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California's New 'Dust Bowl': "It's Gonna Be a Slow, Painful, Agonizing Death" For Farmers
"It's really a crisis situation," exclaims one California city manager, "and it's going to get worse in time if this drought doesn't alleviate."
For the state that produces one-third of the nation's fruits and vegetables, the driest spell in 500 years has prompted President Obama to make $100 million in livestock-disaster aid available within 60 days to help the state rebound from what he describes is " going to be a very challenging situation this year... and potentially some time to come."
As NBC reports, Governor Jerry Brown believes the "unprecedented emergency" could cost $2.8 billion in job income and $11 billion in state revenues - and as one farmer noted "we can't recapture that." Dismal recollections of the 1930's Dust Bowl are often discussed as workers (and employers) are "packing their bags and leaving town..." leaving regions to "run the risk of becoming desolate ghost towns as local governments and businesses collapse."
"The truth of the matter is that this is going to be a very challenging situation this year, and frankly, the trend lines are such where it's going to be a challenging situation for some time to come," Obama said Friday during a meeting with local leaders in Firebaugh, Calif., a rural enclave not far from Fresno.
Obama promised to make $100 million in livestock-disaster aid available within 60 days to help the state rebound from what the White House's top science and technology adviser has called the worst dry spell in 500 years.
...
"A lot of people don't realize the amount of money that's been lost, the amount of jobs lost. And we can't recapture that," Joel Allen, the owner of the Joel Allen Ranch in Firebaugh, told NBC News.
"It's horrible," Allen added. "People are standing in food lines and people are coming by my office every day looking for work."
Allen — whose family has been in farming for three generations — and his 20-man crew are out of work.
He said: "We're to the point where we're scratching our head. What are we gonna do next?"
At the local grocery store, fruit prices are up — but sales are down. The market was forced to lay off three employees — and many more throughout the town are packing their bags and leaving town.
McDonald said farming communities like Firebaugh run the risk of becoming desolate ghost towns as local governments and businesses collapse.
"It's going to be a slow, painful process — but it could happen," McDonald said. "It's not going to be one big tsunami where you're gonna having something get wiped out in one big wave. It's gonna be a slow, painful, agonizing death."
...
The problem is not just in California. Federal agriculture officials in January designated parts of 11 states as disaster areas, citing the economic strain that the lack of rain is putting on farmers. Those states are Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
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Hey, Du888; nice to see You in here, Man!
Welcome to Fight Club, Bro!
Roll up those sleves and punch Someone.
ANYONE.
Yep. Sure. -I got it coming to Me; just ask around...
Shit, Man; -pop Me once for Denninger while yer at it. Tell him I said Hi when your over there next!
On a brighter note: There go the democratic votes.
The FEDs will have to reinforce the Mexican American border to keep them from leaving.
Obama also gave $60 million dollars to Central Valley Food Banks and no he did not ask his donors for contributions he used US tax dollars to keep farm workers from going back to Mexico.
There is this wine from that vineyard on that forking plateau between the western mtns and the easterns mtns. I can't remember the name/vineyard, but I remember it by the "leg opener" title that I scribbled on the label.
I've never been there, but I met the old guy that owns it at Squaw Valley. He totally convinced me.
Is 2014 going to be a good year for dry wines?
I should be an expert, but I get to drink all of the very best for free without pretending or remembering. But I do know what I like. And I remember the good stories. My whole being is digging 2014 after all the unlucky crap from 2013. I feel lucky again and I like your whatchamacallit presentation facade whatever the fork they call it thing.
Damn, I like you even more now that my dumbass caught your joke!
Farmworkers need to be retrained as joke writers for late night TV talkshows, create social websites like Stooplabor.com or agriporn.
"...create social websites like schtuplabor.com....."
You misspelled that. Govt's been schtupping labor for a while now
Progressives love this shit. It gives them an excuse. Instead of having to deal with their failures..they just blame it on the weather (man made at that)
The most beautivul aspargus and the much sweeter peaches don't grow in cali. That is the crap they ship to the cities. But do not worry, you can print an exact duplicate on your new whatchamacallit printer.
