On 5/24/2015 2:06 PM, Paul M. Cook wrote:
> "Ophelia" > wrote in message
> ...
>>
>>
>> > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 3:32:44 AM UTC-7, Ophelia wrote:
>>>> I have noticed several people here mention California. We have had a
>>>> lot
>>>> of
>>>> stuff on tv about the lack of water there. We were shown the huge
>>>> reservoirs with very little water in them. They were showing how people
>>>> with lush grass and full swimming pools were being demonised.
>>>>
>>>> Is anyone here affected? It sounds very frightening!
>>>
>>> While people want to demonize the almond, the water it takes to grow
>>> one is the same as what's used to flush away a wee.
>>
>> I love almonds. I am not sure why anyone would demonise them?
>>
>
> When it takes 20 gallons of water to grow one and you are in the middle (or
> beginning) of an epic droiught it makes for an easy target.

When would that be?

I thought it was 8, looks a lot lower.

Looks like you were just caught LYING again, asshole!

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcaria...17-column.html

It's not clear exactly when almonds became the scapegoat for the
California drought.

Maybe it was last August, when the Atlantic posted "The Dark Side of
Almond Use," implicating the tasty little nut in every environmental
crisis from bee colony collapse disorder to the struggles of the state's
Chinook salmon population.

Or maybe it was in February, when a headline in Mother Jones blared, "It
takes how much water to grow an almond?!" (Profoundly misleading answer:
1.1 gallons per nut.)

Since then, the almond's culpability for you name it — our depleting
aquifers, our sinking topsoil, the heartbreak of psoriasis — has become
an article of faith among finger-wagging pundits and environmental
activists.

http://www.almonds.com/blog/water/al...-water-numbers

Over the past two decades, almond growers have reduced the amount of
water they use per pound of almonds by 33%.4 Key strategies, for
example, have included the wide adaptation of micro-drip irrigation
instead of traditional sprinklers, soil maps, and soil monitoring
systems that allow for demand-based irrigation instead of scheduled
irrigation.
While it’s true that more acres of California farmland are being used to
grow almonds, that doesn’t tell the full story. That shift toward
almonds – and other perennial crops like other nuts and olives – has not
led to an increase in water used for farming overall in the state. In
fact, from 2000 to 2010, the state’s agricultural water use held
steady.5 By the way, so did urban and environmental use.
Some reports have overstated agriculture’s share of water use in
California. Agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of the state’s
developed water usage in an average year. Fifty percent is comprised by
environmental water use, including water in rivers, streams, wetlands
and water needed to maintain water quality for agricultural and urban
use, and 10 percent is used in urban areas.6 All these types of usage
are important for California.
It takes water to grow almonds. It also takes water to raise all other
animal- and plant-based food, as well as to make your make your car,
jeans and cell phone. Estimating exactly how much water any particular
item takes to produce is extremely difficult, but for a broader
perspective, you may appreciate this useful online tool from the U.S.
Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey.
Many people don’t know that almond trees produce two crops with the
water they use. One is almonds, and the other is their hulls, which are
used for livestock feed. A useful by-product includes shells, which are
used in co-generation of energy and as livestock bedding.