What does 10 TRILLION gallons of water even equate to?

BTW, one mile by one mile (5280' by 5280') has 27 million 878 thousand 400 square feet of surface in it. 27,676,400 sq ft in each square mile so it doesn't take many square miles of land surface to old 10 trillion gallons of 3" deep water.

The number of gallons sounds like a huge awe inspiring amount but spread out even 3" deep really doesn't cover much land surface at all in square miles. Remember that one cubic foot contains 7.48 gallons of water and that will only cover (4) 12" by 12" areas (4 sq ft) of surface 3" deep.

Sensationalism (norm for news reports) is used to make it sound far more worse than the amount really is. The real problem is the runoff with no where to contain it properly.

During it's boom years China was averaging one new coal fired plant per week.

CO2 is a natural occurring gas
You me and everybody else exhales CO2
What about all that coal dust pollution in China
You think CO2 is dangerous?
What about the pollution of the Ganges river
What about the pollution of that big river in India
Coal dust is carbon
Soot is carbon
CO2 in not raw carbon
CO2 is not chemical pollution of rivers, or the atmosphere

Try as we may, the USA including all of North America doesn't add squat to the planet's actual air and ground pollution in perspective! Like grabbing the tip of the tail and trying to wave the St Bernard dog! Good Luck!

List of CO2 emittersThe US is #2.

When I was in elementary school in the 70's, we had assemblies where groups came and told us how much of an impact man was having on the planet. They told us that it was established scientific fact that there would be another ice age if we didn't stop polluting and kept growing the population.

Here we are in the 2000's and people are telling us that it's established scientific fact that we are making the planet too hot and must stop polluting and growing the population.

There are legitimate scientists that disagree with the conclusions being drawn about "climate change". Looking at the fossil record, solar cycles, etc. there are legitimate questions that can be raised.

Follow the money on both sides.

Texas has similar issues. San Antonio was going to build a reservoir, but the NIMBY people shot it down, so the town uses an aquifer and is in the process of building a pipeline. Austin is OK... for now, but there is no way the people with the 7-8 digit sale properties on the lakes would give that up should a need to create additional water storage space arise.

I can see California having similar problems, because it is easy to ignore infrastructure. Bridges don't vote, hold protests, or donate to campaigns, so dams, waterways and such are easy to ignore by politicians.

Looking at the historical rainfall totals, for SoCal in particular, yields some interesting results.

First, there is a wet dry cycle, it is fairly regular, and has not increased in duration or intensity in recent years.

Second, the swings in the data from wet to dry are fairly large. When you average it you get a nice number, LA being 14.77 inches a year. But very rarely do we actually have an "average" year. We get a year way above the calculated average and then many years somewhat below average. Historically, this cycle has repeated itself over and over again.

The biggest change is the population. The current storage and transport system was adequate for the population as it was being built in the 60s and 70s. The storage and delivery system was designed to get the state through the standard 6-8 years of dry and be refilled during the wet year. The population in 1970 was about 20 million. It is now double that with the last reservoir being put into service in 1979. The result is we have a fixed storage capacity which did not anticipate the population boom, nor the agriculture boom. It is now drained much faster during the dry years. As the population has grown, we have not upped our storage capacity to capture what falls in the wet year. We have managed to make the existing capacity work with conservation, and pulled water from the ground to make up the difference, but this last wet dry cycle has brought to bear the limits of supply for todays population. It is not so much a case of extended drought, CA has always had these, it is a case of more people using the resource.

So in the span of 3 months, our reservoirs went from nearly empty to overflowing, the snow pack is way above average, some of the excess is soaking into the aquifer, and the rest is flowing to the ocean. In the span of 3 months, we have topped off all of our storage capacity. Unfortunately, it is the same capacity that was filled in 2005 and mostly refilled in 2011, but we have more people than ever. Unless additional storage is built, the increasing population in CA will necessitate even more alternative and severe measures to make it through the dry part of the cycle.

There are a lot of politics involved, particularly in CA, with getting any large project such as a reservoir done. There is also a lot of politics with regards to control, and not giving the public all the information. I kept hearing about the drought, and seeing pictures of the existing reservoirs near empty, but I never saw anything showing the real issue of total storage capacity vs population and how many dry years the supply would last given a certain population and usage rate, nor the fact that 6-8 dry years between wet years is pretty typical (even though this data is readily available) Never let a disaster go to waste, we have added laws and policies due to the drought without explaining to the general population why there is a resource shortage. There is also a significant short sightedness in our state government. I am hoping this last cycle will serve as a wakeup cal.

Just to add to the other aspect of this thread, I believe there should be a balance between regulation and resource usage. While I am not entirely convinced as to the magnitude of man's impact on a global scale, there is certainly an impact on local scales. I grew in the high desert about 75mi from Los Angeles. I remember regularly seeing on the news or when visiting family the smog so thick you could not see the skyline. The smog regularly crept over the mountains and spilled into the high desert and we would have smog days. Now there are many more people and many more cars in LA, but those smog days are a thing of the past, very very rarely is smog even mentioned anymore and only once in a great while with just the wrong conditions do we have a smog warning. I for one am glad I can't see the air I am breathing anymore.

1 cuft of water is 7.48 gal
1 gal of water is 0.1336898xxxxx cu ft

10 trillion gallons is just under 1.4 billion cu ft
it would cover just under 2.8 billion sq ft of land with 6" of water

some 310,xxx cu ft of water is 1 acre ft

i haven't worked out sq miles covered by 6" of water

i cu ft aka 7.48 gal will cover 4 sq with 3" deep (if contained in that 4sq ft area)

I get so tired of seeing this constant GW being blamed on the people in the USA and Canada when it's a total and complete LIE! Wake up people! GW and GC is a normal and recurring event on the planet earth just like ice ages. We live where it was once tropical and was under the ocean and then later was under 1-1/4 miles thick ice glacier that carved out and created the 5 VAST Great Lakes in the USA and is presently 600 feet above sea level and still rising and rebounding from the massive ice's weight. Talk about naturally occurring changes??? Where have all you nay-say'ers been all you lives? Come out from deep under that rock and smell the real fresh air! We have very clean air and water too! Get smart for once as you are aging day by day until...!

rjxj,

Well, we have a 2800 sq ft home and multiple RV's and boats too and have had such for over 50 years now and yet pollute far less than so many others in other countries so we do not feel ashamed in any way. All out items are in the high efficiency spectrum of low pollution output per the fuel they sip and that's only any possible pollution output when any are actually in running mode! So much BS about nothing in the true realm of actualities of world pollution!

The USA only has 5% of the worlds population and has so many mandated pollution laws and safeguards. While most of the world's other 95% of the population spew out gobs of raw pollution every day. The small amount of pollution our 5% population is almost nothing compared to the 95% the rest of the world's population produces.

Perhaps most do not realize the daily choking polluted air that is the norm/produced in the world's much more populous nations like China and India for example with over 6 times as many people as we have here. Pollution so bad it's like a dense fog that burns your lungs with every breath but amazingly, the people there just keep on living and many to even 100 years of age. Who'd think that was even possible?

Try as we may, the USA including all of North America doesn't add squat to the planet's actual air and ground pollution in perspective! Like grabbing the tip of the tail and trying to wave the St Bernard dog! Good Luck!