Maw, we got te pack up th' SUV an' git on t' Tulsa... I heared there's awl kinna work out thar n' Oklehooma..."
"Well dammit to hell, Edna Mae, looks like we got more California trash movin' in down the street."
Jerry wants his name on a train station (I hope it ends up on the transgender bathroom door).
State would be better served building desalination plants, and flood control recovery.
Tap to toilet is going to be huge $$$ for the Banksters that will bankroll it and for the Unions that will take twice as long to build it and need thrice as much to run as will be advertised.
OF COURSE Tap to Toilet will be JUST for the cows...
..at first...
Couldn't happen to a better state.
Of course that could backfire where are all the illegals going to go? Certainly not back home as I recall they are here to stay.
I'd hope that you'll be consistent on your position as this same things hits places like Texas... (maybe if Brown visits there he can be blamed for that, but otherwise folks are going to without a handy fall-guy)
It already hit Texas. They just didn't cry about it.
and Obama didn't fly in with millions of taxpayer dollars
Obviously Texas isn't sucking cock correctly. CA seems to be the 'dream' of elitists project.
Fuck up the entire world trying to take it over and things are going to shit in the homeland. What a wonderful planet we live on.
Joseph just tweeted you better start putting away extra food in the good years.
If we can ship oil all across the world to places where it was not previously present, why can't we build aqueducts / pipelines to pump water to those states where water is not as commonplace? Same as we ship certain foods that are local to a region of the nation... NATION, we work together.
We're already doing that and, well, we're still running short. Ever consider that we'll one day not be able to continue perpetual growth on a finite planet?
If it is a finite planet, then please do the planet a favor and commit suicide now?
If it is a finite planet??
Seriously, you intend to argue that it is not? Granted, Seer seems all in a tizzy that most non-Californians want it and its population to shrivel up and die but it's pretty hard to argue that Earth is an infinite planet.
I could easily point out that we've spent countless sums on military hardware, but almost nothing on desalination technologies. I used to live in CA for 5 years during grad school, so I know it's an arid desert. But since we're talking about agriculture as well as dust storms, and water shortage at some point in the not too distant future, I thought advocating for water was a good idea. Pipelines that transport water are there, I know. But not enough and not from the right locations. If we can ship oil across the globe, why can't we pump water from places where it's so abundant, every year it causes flooding? If we're such an advanced civilization, why can't we deploy more regional desalination facilities or even residential units, or community units, that would allow the people of the coastlines to purify sea water?
I'm not particularly obsessed with CA... just saying we should have the technical and societal means for addressing this one way or the other.
It's not being done because, the money making system just doesn't give a fuck. Which is why I know the money making system is fucked, and a disservice to humanity.
That's not how it works. We prepare & because you don't, you've already committed suicide.
It didn't work on Mars, and it won't work here.
Not that it can't be done, but it's very expensive.
It's probably cheaper to do desalination closer to home, there's some numbers that dictate, I think you can pump water about 500 miles for what it costs to desalinate the same amount locally.
Desalination is cheap enough now to supply city water, even for lawns, but agriculture users need huge amounts at really cheap prices, or at least that's what they're used to.
But California has that nice Monterrey shale, they could frack that, use the gas to run desalination, and pump the water all the way up to the ski slopes and let it come back down to the farms through the river system. But noooo, ....
Hemp grows good under dry conditions and it helps preserve the land. California won't have to be a dust bowl like in Oklahoma back in 1935. Californians will be moving back to Oklahoma if they ain't got that do re mi.
If California farmers could grow hemp or marijuana, same thing, they would at least have a cash crop to sell and/or industrialize. Maybe it should be considered just to save their asses. They could do something like that.
Might want to give it a try.
It might work.
They wouldn't be needing a 100 million dollars from the gov and the gov would be collecting taxes on the incomes produced by the hemp crops.
