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Drought and Desertification: How Robots Might Help
Hallie Siegel writes Groundwater levels in California's Central Valley are down to historic lows and reservoirs have been depleted following four consecutive years of severe drought in the state. California is set to introduce water rationing in the coming weeks, and though the new rationing rules will focus on urban areas and not farms for the time being, they serve as a warning bell to farmers who will inevitably need to adapt to the effects of climate change on food production. John Payne argues that long term solutions are needed to help make agriculture drought resistant and looks at some of the ways that robotics might help.
Much of California is a mix of desert, grassland, and chaparral in its natural state. It wouldn't require any water or irrigation. The reason California has an insatiable appetite for water is because people insist on farming there, often with thirsty crops; and farming happens in California because water is effectively heavily subsidized. The solution to California's water problems is simple: have California farmers pay market rates for water and stop subsidizing farmers.
The severity of this current "drought" is largely due to the incompetent fools in Sacramento putting the environmental whackos agenda over the needs of human beings to eat, wash and water. No new reservoirs, no new aqueducts, and they have dramatically drained large reservoirs to provide an unprecedented environment for the "delta" smelt, which is just like every other smelt in the ocean but only able to live in semi salty delta waters. If we had had a bunch of conservatives running the state, we would have built a massive aquarium that the public could enjoy and filled it with a sustainable population of the delta smelt, and kept our reservoir levels high so that we would have potable water when we have a drought.
People forget that we live in a first wold country (despite the best efforts of the environmentalists) and the government still has a few things that they actually must provide and if they fuck it up, things can go very badly for them. Gray Davis fucked up electricity, and he got his ass handed to him. When we start seriously rationing water and people can't flush their toilets, Jerry "rainbow" Brown is going to get similar treatment. There are few things that can actually end civilized society, one is energy and one is water. Then we will get a republican elected, and they will do the above, build 10-20 more reservoirs, maybe pass a few laws requiring a public vote to divert water for environmental purposes, and if need be, build a big fucking aqueduct up to Oregon and Washington to pull down some of the 200 inches a year they get in western Oregon... The solution is technology and forward thinking, not the environmental whacko mud hut mentality that we have in office right now.
50% of CA water goes to environmentalism (salmon, etc), 40% to farms (watering the desert), and 10% to city (gotta have fancy lawns).
Putting everything on the table is a lot less expensive than some pork barrel pipeline. Or some fantasy silver bullet "science will save us!".