GLOBAL WARMING: Solutions to Droughts, Fires, and Floods!

By

Surf City Voice

– July 17, 2022Posted in: "The OC", climate change, Environment, Fires, Fresh Juice, global warming, Water, wildfires

By Alpha Lo, guest writer; cross-posted from SoCal Water Wars.

Alpha Lo is a water physicist who educates the public and organizes coalitions to restore the water cycle and rehydrate the landscape using natural processes. He co-founded the Regenerative Water Alliance and publishes the newsletter, Climate Water Project, on Substack.

A cycle of drought, fire and floods — exacerbated by human-induced climate change — is entangling the earth.

California wildfire. Photo: Bureau of Land Management, 2008

California, British Columbia, Australia, Greece, and Brazil are examples of places that have recently been hit by all three of these natural disasters that are interlinked in ways not always noticed:

• Fires can lead to floods. When fires get too hot they can form a waxy coating on the soil that prevents the landscape from absorbing water from huge rain storms. Instead, the stormwater gathers speed as it flows downhill to inundate urban areas with floodwaters. In 2020, wildfires unfurled across the Australian landscape and degraded the soil. Two years later the soil was unable to absorb all of the stormwater, causing massive floods that affected millions of people.
• Floods can lead to wildfires. Floods can wash away topsoil and create landslides. In the future, less water is absorbed by the landscape during rainstorms so less water sinks into the aquifers below. Less groundwater infiltration means less water to keep the rivers flowing and the soil and vegetation moist into the dry season, thus increasing the chances of wildfires.
• Fires can lead to droughts. Deforestation by fire (or logging) limits evapotranspiration (absorption of plant moisture by the air), disrupting the water cycle that brings rain to replenish rivers, aquifers, soils, plants, wildlife and human life. Forests act as conveyor belts to bring moisture inland. Without a chain of forests going inland, rainfall decreases exponentially the further inland one goes. With a chain of forests the rainfall remains consistent going inland.
• Two Russian physicists, Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshov, have mapped out this pattern of rainfall [1] called moisture hopping in the climate-science literature.
• Climate scientist Francina Dominguez did computer simulations of moisture hopping in the US, and found that the 2012 drought in the Midwest was cause partly by the drought in California because not enough water vapor was being passed inland. Moisture from California accounted for 15% of the rains in the Midwest.[2]
• Climate scientist Antonio Nobre has shown how the burning of the forests in the Amazon causes droughts in other parts of South America.[3] 
• Meteorologist Millan Millan showed how paving over nature in Spain led to less rain there. [4,5] Through evapotranspiration nature normally combines inland moisture with the ocean moisture to create rain, but urbanization (another form of deforestation) also decreases evapotranspiration and helps cause droughts. [6]
• In the 2020 California wildfires, two million hectares of forest was lost, and 20% of old growth trees, weakening the rain conveyor belt, which will lead to more droughts further inland in the future.

So what can we do about this cycle of disasters?

Enhancing the ability of landscapes to retain rainwater is a solution which addresses all of the types of disasters.

If landscapes can retain more water they will be more hydrated in the dry season, which which means fewer wildfires. And, if landscapes located uphill can absorb more water when it rains, the volume and velocity of floods will be less at lower elevations.

Subscribe to Climate Water Project now

Flood under the Old Route 49 bridge crossing over the South Yuba River in Nevada City, California,
saw local and regional visitors during the atmospheric river event across Northern California on January 9, 2017.
Photo: California Department of Water Resources

There are many ways to retain more water in the landscape.

Increasing soil sponginess, for example, can decrease flood strength by 20% [7]. Each one-percent increase in organic matter in the soil increases its ability to hold water by 20,000 gallons per acre.

Many methods exist to increase organic matter in soil. Inoculation of the soil with mycelium which helps to break down biomass to form organic matter. The fields of permaculture and regenerative agriculture provide a compendium of methods to improve the ‘soil carbon sponge’.