Far be it from me that it's like it is, but it is fubar.
Sow the wind, reap a whirlwind.
Beer time.
Yeah. Plant the whole central valley in pot and then light it on fire and let it burn out of control.
I get to be downwind!
"If California farmers could grow hemp or marijuana, same thing, they would at least have a cash crop to sell and/or industrialize."
Better first understand your potential markets. Just stating that one grow/produce something doesn't mean that buyers will pop out of the woodwork.
You state that "It might work." Then:
"They wouldn't be needing a 100 million dollars from the gov and the gov would be collecting taxes on the incomes produced by the hemp crops."
Nice trick, switching a hypothetical to a concrete outcome.
Any idea on what the value of the existing crops and livestock is?
Further, you just don't switch crops like you change your underwear. Way too many people running around trying to play farmer w/o having the first clue of the realities in farming...
Hit and run punk, hit and run...
I thought this was the #Fukashima fallout map of CA...
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."
Oslo, October 9, 2009
Fuck Oboma and his peace prize. He can stick that medal up his shitty slopped out ass. Of course the fucker wants to contain nukes as they have every other base covered including weather modification. Heaven forbid some decent country would drop one right up his asshole and wipe out the hellhole called DC. The US army claims they OWN the weather. Don't think so? Just google it up. You think these weather extremes are due to nature?? LMAO not a fucking chance.
100 million, chump change. Good president. He really seems to care. About what I have no idea. [/thornton melon]
100 million of taxpayer's money stolen from them by a chump!
1. How many gallons of water does a cow require a day?
and
2. How many bottles of poland spring does 100 million dollars buy?
and
3. Funny how Fiendstein, her husband and his cronies are ging to make even more money then this 'drought relief' amounts to selling dozens of Post Offices to hedge funds.
We have to ask ourselves what would Caesar Chavez do and I think we know the answer is leave California and invade British Columbia and picket their grocery stores!
Looks like China gets Cali at a firesale price.
I'm thinking that behind that satire you understand the ramifications.
Loss of control of food producing land... we will come to know what so many other small, third-world countries experienced...
Chinese get a big chunk of the pork industry (Smithfield) and now the Canadians have managed to spawn PEV into the US. Yeah, opportunity: I'll be looking to raise hogs.
How much money in the Trillion Dollar Ag Bill went to China/Smithfield?
Are Obama & Congress bailing out Chinese Oligarchs' investment in pork?
No satire, I believe China will get Oregon and Washington too, maybe everything west of the continental divide.
How do you say "New China" in mandarin?
Look at the bright side, they'll kick Monsanto's GMO crap out, we might get non-gmo stuff again.
And they'll close the mexican border, and kick illegals out. Give 'em 30 days to leave or be arrested ...maybe shot.
Hmm, starting to sound pretty good.
<--- Water is more important
<--- Food is more important
I think a lot of farmworkers should head for Detroit and become car designers for Chevy. Imagine the Chevy Coyote , a midsize sedan with seating for 24 and storage in the gas tank, wheel wells and under the dash for over 100 lbs of contraband. The Jeep Lowrider able to bounce its way over a 12 foot high border fence and carry 16 in comfort.
Just tell the all-powerful Yellen to print water and food. Problem solved. /s
Buy water from Canada and ship it here in a Keystone Pipeline.
Too late..sold to the chinese by a bankrupt Canadian socialist government agency. Crown Corporation, i believe its called.
The solution is consumer based water conservation ..not enforced by a gun but enforced through community personal responsibility. But before that can happen..they (the great userping parasite) need to quit fucking with the water flow.
Otherwise....No water for you ..american dog. Gulp
RIPS
More likely Nestle & they aren't China.
How could I forget the Cadillac Escaladero, a luxury auto with software and holographic dash printer able to forge drivers license for all 50 states with matching registration. A built in console meth lab, tattoo maker and tires made of 50 percent tar heroin!
