickle barrel.

Kylinne
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Kylinne »

George the original one wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:00 pm
Man, that's news to those of us living in the temperate rain forest of western Oregon & Washington! My county averages 87" of rainfall per year.
Not to mention that central California used to be all wetlands, as did large parts of SoCal - the Los Angeles basin was 14,000 acres of wetlands, with oaks and seasonal streams elsewhere. It didn't get a lot of rain, but there was huge runoff from the snowfall every year. It's why both were/are such huge farming area - there is/was a ton of snowmelt available. Of course, then they built a ton of dams and turned the rivers into concrete to control flow, and now the central valley is sinking up to half a foot a year from the depletion of the groundwater and most of the original wetlands and scrub oaks in SoCal are now parking lots.

Riggerjack
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Re: Western USA Drought

Post by Riggerjack »

central California used to be all wetlands, as did large parts of SoCal - the Los Angeles basin was 14,000 acres of wetlands, with oaks and seasonal streams elsewhere.
Well, this comes down to how one defines wetlands. But yes, our current and past farming and development practices are disastrous.

But I hear we can fix all of that with a high speed rail line. :twisted:

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