Mycelium as revealed by microscopy: Photo: Christian Scheckbuber, Wiki Commons

Another way to retain more water in the landscape is to use a variety of earthworks like berms, swales (digs dug into the ground), terraces, check dams, and water pianos [8] that slow or catch the water, after which it usually sinks at a much slower rate allowing it to seep out into rivers and landscapers into the dry season. And plants can use capillary action to draw up water that flows underground to create shallow water tables.

Embarkment dam with two berms. Ragöser Damm near Eberswalde, view direction west –
here flows the small river Ragöse under the Oder-Havel-Kanal Photo: Ralf Roletschek, Wiki Commons

A third way to retain more water in the landscape is to restore wetlands in the floodplains and the rivers that feed them. Wetlands and their vegetation can absorb a lot of floodwaters. [9,10,11] One acre of wetland can hold one million gallons of water during floods. Wetlands can release water slowly, hydrating the landscape more during dry

PDF: Hess: The Role of Wetlands in the Hydrological Cycle – Read now.

Wetlands can also replenish aquifers, increase humidity, and lower temperatures.[12,13] This leads to cooler winds that are less likely to fan wildfires. Wetlands are also natural firebreaks.

Wetlands restoration in Fairview Park/Talbert Sanctuary, Costa Mesa, CA. Photo: SoCal Water Wars

we restored our rivers and removed the flood control levees and their concrete banks water could flow onto the floodplains and fill the wetlands during heavy rains.

The ability of the landscape to absorb floodwaters is important.

California gets half of its water from atmospheric rivers of water vapor coming from the ocean that empty themselves on the land. If that water is not absorbed the drought situation in California becomes worse.

Composite satellite photos of an atmospheric river connecting Asia to North America
in October 2017. Photo: NASA

Dams are not the best way to absorb atmospheric river-water. They have to release a lot of that water after big storms in order to maintain a buffer for water from future storms. Dams also also problematic because they remove soil and sediment from the ecosystem.

Subscribe to Climate Water Project now

Wetlands and aquifers are better water storage solutions. Wetlands guide the water into aquifers that have much larger storage ability than dams. Farms and cities can draw from that water.

So we want to transition from a water infrastructure that is heavily dependent on dams to more of a dam-wetland hybrid—a transition to nature based solutions is both more efficacious and financially wise. [9]

CLICK HERE TO READ PART TWO, on SoCal Water Wars!

(Complete footnotes are in part two.)

Tags: climate change, droughts, Environment, Fires, floods, global warming, Water, wildfires

About Surf City Voice

John Earl is the editor of SoCal Water Wars (previously Surf City Voice.) Frequent contributor Debbie Cook, a former Huntington Beach Mayor, is board president of the Post Carbon Institute.

9 Comments

1. Reply

   Mike Tardif

   Posted July 18, 2022 at 3:50 AM

   This “Alpha Lo” is either a moron or a paid propagandist.

   • Reply

     Vern Nelson

     Posted July 18, 2022 at 7:12 AM

     You’re real quick with the easy insults, but do you have one or three examples of his moronicness or shillery?

     Are you a climate change denier running for Assembly?

   • Reply

     Greg Diamond

     Posted July 19, 2022 at 5:19 PM

     “The evidence for which is:

     1. __________________________________
     2. __________________________________
     3. __________________________________
     4. __________________________________
     5. __________________________________”

     Fill out our candidate questionnaire above. Add more lines if you can!

2. Reply

   Mike Tardif

   Posted July 18, 2022 at 7:32 AM

   Alpha Lo is a communist propagandist.
   https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/project-of-the-day-alpha-los-gift-circles/2012/02/09

   • Reply

     Greg Diamond

     Posted July 31, 2022 at 10:38 PM

     I’m sorry that I missed this before.

     OK, here’s the entire article from your link. Tell us the part that you think shows that Alpha Lo is a communist proagandist.

