California Budget and IOUs

Most Californians already know the following, though it doesn't hurt them to review this:


The budget (and other problems caused by California's liberal policies, including its impending bankruptcy) aren't the only things Californians are facing right now.

What about the drought? There was a bad drought there in the late 1970s, but there has now been a multi-year drought and serious fires are currently an all-year threat, not limited to growing to a peak at the end of the dry season. There already have been serious fires, with more to come. But even more important is the water shortage resulting from the drought. All but two(?) counties are disaster areas because what matters with water and water use in addition to the huge metro population (facing water use restrictions) is the enormous agricultural presence in California.

Some stimulus money is likely to go toward some long-desired tweaks and additions to state water transfer and other water projects, and stimulus or other bailout money may go to aid destressed farms in California (which aren't limited to political targets like agribusinesses and heavy-water-use crops like rice). Most people don't realize that even near 2010, with its huge growing metro population, California is still a leader in the USA in all kinds of categories of agricultural crops and crop production (and is highly dependent on irrigation, i.e., on a water supply).

We're getting an El Nino shift now. While this may reduce the hurricane threat this year, bear in mind what a substantial El Nino can do, such as the one that struck the West Coast in 1982. Bear it in mind in particular given the drought and what that means not only for fire risk, but landslide risk in storms (as well as in earthquakes), especially with land that's not only dry but barren from being struck by fire. Don't be surprised if more natural disasters strike California in addition to the economic and political disasters.

I'm one native who is glad I'm not there currently.

I've regretted the liberal aversion to proper development not only of power generation and transmission, and of securing oil and gas supplies (including Californian LNG facilities), as well as other related failures -- the Monterey Bay area should have ben developed into another national-class-size metropolitan area, complete with a world-class shipping port using the underwater deep canyon as part of an already-there shipping channel, for example. But what we may see nevertheless in the future with water supplies is a growth of the State Water Project (putting parts of Central and Southern California still not on it, on it), as well as other new water transfer projects and attempts to procure or secure more water supplies in the mountains. Even the underwater tunnel concept may be revisited someday if it is needed.

[Underwater tunnel bringing fresh water from Alaska, "plugged into" the California State Water Project]

http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1992/9203/9...

It also merits thought in passing as well that while "global warming" is largely the rationale for one of the most massive and disgusting political movements and campaigns we have seen in ages, if there is warming to any true significant extent, it means a shifting northward of the high pressure zones, the winds, and the climate zones as well as the weather, extending the length of the dry season and shortening the wet season (and changing snow to rain) all along the West Coast to Alaska. That means the kind of droughts we see in California occasionally are somewhat like what the state could experience normally in the future, which in turn means a permanent drought, great reduction of snowpack and water supplies, and an even greater need later (above and beyond that spurned by population growth) for water.

(No, the recent drought years itself, like summer 1988, can't instinctively be blamed on global warming!)

Have a nice day, y'all in California and elsewhere.

(Continued drought -- widespread fires, extending onto low ground, the Valley and metro areas -- floods like in 1982 this winter, triggering landslides or loosening the earth -- at which point the Big One strikes.)

Don't forget "The Big One"!!

Like we are even remotely prepared for that. Let the looting begin!