jdreyer wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 18:18:

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:45:
Closest I've even come to religion is The Tao. I'm big fan of it. And Lao Tzu is a big fan of humility.

So, I think what you're saying is you're still struggling to adhere to the precepts?

Ol' Mac Davis sang it best....It's Hard to be Humble

Sepharo wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:04:

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 11:50:
That's why they always say, the wise man walks with his head bowed, humble like the dust.

Seriously who are you?
First you're okay with e-sports after a decade of bashing them and now you're saying a wise man should be humble?
New girlfriend or something?

He just forgets the random crap he says day to day, I've seen him have wildly differing opinions on the same issue (vaccination, government, ebola etc) in a 24 hour period.

The retirement crisis article is interesting, Canadians have a similar problem. Everyone has their eggs in one basket which is real estate. People aren't saving anymore, they're counting on going through the same unprecedented growth spurt that the boomers had with their homes. A piece of shit bungalow in Toronto sells for a million dollars, the market is ridiculously overvalued to the point of a bust cycle being long overdue. Your average Canadian has paltry RRSP (think 401k), some basic CPP/OAS benefits and is counting on selling their home at a ridiculous price to carry them through retirement. Shit is going to really hit the fan for these people if the cycle closes out when they need to retire. It's even worse for the 20-30 crowd who got a mortgage when the rates were 2.99% instead of the more realistic 5-10% we'll be seeing in the next 5 years. Those people are already debt heavy from poor consumer spending and likely won't even be able to afford the renewal.

People just aren't living within their means anymore, we've made debt too easy.

This comment was edited on Mar 23, 2015, 19:46.

xXBatmanXx wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:32:
The problem being you are farming an area with great amounts of water and that was never intended to be.

The majority of Cali's water for agro has come from the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which up until the last few years has been an reliable water source. They've had off years in the past, but never three in a row. Anthropomorphic global warming is really screwing things up, increasing in both length and severity naturally occurring phenomena.

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:45:
Closest I've even come to religion is The Tao. I'm big fan of it. And Lao Tzu is a big fan of humility.

So, I think what you're saying is you're still struggling to adhere to the precepts?

Please keep and eye out for cheap xbox live and psn memberships. I need to re-up both of those soon.

(looks like i missed a chance this weekend for 29.99)

Thanks.

No more lawns.

Residential use is basically not significant to the problem in any way, it's less than 20% of the total water used in the state.

This comment was edited on Mar 23, 2015, 18:10.

Sepharo wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:04:

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 11:50:
That's why they always say, the wise man walks with his head bowed, humble like the dust.

Seriously who are you?
First you're okay with e-sports after a decade of bashing them and now you're saying a wise man should be humble?
New girlfriend or something?

Who said I'm ok with e-Sports? If that's your boat, float it. I still think they're ridiculous however, and watching them even more so. But we all have our crosses to bear, n'est pas?

Closest I've even come to religion is The Tao. I'm big fan of it. And Lao Tzu is a big fan of humility.

No. I actually just got rid of one about 2 months back. She was hella hot, but fucking crazy. I forgot the rule about never sticking your dick in crazy. Well, let's just say I now recall why that rule exists.

You're more fun when you're deep into the victory beers after a Lion's win.

jdreyer wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 11:58:
California's about to run out of water.

Man, that's some scary shit. I'm sure people will have drinking water, but the lack of water for farming could decimate Cali agriculture. Cali is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, and produces things not grown anywhere else, like almonds. You let those trees die, and no almonds for 30 years.

The problem being you are farming an area with great amounts of water and that was never intended to be.

jdreyer wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:09:

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 16:38:
And this water shortage means food prices will go up for everyone in NA over the next 3 years. One place to start. Ban fucking lawns. No more lawns. A nice rock/wild garden with desert plants looks beautiful, is hardy, and no more wasted water, and wasted fueld and pollution from the ancillary stuff that surrounds that industry, lawnmowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, lawn seed, etc. It's all just been a massive, and absolutely totally unnecessary waste of time, money and resources. And charge golf courses through the nose at the very least. Those things should be outlawed completely.

And people should start getting back to creating victory gardens and learn how to can, pickle, and preserve foodstuffs. During WWII almost 80% of people in NA had some form of victory garden and were canning, pickling, and preserving their own food. We actually used to eat a lot more, and should eat a lot more, lacto-fermented foods.

Let's see if California has the will to correct the problem or go under.

Hopefully stuff like this where an Orange CA couple were both sued and faced charges for ripping out their grass and making a rock garden are a thing of the past.

And Victory gardens are a great idea. Just don't allow the growing of rice.

hah! tell that to socal's massive asian population.

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 16:38:
And this water shortage means food prices will go up for everyone in NA over the next 3 years. One place to start. Ban fucking lawns. No more lawns. A nice rock/wild garden with desert plants looks beautiful, is hardy, and no more wasted water, and wasted fueld and pollution from the ancillary stuff that surrounds that industry, lawnmowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, lawn seed, etc. It's all just been a massive, and absolutely totally unnecessary waste of time, money and resources. And charge golf courses through the nose at the very least. Those things should be outlawed completely.

And people should start getting back to creating victory gardens and learn how to can, pickle, and preserve foodstuffs. During WWII almost 80% of people in NA had some form of victory garden and were canning, pickling, and preserving their own food. We actually used to eat a lot more, and should eat a lot more, lacto-fermented foods.

Let's see if California has the will to correct the problem or go under.

Hopefully stuff like this where an Orange CA couple were both sued and faced charges for ripping out their grass and making a rock garden are a thing of the past.

