Calif. groundwater depletion could be catastrophic
By Tom Knudson, Sacramento Bee
LOS BANOS — Flat as a tabletop, the furrowed, brown farm fields east of this San Joaquin Valley town are some of the most productive on Earth.
Every spring, they are planted with a smorgasbord of crops that in one form or another are trucked to grocery stores across America, from fresh juicy tomatoes to freeze-dried onion flakes, honeydew melons to tortilla chips.
Now that bounty is threatened by a crisis of geological proportions: The land is sinking – crippling the region’s irrigation and flood control infrastructure and damaging aquifers that are buffers against climate change.
Nature, though, is not to blame. This problem is self-inflicted, driven by the frontier-style exploitation of the last unregulated resource in California: groundwater.
“We are looking at a material impact of a magnitude that is potentially catastrophic,” said Cannon Michael, a sixth-generation farmer who grows tomatoes, onions and other crops near Los Banos.
Today’s drama is only the latest chapter in a long-running saga of sinking. Three generations ago, so much groundwater was pumped from aquifers that half the valley sank like a giant pie crust, sagging 28 feet near Mendota and inflicting damage to irrigation canals, pipelines, bridges, roads and other infrastructure.
What stopped it were two massive government-funded irrigation efforts – the federal Central Valley Project and California State Water Project – that flooded the region with water from distant California mountains, relieving pressure on the area’s natural underground water supply. But the fix was temporary. Today, drought, climate change and other forces have unleashed a new era of groundwater pumping, triggering some of the worst land subsidence ever seen in California. Near Michael’s farm, the valley is predicted to drop 17 feet by 2060.
78% of the world has been suffering with below normal temperatures for the past 28 months, and that glo-bull warming hoax disappeared 16 years ago as the planets temps have plummeted. So the nomenclature of the left is now “Climate Change”.
Well, they’re right as the climate is in a constant state of flux.
Bitter, where do you get this stuff? There are sources to validate anyone’s opinion regardless of the truth. Take how American public schools rate against foreign schools for example. If you believe American schools are fine, there are outlets which conclude that our schools failures are exaggerated. But any scientific comparison shows American schools rank amongst the worst of any industrialized nation. Same can be said for the global warming issue, there are media outlets to validate any opinion. But the overwhelming consensus from climate scientists is that anthropogenic causes are warming the planet. Are these two topics related? Perhaps a poorly educated populous is easily duped by the media to ignore science? So really, where are you coming up with this?
“28 months”
Weather vs. climate.
You still don’t know that. What is so difficult?
If you go to 100 doctors and 97 say you have cancer, 3 do not. Do you rely on the opinion of the 3?
Yes. Cancer is a global socialist liberal conspiracy that wants to make Al Gore the Pope of the earth.
-science.