{"id":171,"date":"2009-02-04T13:52:48","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T21:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/04\/the-end-of-ag-chu-drops-a-climate-bomb\/"},"modified":"2009-02-04T13:52:48","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T21:52:48","slug":"the-end-of-ag-chu-drops-a-climate-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/04\/the-end-of-ag-chu-drops-a-climate-bomb\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of Ag? Chu Drops a Climate Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"arizona-drought-small.jpg\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/files\/2009\/02\/arizona-drought-small.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/files\/2009\/02\/arizona-drought-small.jpg\" alt=\"arizona-drought-small.jpg\" \/><\/a>Higher temperatures and drier conditions could destroy California&#8217;s vineyards by the end of the century if\u00a0Americans\u00a0do not act fast to slow global warming, Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu\u00a0said Tuesday in his first interview since joining the Obama cabinet.\u00a0\u00a0Chu, a California native, warned that increased water shortages\u00a0in the West and a loss of up to 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack are likely to have a severe impact\u00a0on the state&#8217;s agricultural industries as well as\u00a0California&#8217;s cities.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,&#8221; Chu <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,7454963.story\">told the <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 &#8220;We&#8217;re looking at a scenario where there&#8217;s no more agriculture in California.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Californians may appreciate\u00a0this kind of\u00a0attention in Washington to what is shaping up as potentially the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/01\/29\/snowpack-slips-further\/\">worst drought <\/a>in the state&#8217;s history.\u00a0 The California Department of Water Resources <a href=\"http:\/\/www.water.ca.gov\/drought\/docs\/WaterConditions_factsheet.pdf\">reports<\/a> $308.9 million in agricultural losses last year due to drought in the state, and if January was any indication of what&#8217;s to come, that number will be even higher for 2009.\u00a0 The <a href=\"\/\/www.pressdemocrat.com\/article\/20090202\/ARTICLES\/902020251\/1349?Title=Drought_likely_to_hit_grape_growers_first\">Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports <\/a>that grape growers in the counties of Sonoma and Mendocino\u00a0are facing a\u00a0difficult choice this month as\u00a0they decide whether to use\u00a0some\u00a0of their reduced water allotments for frost protection. With such a rapidly dwindling supply, water used now could mean none for irrigation later in the season.<\/p>\n<p>This morning on <a href=\"\/\/www.kqed.org\/epArchive\/R902040900\">KQED&#8217;s <em>Forum<\/em>,<\/a> California water experts discussed the direness of the situation and the probability of water rationing and other measures to deal with it.<\/p>\n<p>The California Department of Water Resources <a href=\"http:\/\/www.water.ca.gov\/drought\">website<\/a> has extensive information about drought conditions and mitigation efforts across the state, including this\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.water.ca.gov\/drought\/docs\/WaterConditions_factsheet.pdf\">fact sheet<\/a>\u00a0updated for\u00a0January 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Photo by Reed Galin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>California&#8217;s vineyards may disappear along with the rest of the state&#8217; agriculture industry if Americans don&#8217;t wake up and act to slow climate change, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said this week. In facing what may be its worst drought in history, in the coming months California is going to be making some hard decisions about the future of agriculture in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[17,103,509,581,654],"coauthors":[],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power","category-water","tag-agriculture","tag-chu","tag-sierra","tag-temperature","tag-water"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.13 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The End of Ag? 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In facing what may be its worst drought in history, in the coming months California is going to be making some hard decisions about the future of agriculture in the state.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/04\/the-end-of-ag-chu-drops-a-climate-bomb\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Climate Watch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-04T21:52:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/files\/2009\/02\/arizona-drought-small.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gretchen Weber\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gretchen Weber\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/04\/the-end-of-ag-chu-drops-a-climate-bomb\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/04\/the-end-of-ag-chu-drops-a-climate-bomb\/\",\"name\":\"The End of Ag? 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