And Victory gardens are a great idea. Just don't allow the growing of rice.

Cutter wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 11:50:
That's why they always say, the wise man walks with his head bowed, humble like the dust.

Seriously who are you?
First you're okay with e-sports after a decade of bashing them and now you're saying a wise man should be humble?
New girlfriend or something?

And this water shortage means food prices will go up for everyone in NA over the next 3 years. One place to start. Ban fucking lawns. No more lawns. A nice rock/wild garden with desert plants looks beautiful, is hardy, and no more wasted water, and wasted fueld and pollution from the ancillary stuff that surrounds that industry, lawnmowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, lawn seed, etc. It's all just been a massive, and absolutely totally unnecessary waste of time, money and resources. And charge golf courses through the nose at the very least. Those things should be outlawed completely.

And people should start getting back to creating victory gardens and learn how to can, pickle, and preserve foodstuffs. During WWII almost 80% of people in NA had some form of victory garden and were canning, pickling, and preserving their own food. We actually used to eat a lot more, and should eat a lot more, lacto-fermented foods.

Let's see if California has the will to correct the problem or go under.

jdreyer wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 13:25:
...

Fair enough! I had some vague numbers in my mind that weren't as drastic, but they were based on older data from what I'm seeing.

BobBob wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 13:18:
They need to gather together the resident billionaire techies from the entire state, form a think-tank, and develop a highly efficient and economical desalination process -- be it large plants or some other methods (even if it means piping salt water into homes and processing it via mini stations with solar -- like we do with water heaters now). Salt water can be used for non-drinking uses - especially toilets. It's absolutely ridiculous that we are concerned about lack of drinking water while sitting next to the largest body of water on the planet.

It could solve 3 issues in one (perhaps a bit of science fiction here):

1) Lack of available drinking water
2) Rising tide levels
3) Lack of salt for snowy regions (roads, etc.)

1. The biggest desal plant in the world is this one. It cost $7.2B, and produces 264 million gallons of potable water per day. California uses 38B gallons of water per day. Build 100 of those desal plants for $720B and you're producing 26.4B gallons of water per day, about 2/3 of what you need. For reference, the US Defense budget for 2013 was $640B.

2. Think we can do that in 3 years? Because that's when the big hurt starts.

3. We have plenty of sources for salt for roads. There was a shortage this year because no one predicted the massive number of snowstorms. But it's not a problem to produce.

4. Desalinization will have no effect on rising tides. It's like you have a burst pipe in your basement and you take out a cup, boil it, and drink it. Will that have any effect? Currently the ocean is rising by 3mm per year, which is 1000 km3 of water, or 700 billion gallons of water per day. Even if you pull out 26 billion gallons (assuming 100 desal plants), you're no where near close. And much of what you pull out will end up back in the ocean via evaporation or runoff.

There is some serious discussion going on in here, but I feel I am required to chime in and say:

Alien vs Pooh is spectacular!

SimplyMonk wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 13:19:

eRe4s3r wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 12:55:
Worth noting that Cali isn't the only large farm area with water problems.

Yeah. Crazy thing I learned about almonds this week, if the internet is to be believed, is that a single almond takes a gallon of water to grow. Madness.

There are about 400 almonds in a pound, so that's not too bad, about the same as eggs per pound. Chicken is about 500 gallons per pound, and pork is 700. Beef is around 2000 gallons per pound. Given how much nutrition are in almonds, it's actually a bargain.

CrimsonPaw wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 13:10:
I think the problem isn't that the system is broken, it's that people are so damned focused on immediate satisfaction that they are nearly blinded by it. Where's the concern for Social Security? I hear that system's kicking ass ...

You are, of course, correct. There is no major flaw in 401ks. There are some minor issues where the stocks/funds available to investors are less than great choices, but the major issue is people being either unwilling or unable to save.

There are people buying new cars every few years instead of saving, that's true. But there are also plenty of people who simply don't make enough. If you are supporting a family of four and make less than $40k a year, there isn't going to be a lot of left over for retirement savings -- highly dependent on location..

Neither of those problems have simple solutions.

BobBob wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 13:18:
Salt water can be used for non-drinking uses - especially toilets. It's absolutely ridiculous that we are concerned about lack of drinking water while sitting next to the largest body of water on the planet.

Although I would love to see research and infrastructure in this direction, like the article says, agriculture is the real consumer in California taking ~80% compared to residential's ~10%.

Worst case scenario here is that the price of water makes certain crops no longer viable in California and some farms are forced to relocate or change to a more water efficient crop.

Verno wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 12:58:
Kind of like how Cracked breaks up its lists into multiple pages to serve as many ads as possible

Yeah, but at least they're not charging you a dollar first.

Suckage wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 12:35:

jdreyer wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 11:58:
California's about to run out of water.and produces things not grown anywhere else, like almonds. You let those trees die, and no almonds for 30 years.

Where did you get that information? Sure, the USA are a major producer of almonds, but they're far from being the only one. Regardless, California's situation is worrisome.

This site claims California produces 90% of the world's almond supply, a number I've heard elsewhere. Also check out all the other delicious foods poised to be wiped out: apricots, dates, artichokes, apples, broccoli, carrots, celery, figs, kiwi, wine grapes, lettuce, plums, pomegranates, walnuts. The list goes on.

This PDF by the California Board of Almonds shows that Cali had 82% of world production in 2012-2013.

Regardless of which number is correct, you are talking about the vast majority of the world crop. And even if they manage to water the trees enough to keep them alive, they won't blossom if stressed from lack of water. Almond prices pretty much go to the stratosphere.