     Project of the Day: Alpha Lo’s Gift Circles
     February 9, 2012 No Comment Michel Bauwens 6 min read
     Charles Eistenstein discusses the practice of gift circles:

     “Given the cir­cu­lar na­ture of gift flow, I was ex­cited to learn that one of the most promis­ing so­cial in­ven­tions that I’ve come across for build­ing com­mu­nity is called the Gift Cir­cle. De­vel­oped by Alpha Lo, co-au­thor of The Open Col­lab­o­ra­tion En­cy­clo­pe­dia, and his friends in Marin County, Cal­i­for­nia, it ex­em­pli­fies the dy­nam­ics of gift sys­tems and il­lu­mi­nates the broad ram­i­fi­ca­tions that gift economies por­tend for our econ­omy, psy­chol­ogy, and civ­i­liza­tion.

     The ideal num­ber of par­tic­i­pants in a gift cir­cle is 10-20. Every­one sits in a cir­cle, and takes turns say­ing one or two needs they have. In the last cir­cle I fa­cil­i­tated, some of the needs shared were: “a ride to the air­port next week,” “some­one to help re­move a fence,” “used lum­ber to build a gar­den,” “a lad­der to clean my gut­ter,” “a bike,” and “of­fice fur­ni­ture for a com­mu­nity cen­ter.” As each per­son shares, oth­ers in the cir­cle can break in to offer to meet the stated need, or with sug­ges­tions of how to meet it.

     When every­one has had their turn, we go around the cir­cle again, each per­son stat­ing some­thing he or she would like to give. Some ex­am­ples last week were “Graphic de­sign skills,” “the use of my power tools,” “con­tacts in local gov­ern­ment to get things done,” and “a bike,” but it could be any­thing: time, skills, ma­te­r­ial things; the gift of some­thing out­right, or the gift of the use of some­thing (bor­row­ing). Again, as each per­son shares, any­one can speak up and say, “I’d like that,” or “I know some­one who could use one of those.

     Dur­ing both these rounds, it is use­ful to have some­one write every­thing down and send the notes out the next day to every­one via email, or on a web page, blog, etc. Oth­er­wise it is quite easy to for­get who needs and of­fers what. Also, I sug­gest writ­ing down, on the spot, the name and phone num­ber of some­one who wants to give or re­ceive some­thing to/from you. It is es­sen­tial to fol­low up, or the gift cir­cle will end up feed­ing cyn­i­cism rather than com­mu­nity.

     Fi­nally, the cir­cle can do a third round in which peo­ple ex­press grat­i­tude for the things they re­ceived since the last meet­ing. This round is ex­tremely im­por­tant be­cause in com­mu­nity, the wit­ness­ing of oth­ers’ gen­eros­ity in­spires gen­eros­ity in those who wit­ness it. It con­firms that this group is giv­ing to each other, that gifts are rec­og­nized, and that my own gifts will be rec­og­nized, ap­pre­ci­ated, and rec­i­p­ro­cated as well.

     It is just that sim­ple: needs, gifts, and grat­i­tude. But the ef­fects can be pro­found.

     First, gift cir­cles (and any gift econ­omy, in fact) can re­duce our de­pen­dence on the tra­di­tional mar­ket. If peo­ple give us things we need, then we needn’t buy them. I won’t need to take a taxi to the air­port to­mor­row, and Rachel won’t have to buy lum­ber for her gar­den. The less we use money, the less time we need to spend earn­ing it, and the more time we have to con­tribute to the gift econ­omy, and then re­ceive from it. It is a vir­tu­ous cir­cle.

     Sec­ondly, a gift cir­cle re­duces our pro­duc­tion of waste. It is ridicu­lous to pump oil, mine metal, man­u­fac­ture a table and ship it across the ocean when half the peo­ple in town have old ta­bles in their base­ments. It is ridicu­lous as well for each house­hold on my block to own a lawn­mower, which they use two hours a month, a leaf blower they use twice a year, power tools they use for an oc­ca­sional pro­ject, and so on. If we shared these things, we would suf­fer no loss of qual­ity of life. Our ma­te­r­ial lives would be just as rich, yet would re­quire less money and less waste.

