California Is Drilling for Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:


California Is Drilling for Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago
We're using so much groundwater that it's contributing to sea level rise.

—By Tom Knudson | Fri Mar. 13, 2015 6:00 AM EDT


This story was originally published by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.


By now, the impacts of California's unchecked groundwater pumping are well-known: the dropping water levels, dried-up wells and slowly sinking farmland in parts of the Central Valley.

But another consequence gets less attention, one measured not by acre-feet or gallons-per-minute but the long march of time.

As California farms and cities drill deeper for groundwater in an era of drought and climate change, they no longer are tapping reserves that percolated into the soil over recent centuries. They are pumping water that fell to Earth during a much wetter climatic regime—the ice age.

Such water is not just old. It's prehistoric. It is older than the earliest pyramids on the Nile, older than the world's oldest tree, the bristlecone pine. It was swirling down rivers and streams 15,000 to 20,000 years ago when humans were crossing the Bering Strait from Asia.

Tapping such water is more than a scientific curiosity. It is one more sign that some parts of California are living beyond nature's means, with implications that could ripple into the next century and beyond as climate change turns the region warmer and robs moisture from the sky. .....................(more)

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/california-pumping-water-fell-earth-20000-years-ago

[B Calm]

1. California has a big problem and drilling will only make it worse. The answer is

the Pacific Ocean!

[cherokeeprogressive]

2. Careful; You'll start a fight.

Everyone knows a not really high speed boondoggle (train) is more important by an order of magnitude than fresh water. "Good" progressives do anyway. What's most important is "being like" other countries that have them.

[still_one]

3. that is a long term solution, short term they have to do other things

[NYC_SKP]

4. The answer is "too many people", and "too much wasted water".

We need to quit looking for scientific ways to get out of the trouble that scientific projects like bringing water to deserts and then building golf courses have created.

We need to scale back a little, not go deeper into it.

Some think that desalination plants are the magic bullet.

Nope, not even if solar powered, they are not the direction in which we want to go.

Limit growth, ration water, live respectfully on this planet, respectful OF the planet.

[yeoman6987]

6. I know you say destillination plants are not the answer

However, they could take care of two problems. One is need for water and the other higher ocean levels.

[NYC_SKP]

9. Not sure what you mean by "higher ocean levels" with respect to desalination.

http://www.worldometers.info/water/

Total world fresh water use is about 51,885,644 acre-feet/year. And there are 89,600,000,000 acres of ocean, by my calculation.

If we were to draw all of the world's water needs for one year from the oceans, the change in sea levels would be imperceptible, on the order of 1/140 of an inch.

And all of this would evaporate and return to the oceans.

[yeoman6987]

10. Oh. Never mind. I just thought it would help

With global warming and the ice melting. It was just a thought....a wrong thought. Back to you idea of using less water overall. A good idea if everyone gets on board.

[yeoman6987]

5. If a Democratic state accepts this, we are in trouble.

[Man from Pickens]

7. Las Vegas in huge trouble too

If you're alive 20 years from now you may well get to witness that city disappear from the map - there never was anywhere near the water available that they consume, and now it's almost out.

Perhaps a desert wasn't the right place to built a large city?

[IDemo]

8. This is by far the biggest story of our time

Sorry ISIL and email, step aside.

It should be receiving the attention of everyone from citizens to state and federal officials. The calls for desalination plants are well and good but assume they can be constructed within a realistic time-frame to address the issue and that the enormous power they require will be available. Even the massive plant under construction in San Diego will supply just 7% of that area's potable water needs. And piping water from other regions; all of which lie west of the Mississippi are dry as well, is simply that - a pipe dream.