California Drought Update
by Patrick Ruckert
September 3, 2015
Note to Readers
I am still on the road this week, so, like last week, another very brief update.
They Won’t Stop, so Neither Can We
The headlines that flashed across the world this week on the month of July results of urban water use cuts was like this one in the San Jose Mercury News, “California Drought: Urban users cut their water use by whopping 31.3 percent in July heat.”
As I have stressed a number of times, urban water use is 10 percent of statewide use, with 50 percent reserved for environmental use and 40 percent for agriculture. The massive propaganda by the state and other officials on cutting urban use is nothing but the manipulation of the population to accept the idea that nothing can be done about the water crisis except conserve it. This is right in line with the general environmentalist idea that there are limited resources, and that human creativity and a mission sense to create new resources should not even be considered.
To the contrary, mankind has always created new resources; that is how humans progressed from hunting and gathering to today’s world in which virtually all we need and use has been created by mankind. And to do so, mankind must always be increasing the energy-flux density of the productive process, especially that of energy supplies. And no sector of the economy uses more energy that providing water and food to the population.
The New Paradigm show this week demonstrates that principle in the field of nuclear processes, with the focus on Fission, Fusion, and the alternative of collapse:
New Paradigm Show – Fission, Fusion, and Collapse
https://larouchepac.com/20150902/new-paradigm-show-fission-fusion-and-collapse
Why do you insist that we must go nuclear? Isn’t fission power outdated and dangerous? Is the universe winding down and dying? Vernadsky poses a “riddle” of how it is that thought, which is not a form of energy, changes material process; but why is that mysterious? And could something like the 1859 Carrington Event happen again?
The following piece from EIRNS on August 28, summarizes both the problem with the focus on conservation and the alternative policy:
Dark Brown Death–California Urbanites Cut Water Use by a Third from Summer 2013; Exceed Brown’s Edict for 25% Cut
Aug. 28 (EIRNS)–California’s State Water Resources Control Board announced yesterday that the July water use by urban entities (towns of varying sizes) in the state, was overall 31 percent less than in July 2013 (the base month for comparison), which exceeds the 25 percent cut mandated by Gov. Jerry Brown. In June–the first month his edict went into effect, usage was also down 27.3 percent over same month, 2013.
If such consumption cuts were made as a contingency, while a crash effort was underway–involving nuclear desalination, deploying pilot and permanent ionization systems, building new conveyance lines and so on–to provide plentiful, “new” water supplies, the state would be on course for a productive future.
But as it is, the future is dark Brown death. The state’s water “conservation” targets, as the State Water Board spokesman said yesterday, will “save” 1.2 million acre feet by February, 2016, but then what? There is no mobilization for more water, just for cutting use. Brown’s administration this week began
taking bids for building its proposed two tunnels to channel water from the northern Sacramento River basin, southward into the parched Central Valley. But what if run-off dries up?
There are 405 urban water entities in the state (ranging from Los Angeles and San Francisco, to smaller, rural water districts). As of July, 290 of them are complying and reporting their water “savings” to state officials, who in Spring, assigned varying rates of mandatory cuts, ranging from 8 to 36 percent. So far, officials have not yet started fining and penalizing scoff-law localities.
