| ▲ | ux266478 5 days ago | ||||||||||||||||
> the irrigation and suitability for farmland of central California The unsustainable irrigation that's draining aquifers during droughts and causing permanent damage[1] to groundwater retention? The irrigation that's causing changes in land topography[2]? > the lack of frequent flooding of the Mississippi river You mean the system which is a well known ecological disaster?[3][4][5] And no frequent flooding? Since 2017, the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area (which covers only a small portion of the watershed) has seen the USDA pay out $11.4 billion[6] to cover damages from flooding. I live in the watershed and for most of the summer I get flood alerts every time it rains. Damages are on the news constantly. In 2008, a tributary river flooded so badly it destroyed two mid-sized cities in Iowa[7]. Then you have the the 2011 flooding[8] of the Mississippi which was the most disastrous since before most modifications had been made to the river. Lack of frequent flooding? Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it's not happening. Like what are we talking about here? Even reaching for what you assume to be innocuous examples, empirically observable negative consequences hang off of them like fruiting bodies. Who knows what the consequences will look like in 100-200 years when they've had time to iteratively feed back into themselves. [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30197456/ [2] - https://www.usgs.gov/centers/land-subsidence-in-california [3] - https://repository.lsu.edu/geo_pubs/2126/ [4] - https://repository.lsu.edu/geo_pubs/1614/ [5] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230306143336.h... [6] - https://www.ewg.org/research/usda-policies-fall-short-helpin... [7] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_flood_of_2008 [8] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Mississippi_River_floods | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | potato3732842 4 days ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||
This is exactly the sort of ignorant of the past viewpoint I was complaining about. The part of CA we're talking about was a desert shithole before (arguably still is). There's debate about just how much we can sustainably irrigate it, but at least we can irrigate it. The alternative is basically no agricultural activity. Maybe some grazing. Ditto for the Mississippi. It floods "a little" now vs "somewhere on it is getting wiped out just about every year" before. If it's only happening once a decade now that's a huge improvement. You can mislead all you want by saying things like "worst since X" and whatnot but the fact of the matter is that the system clearly works ok if most of the Xs are from before the system was there. The material wealth generated by the economic activity enabled by these two projects is almost impossible to quantify. I think it speaks volumes that you didn't even attempt to address my 3rd example. | |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||