This drought was anticipated:
Revelation 6:5-6 And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, Come. And I saw, and behold, a black horse; and he that sat thereon had a balance in his hand. (6) And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, A measure of wheat for a shilling, and three measures of barley for a shilling; and the oil and the wine hurt thou not.
http://www.thewarningsecondcoming.com/the-third-seal-will-be-revealed-wh...
California tumbles into the sea
That'll be the day I go
Back to Annandale.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-agai...
His mother said to the servants, “Do what he tells you.” John 2
http://www.thewarningsecondcoming.com/the-third-seal-will-be-revealed-wh...
do not fret sheep
do not worry mules
it is all in the communist planning
monsanto has crops for desert
has seeds for nuclear summer and winter.
make bayer and monsanto your friend.
drink pepsi eat corn syrup
the corporation will take care of you.
Reverse dustbowl. We don't want or need you here.
Moonbeam and Rondstadt should get back together and do a raindance...
Google makes a better desalination plant, Tom Perkins hits a whale in his submarine and drowns, and 10million illegals move to Wyoming and make pinatas out of Dick Cheey an Alan Simpson. Problem solved.
Saw that South Park episode!
I think this drought is a win-win. No crops means no jobs for illegals. They go home and Conservatives are happy. Less California produce and fruit means less radiation in the food supply for the rest of the United States. Maybe we all make it a few more years tumor free. I do feel bad for any small farmers, but Big Ag can suck my cock!
The "conservatives" are the ones that helped facilitate the influx in the first place- NAFTA (yes, I fully understand that both parties were in on it).
"Illegals*" have been returning back to Mexico for some time (housing bubble bursting). People will have to face up to the fact that more and more of us are going to have to be closer to producing food than we have been: I saw this coming a long time ago and have been adjusting to it.
As much as I dislike Big Ag it is what it is- a symbol of all of our demands (in their case, cheap food). Eventuall my equation proves true: BIG = FAIL.
"The "conservatives" are the ones that helped facilitate the influx in the first place- NAFTA"
Ah, NAFTA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993 and entered force January 1, 1994.
"Illegals" have been returning back to Mexico for some time (housing bubble bursting).
Ah, California housing has rebounded in most areas and the population of Latinos living in California now equals white non-Hispanics. By March 2014, Latinos will claim the title as the majority, overtaking the number of non-Hispanic whites.
And isn't da king recruiting illegals to sign up for Obamacare? Joe W. should demand an apology.
I know who the illegals are and it isn't the Mexicans.
Let the golf courses and patchy little lawns in the burbs go and you save a lot of water right there.
While I agree that a lot of that is water wasted, IIRC, most of our water use is in agriculture and power generation. The whole "If it's yellow, it's mellow, if it's brown, it goes down" thing is a bit like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. See my post below about drought adapted crops and then combine that with my belief that people would be well served by ripping out their lawns and planting gardens.
"my belief that people would be well served by ripping out their lawns and planting gardens. "
We are doing just that. Healthy work, fresh air; and fresh clean home grown no pesticides no gmo food.
Of course everyone thinks I'm insane when I say that it would be far healthier for Americans to do this and be allowed to keep a little more of their hard earned money than to be taxed to subsidize rich Cali Ag concerns.
4 million illegals in CA all consuming, very conservatively, 4 gallons a day. Do the math homie, 16 million gallons a day or 11,110 gallons per minute per day.
4 gallons a day is very low unless you are assuming they rarely shower and do their "business" outside. Use a water closet twice and that is 5 gallons. Shower is about 30 gallons.
I agree, kept my estimate purposely low to compensate for recapture of grey water and to take away the PC whiners whining.
Let them eat cake!! We all need our own personal golf courses.
We can just print moar water!
I'm no pro, but I look at a lot of weather models and the extended range (late Feb/early March) looks above normal temps for almost all of California...while areas in the lakes/Ohio Valley stay well below normal (temps). This isn't going to end well.
