(no subject)

[elessa]

this past spring as i made the decision to leave southern california i had a few discussions with my brother about my reasoning.

it would appear that one of the reasons for leaving may (not necessarily will)come to fruition.

California cuts water deliveries to cities, farms

The Department of Water Resources announced it will deliver just 15 percent of the amount that local water agencies throughout California request every year.

15% of the water requested and used per year is all that will be delivered. if there isn't a significant snow pack and rain to fill reservoirs look for farmers to be leaving fields fallow which will in turn cause the price of groceries to increase even more. last year the state delivered 35% of the amount requested.

cities may have to consider implementing the rationing of water. i know that san diego did well in 1993 with educating people to cut back on water by 10%, however consider the increase of population which has occurred in california since that time. conservation will need to be much greater in order to have enough water for everyone. definitely no lawn watering or car washing will again be par for the course.

the spectre of fire and the amount of water resources which are lost in putting them out is depressing. it is a horrible cycle. drought causes fires to be more frequent. water from reservoirs and lakes is needed to snuff them. the very water also needed for farming and human consumption.

among my reasons for leaving SoCal besides the cost becoming prohibitive to remain there, the chaos which could erupt among the masses due to a lack of water, high food prices, high unemployment, and other economic depression crept into my addled brain. does it only happen in movies and books? i suppose we will know by the end of 2009 if there isn't a healthy rain/snowfall this winter.

yeah, yeah. i am a pessimistic alarmist. i hope i am proven wrong and there is another miracle march.

for more info, here is the site of the california department of water resources

Comments

[muzadi.livejournal.com]

Interesting. That is one of the reasons I have thought about moving north, in fact.

[elessa.livejournal.com]

my bro and i discussed the scenario at length. the what if people went nuts and mob mentality overruled civility. how do you leave the los angeles area? which direction do you go? what do you take?

maybe we are crazy, but in this day and age who knows. the spectre of water rationing and millions of people who don't give a rat's backside didn't sit well with me.

i read an article a year ago by a hydrologist who had been studying west of the mississippi. in reality what the climate and water situation is currently is how it has been historically for millenia. it is returning to being a high and low desert. the last 125 years has been a fluke with having had as much rain and snow as it has. it just happened to coincide with mass migrations and settlement.

there are a number of water rights issues coming up, such as the one i wrote about a week or so ago on the colorado river near mexico.

also, the water surplus allocation from the colorado have been cut back since 2003 to southern california.

i personally wasn't comfortable living there any longer.

[stmarc.livejournal.com]

My wife and I evolved a plan many years ago for what to do in case of civil disorder or natural disaster, where to go if we were apart, and so forth. It didn't take long. Copies of it are in the e-bags we both keep in our personal vehicles. It is an enormous comfort.

Regarding California, I do not see "water riots." The water will run out slowly enough that people will just leave and go somewhere else where it is more available. Civil disorder from lack of freshwater could happen, but it will be because of catastrophic failure caused by an earthquake or something, not mere depletion.

If you want to read a "Things Fall Apart" story which is fairly analogous to present trendlines, I might recommend Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. We have enough technology that there will probably be some "haves" for many decades to come, as opposed to Kunstler or Rawles' more econ-apocalyptic projections, but things will not get better, things will get worse, failing discontinuities like practical fusion power or the Singularity.

When I am feeling optimistic - which is rarer and rarer - I often reflect that unlimited energy would solve about 90% of our problems. Need clean water? With free electricity you can purify all the water you want and pump it anywhere you need it. Pollution? There's NO pollutant you can't break down into something harmless - and even useful - with enough energy to apply to the situation. Need food? Unlimited clean water + unlimited growlights + energy to crack air and generate nitrites for fertilizers = all the hydroponic food you want, and power for transport to get it where it needs to be. Need resources? There are oceans of water orbiting Saturn, all the iron you could ever want on Mars, seas of hydrocarbons on Titan. Free power means ground-based laser boost and The Martian Way-type reaction ships with constant-acceleration drives and the solar system is ours!

We are so close. We could coast in on fumes and glory, we really, really could. But time has almost caught us.

[elessa.livejournal.com]

the discussion of rioting was in relation to the water shortage in the situation of natural disaster. i think it would take a large calamity to cause the unrest, but as been shown prior in l.a. there is simmering on the surface a tension waiting to break.

as for solving part of the water shortage the people there have the ability, but not the inclination. they have voted down and protested numerous attempts over the last twenty years to build saline filtration plants and sewage "toilet to tap" plants. stupidity...

the reasoning against the desalinization plants was cost. thing is now it will cost far more than when discussed in the late 1980s and again in the 1990s. what really gets me is that water is already filtered at sewage treatment plants and reused. the toilet to tap is an extension of it that is even more filtered, but scaremongers riled up the populace that it would be drinking bacteria.