     In eco­nomic terms, a gift cir­cle re­duces gross do­mes­tic prod­uct, de­fined as the sum total of all goods and ser­vices ex­changed for money. By get­ting a gift ride from some­one in­stead of pay­ing a taxi, I am re­duc­ing GDP by $20. When my friend drops off her son at my house in­stead of pay­ing for day care, GDP falls by an­other $30. The same is true when some­one bor­rows a bike from an­other per­son’s base­ment in­stead of buy­ing a new one. (Of course, GDP won’t fall if the money saved is then spent on some­thing else. Stan­dard eco­nom­ics, draw­ing on a deep as­sump­tion about the in­fi­nite up­ward elas­tic­ity of human wants, as­sumes this is nearly al­ways the case. A cri­tique of this deeply flawed as­sump­tion is be­yond the scope of the pre­sent essay.)”

     Does the Gift Economy undermine economic growth?

     “Why don’t we need each other? It is be­cause all the gift re­la­tion­ships upon which we once de­pended are now paid ser­vices. They have been con­verted into ser­vice work which the mar­ket con­verts into cash. What is there left to con­vert? Whether fos­sil fuels, top­soil, aquifers, the at­mos­phere’s ca­pac­ity to ab­sorb waste; whether it is food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, med­i­cine, music, or our col­lec­tive cul­tural be­quest of sto­ries and ideas, nearly all have be­come com­modi­ties. Un­less we can find yet new realms of na­ture to con­vert into good, un­less we can find even more func­tions of human life to com­modi­tize, our days of eco­nomic growth are num­bered. What room for growth re­mains—for ex­am­ple in today’s ane­mic eco­nomic re­cov­ery— comes only at an in­creas­ing cost to na­ture and so­ci­ety.

     From this per­spec­tive, a third con­se­quence of the gift cir­cle and other forms of gift econ­omy be­comes ap­par­ent. Not only does gift-based cir­cu­la­tion sub­tract from GDP, it also has­tens the demise of the pre­sent eco­nomic sys­tem. Any bit of na­ture or human re­la­tion­ship that we pre­serve or re­claim from the com­mod­ity world is one bit less that is avail­able to sell, or to use as the basis for new in­ter­est-bear­ing loans. With­out con­stant cre­ation of new debt, ex­ist­ing debt can­not be re­paid. Lend­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties only occur in a con­text of eco­nomic growth, in which the mar­ginal re­turn on cap­i­tal in­vest­ment ex­ceeds the in­ter­est rate. To sim­plify: no growth, less lend­ing; less lend­ing, more trans­fer of as­sets to cred­i­tors; more trans­fer of as­sets, more con­cen­tra­tion of wealth; more con­cen­tra­tion of wealth, less con­sumer spend­ing; less con­sumer spend­ing, less growth. This is the vi­cious cir­cle de­scribed by econ­o­mists going back to Karl Marx. It has been de­ferred for two cen­turies by the cease­less open­ing up, through tech­nol­ogy and col­o­niza­tion, of new realms of na­ture and re­la­tion­ship to the mar­ket. Today, not only are these realms nearly ex­hausted, but a shift of con­scious­ness mo­ti­vates grow­ing ef­forts to re­claim them for the com­mons and for the gift. Today, we di­rect huge ef­forts to­ward pro­tect­ing the forests, whereas the most bril­liant minds of two gen­er­a­tions ago de­voted them­selves to their more ef­fi­cient clearcut­ting. Sim­i­larly, so many of us today seek to limit pol­lu­tion not ex­pand pro­duc­tion, to pro­tect the wa­ters not in­crease the fish catch, to pre­serve the wet­lands—not build larger hous­ing de­vel­op­ments. These ef­forts, while not al­ways suc­cess­ful, put a brake on eco­nomic growth be­yond the nat­ural limit the en­vi­ron­ment poses. From the gift per­spec­tive, what is hap­pen­ing is that we no longer seek merely to take from the planet, but to give back as well. This cor­re­sponds to the com­ing of age of hu­man­ity, tran­si­tion­ing from a mother-child re­la­tion­ship to earth, to a co-cre­ative part­ner­ship in which giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing find bal­ance.