If it wasn't for the way agriculture works in this country and how food gets sold to the sheep, California could take up some of the slack caused by the drought by planting drought adapted crops. Some kinds of Tepary beans can be dry farmed in the Sonoran desert. I have Isleta, New Mexico and Corrales melons, all of which take less water than a lot of the normal varieties of melons. You can find drought adapted cultivars of a lot of different fruits and vegetables. The problem is, they're less likely to have traits that allow for convenient mechanical harvesting, or they are "different" and too many of us don't want "different." Or perhaps they don't lend themselves to the heavy processing that is involved in a lot of the foods Americans eat.
Instead of at least trying to adapt to changing conditions, they're going to sit there and go broke. This spring or summer, we might just get to see what happens when people's EBTs don't stretch quite far enough. My dad didn't quite think I was crazy when I started gardening, but he was skeptical, to say the least, about my claims that food prices were going to start rising. Well, they have risen, and he's seen the drought data and knows about QE. He's a lot less skeptical now.
Big Ship syndrome. Lots gets tied up and switching over crops (desptie the mother fucking punk who keeps down-arrowing me might think) just can't happen quickly. Shipping. Storage life. It's a tough business. For sure it's got nowhere to go but to revert to something akin to sustainability, more local-based (which doesn't generate huge revenue flows inward [though this very notion is drying up]).
Yes, it can take time, and getting the seed can be tough in a world where everything is geared up for the industrial agriculture system that we have, but, while it wouldn't be surprising to have some very (short) wet periods spattered in the future, overall, farmers should be assuming that we are in for a drought for a while, not just this year. Even if it means planting what they can on the fields that would be otherwise be fallow in order to have seed for next year, it might be a wise idea.
It's also an issue of soil condition. And, sadly, most of the Big Ag soils are pretty pathetic, which is really their fundamental problem.
I'm not thinking that any meaningful "solutions" are going to come about through BIG (Ag and or govt). The reasons and concerns I'd made key in a presentation against ethanol: local farmers switching to biofuel feedstock would end up being bought out by large out-of-area conglomerates, which would put a big hurt on the ability of locals to provide food for themselves (hm... seems this story has been played before).
All of that artificial fertalizer only having potassium, phosphorous and nitrogen, but not much in the way of trace nutrients or biological matter is a bitch.
They could plant some cover crops, some low moisture beans or melons. Square Foot Gardening, Back to Eden, composting, desert reclamation - try anything because once the soil blows away, it's gone for a long time.
If they just let the Central Valley sit and dessicate, it's going to become a sand dune in very little time.
As others have noted the solutions are 'different' and BigAg, BigFood, consumers, processors, they don't want 'different'.
It's better to have a low yield, than NO yield.
yup. compost + mittleider micronutrients
not all is lost but we'll have to do it ourselves.
You wanna see some fast down-arrows:
USLV
abortion is a human right & good for free markets
global warming is real & only people who can't read thermometers say otherwise
technical analysis must have equations or it's bullshit & elliot waves are ALWAYS wrong
just click back every 10 minutes and watch those reds pile in.
DAfuq, where's my red arrowz?
Don't make me vote Obamao's 3rd term in, people
I know everyone's shit is all emtional right now.....
Yes, but the Delta Smelt is safe.
I think we can all agree that's more important than California agriculture.
Soylent Green, here we come!
I lived through the last big California drought back in the 70s. Sure, rainfall is down considerably but politics and greed and stupidity prevent rational responses.
Call up google maps for any big Southern California urban area like Orange County. You'll see millions of swimming pools, sitting in backyards, hardly ever used, just evaporating away some truly massive amounts of water.
Do you see any move to ban backyard swimming pools? How about all the idiotic lawns of grass in front of millions of houses in what would be a desert? Get rid of them. Permenantly.
Drive out to the big agricultural zones and you'll see endless miles of walking overhead sprinkler systems creeping along. No matter how bad drought conditions get some big power groups still have guaranteed allotments of water and they don't give a shit.