[stmarc.livejournal.com]

You are a pessimistic alarmist only because you have an ability that most humans do not have: you understand that growth is inherently a short-term phenomenon. If you doubt me, consider that most people can't or won't understand the parable of the Bacteria in the Bottle.

http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/pop/bacteria/index.php

Incidentally, there is a little tossaway discussion in Farmer in the Sky about what it means for a place to be good habitat for humans. One participant points out that most of California is, in its "natural" state, quite hostile to human beings and could not support anything like its present population if not for the constant application of high technology. This comes as quite a revelation to the other participant. It's very prescient.

M

[elessa.livejournal.com]

its funny. i only say or write things that i find concerning because i care about my friends who may be affected. in 2005 and 2006 i tried to have discussions about the real estate and mortgage markets collapsing, but no one thought what i was saying could happen. now i see precisely what i said would happen with regard to foreclosures and falling housing values. no, i didn't have any idea the banks would become nationalised.

quite a few of the sci-fi writers are also futurists with a pretty good grasp on possibilities. i know have i listened to david brin talk a number of times of the scenarios now unfolding in california.

[descendingchaos.livejournal.com]

upon first glance, I thought "the sky is falling." I think there are a lot of things to be concerned about but living in fear just feels like a bad way to live. It is good to have one's eyes open though and not bury our heads in the sand. At least you are in a safer place if the zombie invasion breaks out. Well, unless it happens up there first.

[elessa.livejournal.com]

no, it isn't that the sky is falling. to me it is more a head's up that there _may_ be significant lifestyle changes due to water shortages.

when i drove through northern california this summer to reach the pacific northwest, i drove through the siskiyou mountains where mt. shasta is located. there is a lake. or i should say was. when i drove through there in late 2004 it was very low. this year when i drove through it did not even exist. nada.

people who live in california need to assess their water usage.

for me, the costs of living there were becoming far too much. with a water shortage of the magnitude the dept of water resources is preparing for there will be less planting. california farmers supply a very high percentage of the produce to this country and around the world. the price of groceries in a year on top of the other rising costs there simply are too high for a singleton like me to be able to pay.

[stmarc.livejournal.com]

Scott Adams is gloomy (as usual.) His latest predictions:

C.L.: We are doing nonstop election coverage this month. Any thoughts on whether there will be an election?

S.A.: There will be an election, followed by rioting, the complete unraveling of society, and, I assume, a zombie problem.

[elessa.livejournal.com]

i love scott adams! i got to see him at a hewlett packard conference once as the keynote speaker.

[stmarc.livejournal.com]

I read both "Dilbert" and his blog every day. The blog is well worth reading even if you don't like "Dilbert." There's a link to it on the dilbert.com site.

Speaking of zombies, I quit playing WoW last week because of the utterly idiotic zombie plague and its indication that while the game was fun, the people running it have large lumps of Gorgonzola cheese where you and I have brains. (I'd only been playing two weeks so it's not like I had a big emotional investment.) I went on the WoW forums to see if I was just being oversensitive (as usual) or if others also objected to it.

It went both ways. On the pro side, there was a lot of really ridiculous stuff about how "of course you can't opt out, it's a zombie plague, could you opt out of a real zombie plague?*"

My response was, "You're allowed to use real bullets on real zombies. A bullet from a real Level 1 Gun will kill a real Level 70 zombie dead. I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy a real zombie plague much more than I enjoyed this one."

M

*If this doesn't make sense, I'll offer the short explanation that when you create a WoW character, you can pick whether or not you want to participate in player vs. player combat. Regardless of your setting, during the plague any player who had been zombified could attack any other player, and that player retained all the combat benefits of their original level, which meant that there were dozens of Level 70 zombies running around killing my Level 15 character with one hit and who I could not so much as touch. It made Resident Evil look like Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

[elessa.livejournal.com]

it makes sense. i don't play WoW, but i am part of the development team for a text based game with PvP. i know how unfair it is to newer players who come against longer term/more powerful players. the constant killing and set backs in exp or whatever is needed to advance tends to discourage them. if you want to maintain a player base you have to provide a mechanism for opting out of draining.

as for dilbert, oh hell yes, i read the strip everyday. the blog not so much. i probably should move it higher on the list of what i read daily.

[stmarc.livejournal.com]

Which game?

[elessa.livejournal.com]

legend of the green dragon

unfortunately as of this moment there is an error on the dev server and my co-admin is out to sea with no access to the plesk panel where he can fix it.

one of the coders uploaded some new files a couple days ago and borked it.

there are servers running with older code you can check out if interested. they are heavily modified with different modules. these are sites admin'd by some very creative and strong coders. they have taken the core code and expanded it.

the first one is standard slay the dragon. the second is a survivor island style game and the last is a castle siege game.

http://www.maddriovillage.com/
http://www.improbableisland.com/
http://www.castle-siege.net/