     The same tran­si­tion to the gift is un­der­way in the so­cial realm. Many of us no longer as­pire to fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence, the state in which we have so much money we needn’t de­pend on any­one for any­thing. Today, in­creas­ingly, we yearn in­stead for com­mu­nity. We don’t want to live in a com­mod­ity world, where every­thing we have ex­ists for the pri­mary goal of profit. We want things cre­ated for love and beauty, things that con­nect us more deeply to the peo­ple around us. We de­sire to be in­ter­de­pen­dent, not in­de­pen­dent. The gift cir­cle, and the many new forms of gift econ­omy that are emerg­ing on the In­ter­net, are ways of re­claim­ing human re­la­tion­ships from the mar­ket.

     Whether nat­ural or so­cial, the recla­ma­tion of the gift-based com­mon­wealth not only has­tens the col­lapse of a growth-de­pen­dent money sys­tem, it also mit­i­gates its sever­ity. At the pre­sent mo­ment, the mar­ket faces a cri­sis, merely one of a mul­ti­plic­ity of crises (eco­log­i­cal, so­cial) that are con­verg­ing upon us. Through the tur­bu­lent time that is upon us, the sur­vival of hu­man­ity, and our ca­pac­ity to build a new kind of civ­i­liza­tion em­body­ing a new re­la­tion­ship to earth and a new, more con­nected, human iden­tity, de­pends on these scraps of the com­mon­wealth that we are able to pre­serve or re­claim. Al­though we have done griev­ous dam­age to earth, vast wealth still re­mains. There is still rich­ness in the soil, water, cul­tures and bio­mes of this planet. The longer we per­sist under the sta­tus quo, the less of that rich­ness will re­main and the more calami­tous the tran­si­tion will be.

     On a less tan­gi­ble level, any gifts we give con­tribute to an­other kind of com­mon wealth – a reser­voir of grat­i­tude that will see us through times of tur­moil, when the con­ven­tions and sto­ries that hold civic so­ci­ety to­gether fall apart. Gifts in­spire grat­i­tude, and gen­eros­ity is in­fec­tious. In­creas­ingly, I read and hear sto­ries of gen­eros­ity, self­less­ness, even mag­na­nim­ity that take my breath away. When I wit­ness gen­eros­ity, I want to be gen­er­ous too. In the com­ing times, we will need the gen­eros­ity, the self­less­ness, and the mag­na­nim­ity of many peo­ple. If every­one seeks merely their own sur­vival, then there is no hope for a new kind of civ­i­liza­tion. We need each oth­ers’ gifts as we need each oth­ers’ gen­eros­ity to in­vite us into the realm of the gift our­selves. In con­trast to the age of money where we can pay for any­thing and need no gifts, soon it will be abun­dantly clear: we need each other.”

     Do you think that Jesus was a communist too? (Maybe think twice before you answer that.)

3. Reply

   Ron & Anna Winship

   Posted July 30, 2022 at 5:26 PM

   *Tardy probably has a problem with mixing Social Science and Earth Science. One thing is sure……Global Climate Change is based on Population Expansion and more folks sucking in more Oxygen and expatriating CO2. So, say what you will about Social Science or the art of Kum-By-Ya and the evaporation of most water from every known lake, river and estuary. As the founder of the Communist Party once said: Religion is the opiate of the people….(or was that the press?), or was that from reading too much Kurt Vonnegut?

   • Reply

     Greg Diamond

     Posted July 31, 2022 at 10:22 PM

     Fossil fuels and feedback cycles. Human respiration is nowhere close to being as big of a factor.

4. Reply

   Ron & Anna Winship

   Posted August 7, 2022 at 7:43 AM

   *Yesterday, we got our Retro Water Notice: Every other day, Monday, Weds, Friday!
   Not to worry, as the train tracks down here in San Clemente wash away at a rapid
   rate. Rising Tides, Homelessness, Drought and Human Respiration……don’t matter? OK,
   what are you going to try next? Cheese?

   • Reply

     Greg Diamond

     Posted August 7, 2022 at 9:41 PM

     Mmmmm … yes, I think that I will try some cheese next!

     What are we talking about again?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.