NASA scientist: California has one year of water left

What it *should* say: California has one year of above-ground fresh water in its reservoirs left.

Because:

Now, the water shortage in California is actually a Big Deal. The state government today finally got around to passing some water rationing; it’ll be interesting to see just how badly the Californians ignore it and keep watering their lawns.

But assuming that the drought doesn’t magically turn itself around (and there’s good reason to think that wacky weather in the US is being driven in part by economic development in China… something I doubt the Chinese will bank back on in order to help us out), California will have to think long and hard about actually *doing* something about the water shortage. Desalination plants should dot the shoreline. But there are some alternatives to conventional desalination plants: how about offshore wind farms which use the power of the wind to turn turbine blades… which are filled with tubes that suck up ocean water and spray it into the sky at the top of the arc? Sure, the efficiency will be pathetically low… but you’ll increase downwind humidity some. Or pump filtered but non-desalinated water up to various mountaintops, and on the hottest, driest days of the year spray that water up into the wind. The water evaporates and the salt filters down to the ground; locally you’ll salt the earth, but downwind you’ll add not only water vapor and precipitation, but perhaps also increase cloud cover, reflecting sunlight and reducing solar heating, countering Global Warming. I’m unsure of the wind patterns, but if the mountains around Death Valley are appropriate as a location to add water vapor, I’m pretty sure adding *salt* to the ground won’t really cause a problem. Similarly, if you pump seawater to to the Bonneville Salt Flats and try to flood the place, you won’t really cause much harm by adding salt to the salt.