So rainfall is down. But bullshit and political pandering and blind self-interest is up, up and up.
We just drove down I-5 in California's Central Valley from the Bay Area to LA. In the Central Valley you'll now see dry fallow fields with no crops planted and no miles of walking overhead sprinkler systems creeping along. The fields with nut and citrus trees look awfully dry. Driving along I-5 you can see the north south water canal filled with water destined for Southern California.
Yes, one way or another excess will have to pay its way... BUT, even IF those pools and whatnot would be eliminated/reduced, eventually, as population size increases we get back to this point (and, eventually, worse).
I think it's begining to be a good time to start the conversation about trying to maintain economic systems centered around perpetual growth on a finite planet.
Hey, punk mother fucker, piss off. Cowardly prick! (someone's dogging me with single down-arrows)
Maybe finite minds build massive cities like LA that are totally unsustainable without having water and food shipped in from hundreds of miles away?
The central valley has always been dry. What is needed is to make the farming more sustainable, a bit on the organic side. Use cachements, cycle the crops to sustain each other, compost, etc. Productivity will drop but water consumption will drop as well.
The Sun is changing the solar system, a Maunder Minimum, or worse, is occurring.
Adjusting to this new reality will require re-thinking how to farm.
The country needs that land producing food, so time to think outside the box and drop the irrigation and chemicals.
To just 'give up' because they cannot pump water onto water-intensive, fertiliser-dependent, crops, is foolish.
The Sun is calling the shots, time to adjust.
Something like this?
http://coldsun.net/
DaddyO
there is NO APPRECIABLE measureable difference for irradiance on the surface of the earth, moon, mars, anything. This solar-cycle nonsense is junk-science.
The government does not have the right (nor any rights for that matter) to ban swimming pools in people's backyards. Thanks.
No but they could implement a special pool filling surcharge to make you wish you hadn't got one or just plain tax you for it, there is more than one way to make you change your behaviour right or wrong.
Tax water, just like pot.
then they also should have no right to force water into the state from another state and we'll see how many pools are filled then.
Somehow I doubt if the Valley girls and Dudes jump into their SUVs and head for Oklahoma...
I am thankful for that.
A LOT of US produce comes from Mexico.
So does food poisoning, they sh** in the fields and I don't think they wash their hands either.
I hope his dirty hands don't accidentally strangle you, vato.
Maybe Modesto and Stockton can shrivel up and die finally.
LA needs to shrivel up and die!
It's what you get for voting in the Kenyan messiah, well let him write an executive order to make it rain in California. He is the light bringer he is hope and change he can do anything.
Obama *did* promise to make the oceans recede.
Didn't he know how this would affect California's rainfall?!?
I guess people are just going to have to smarten up and do what other generations have done: grow your own. These days, anyone who isn't growing at least some of their own food needs is a fool. The time to have started this was a few years ago when water supplies started to become a problem.
But no! The government will fix it. Buy up farmer's water rights. Dam rivers and suck them dry. Build huge irrigation canals. Subsidise farmers wether they grow a crop or not. Promote GMOs that need more water than regular crops.
Could an idiot in public office have screwed things up any worse? Well, I can only conclude that there are idiots in office making these decisions, with unintended consequences.
We build up this wheat position 3 weeks ago. Was most oversold since 2008 but no one was talking about it.. Now folks are noticing..
http://signalinea.com/update-on-our-wheat-position/
Whatever. Too much hyperbole with the weather and the news. And with the whinest of the Whiney baby class: farmers. God forbid someone say "yeah, most of California is a desert, what did you expect?" Nope. In history, there wasn't a tarriff they didn't love, banning a product they didn't push for, or a dime of welfare that they didn't demand.
For those of you who have half a functioning brain, residential water usage for things like pools, lawns, flushes, laundry, etc. is a drop in the bucket compared to what agriculture uses. Yet the nannies have to issue these idiotic degrees to drum up fines to have something to do when it's dry outside. Also, let's all ignore the fact that Cali has been on the leading edge of water efficiency efforts for homes and building for 40 years and it hasn't amounted to anything. A couple of dry months and the sky is about to fall.
Dup
I've only been to California a couple of times, so please forgive me for asking questions about something I know so little about, but I do know that California has a long coastline and it's often puzzled me why, if California's water supply is so unreliable/inadequate, don't they build desalination plants along the coast?
which form of energy were you thinking of to power these desalination plants?
I bet tidal + solar would help out. It's not like there's a shortage of tides or sun in California.
..... and what to do with the MASSIVE amounts of salt by-product. No kidding, this is a legit concern by the industry. Dumping it back into the ocean is a no-no.
Nevada refuses to receive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain even though quite a hole has been paid for and excavated.
Maybe salt can be trucked over there...
Humans will die without salt. Why cant it just be resold?
You must have missed the uptick in "Sea Salt" marketing.
ship it north. In our ice storm we ran out across my province. We'll put it to good use.
Building the largest desal plant in the northern hemisphere right now in my town, Carlsbad. Done in 2016. Funded by bond sales.
I shot milk out my nose when as I watched that Obummer clip (and I wasnt even drinking any milk). His little speech is riddled with idiocy, mainly the thought of subsidizing and encouraging farmers to farm in a pretty much a desert. This is not the first time in CA. Why not move more production to the pacific northwest, plenty of fertile grounds rain there? But no, its the government to the rescue, using my money to stimulate nothing :(
Envious, much? Another 70 degree day today in San Diego..How was your weather, Okies?
66, a few clouds, a light breeze. Good day for hitting the range.
BTW, the cold is on the way back next week, but only after finally getting some persistent snowfalls in the western Rockies. But come the 21st of Feb you'll be seeing the polar freezer door opening up again.
Latest model output:
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/medr/9mh.gif
looks like persistent blizzard and heavy snow in the east.
Just as the weather was an excuse for the retail numbers, now the drought can be the blame for thirty years of profligate public spending coming home to roosrt.
If one is willing to believe all the evidence of a zionist/illuminati/freemason/jesuit conspiracy that wants do force the proles to disgourge their wealth and their lives, and if one believed in harp and all the indications that these powers have some control over the weather, then I have a scenario.
Perhaps these powers are causing the drought in CA and the flooding in GB in order to bankrupt farmers so they can pick up prime agricultural land for pennies on the dollar. By causing one sharp drought in conjunction with their cut off of agricultural water to save the delta smelt, they can cause a collapse of farm land prices. Think of it as an April 2013 Precious metals type raid where they can then pick up prime assets from paniced owners...
HAARP heats the upper ionosphere, not so sure that could cause a drought.
What I am sure of is that California is begging for droughts every year no matter what without shipping water in, and from what I'm hearing of residents, they are foolish enough to send water to lawns & golf courses, divert rain water into the ocean, then bitch about having not enough water.
What the fuck do they think INDIA does to survive?
WTF.
HAARP? Dude, I could give California a dirty look and it would get another drought, they don't need HAARP to do that.
Let Silicon Valley and Hollywood pay for it.
I vote YES.
Hollywood=Silicone Valley. An up and coming big shot in my company was doing a presentation to some clients about data centers and mentioned "silicone" valley. I almost burst out laughing thinking of a land full of women strutting around with fake tits.
That's LA and Orange Counties.
Speaking of drought and water wars...
quote from: Utah – Achilles’ Heel of the Surveillance State
Well what do u know. A Mormon action that benefits the country and not just their self interest. But ill believe it when i see it.
Here's a great place to keep abreast of how not to comply...
http://tracking.tenthamendmentcenter.com/issues/nsa-spying/?doing_wp_cron=1392508435.7435500621795654296875
DaddyO
I am not buying any food products out of California anyway. Seems like no one is talking about Fukushima. A quick reminder that in recent times, scientists from across the world who have been monitoring the radiation leaking out of Fukushima, have found that the rates have actually been increasing quite dramatically, causing a major global threat and especialy the West Coast of the U.S. . The rain water collects Cesium, then the plants do... What are your thoughts?
I told you this drought was anticipated:
http://rt.com/news/water-ration-drought-brazil-253/
Revelation 6:5-6 And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, Come. And I saw, and behold, a black horse; and he that sat thereon had a balance in his hand. (6) And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, A measure of wheat for a shilling, and three measures of barley for a shilling; and the oil and the wine hurt thou not.
Been a long time since we heard from you, St. John...
How's tricks?
Still getting those crazy assed dreams?
While in the U.K. record rain. Most ever since record keeping began in 1766!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26172688
California is a desert. LA average rainfall is under 10 inches, that's the definition of a desert climate. Most of California is a DESERT. What were people expecting? Dumbasses. Forest fires, artificial agriculture and too many people will finally spell an end to Cali.
don't worry all of cali can move to Las Vegas, paradise where water is flowing in massive fountains on the strip.
Or the sprinklers on the golf courses. Ditto Phoenix.
Nothing says "conspicuous consumption" and "resource profligacy" like a golf course.
I'll say it again --- taken as a whole, humanity is demonstrably insane.
Ah, no it is not. Most of ag California, and 90% of urban California is semi arid. A big difference. Also, Israel shows how you can have intensive agriculture on semi arid lands, profitably. SoCal gets alot of its water from the Colorado basin, and that basin is normal to wet, so no emergecy for us. Only San Francisco is sucking hind tit, and that is why Obama rushed out there. Those idiots prefer fish over drinking water and that will bite them hard. liberals are learning about choices and their costs.
Israel had food protests in 2011 from shortages.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14433245
They lie.
This is 2008 http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=15821
They also steal water from the Palestinians and execute them on their own land.
That's no profit. Israel with no military & financial aid would shrivel in a year while the real indigenous people, who are PALESTINIANS, would thrive as they know how to work their own land.
"They also steal water from the Palestinians and execute them on their own land."
Wrong again Jew hater. It the Palestinians who are executing Jews on Jewish lands.
The Palestinians are Arabs who have no language, religion or general culture that distinguishes them significantly from the Arabs other neighboring Arab states. Before the 20th century, traditional Palestinian society was semi-feudal in its structure and organized around loyalties to locality and tribe, not nation. Palestinian culture is part of a larger Arab culture.
The Palestinian identity is a shallow political veneer that developed as a hostile tool kept sharpened for use against Israel.
I don't hate Jews & a lot of Jews hate the apartheid that is Israel.
Ever heard of the Shministim? http://www.whywerefuse.org/
There ARE NO JEWISH LANDS.
They do not exist and have not since the times of the Roman Empire.
Tribal? Jews in history have ONLY EVER been a tribe, only ONCE a nation, in the time of King David. That's it. That's not now.
Intesive agriculture needs huge amounts of water, which is not always available. This "water problem" is entirely man-made. In La Nina years, the Southwest does not get a lot of rain that it does in El Nino years. Yet people still insist on growing water intensive crops like cotton in Arizona, and citrus fruit in much of California. Look at the number of swimming pools in Los Angeles. How much water is wasted there due to evaporation? Huge amounts of water are wasted by Las Vegas, which is a completely illogical city.
They want to save the Sacramento delta smelt fish or whatever it is, but nobody talks about the Colorado river delta ecosystem, that has been totally destroyed due to lack of water down in Mexico. The US basically drinks up all of the Colorado, but lo and behold, when there is a drought in California, everybody gets concerned. Fucking hypocrites.
The whole of California farming is completely unsustainable from an ecological standpoint. Let them eat dust for all I care.
At least we're saving that fish.
So there's that.
Because of government subsidies, the cost of water on the West coast has been cheaper for the end user than almost any other area of the US. This might represent one factor resulting in the crumbling malinvestments in desert-based agriculture.
These Calis should consider moving to Oklahoma.