Free Republic

The extended drought in California has farmers looking for ways to use less water. Among them: growing feed indoors using hydroponics. The new diet is making some Central Valley sheep very happy. On Golden Valley Farm an hour north of Fresno, Mario Daccarett's employees milk 500 sheep every day, in rounds of 12. This creamy milk eventually is turned into cheese and sold at places like Whole Foods. "They tell me that our Golden Ewe cheese is the best for grilled cheese sandwich ever," Daccarett says. (I bought some and it was really tasty.) He says he gets about 800...

Dean “Dino” Cortopassi, the Stockton-area farmer and food processor who could undermine Gov. Jerry Brown’s Delta water project and high-speed rail in California, leaned over a pile of paperwork in his conference room this spring, tossing bread to his black Labrador and pounding on the table. The state Capitol, Cortopassi said, has been overrun by “porkers feeding at the public trough,” and if long-term debt is not constrained, he said his grandchildren’s generation will bear the cost. He called his November ballot initiative – a proposal to require voter approval before the state issues revenue bonds for public works projects...

Among Manchester’s proudest scientific developments has to be graphene - it’s very own homegrown wonder material first isolated by scientists at the University of Manchester back in 2004. A material made from a single atom layer of carbon that is super lightweight, super conductive and super strong, it seems to have endless capabilities in the modern world - from smart clothing to intergalactic exploration. Twelve years after its discovery via a sticky tape dispenser - and six years since its developers Andre Geim (pictured below) and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics - and interest in graphene...

The western United States is chronically short of water and the situation can only get worse, barring some sort of major reversal of climate. I don't believe this is caused by climate change, but rather is an inevitable function of increasing population demands on a limited resource. With few exceptions, Lake Mead, designed to be a major supplier of water for southern California and Las Vegas, has been steadily dropping to the point where it may fail to produce any water in dry times of the cycle. Other reservoirs have been observed to dry up or lose over three quarters...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday called for a new tax on city water and sewer bills to stabilize the city's largest pension fund, a move he portrayed as his latest tough decision to secure Chicago's financial future. Emanuel's plan, which would increase the average water and sewer bill by 30 percent over the next four years, was quickly met with resistance from some aldermen who argued the city would be better off adding business taxes or even raising property taxes again to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to keep the city's municipal workers'...

July 19, 2016 — Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore. “Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the...

Shocking new pictures of the filthy waters in Rio have revealed yet more concerns for Olympic athletes in Brazil who have been told not to put their heads under water. Ganabara Bay will host the triathlon, sailing and some swimming events at the Games and last week a floating corpse and a severed arm were found floating in the water. A study has shown viral levels in the bay is up to 1.7 million times what would be considered worrisome in the United States or Europe.

An agreement approved Tuesday by a multi-state governmental body known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council will allow the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin to draw millions of gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan. Waukesha, a city of 70,000 located 20 miles west of Milwaukee, lies in the Mississippi River Basin, just outside the Great Lakes Basin. Gov. Rick Snyder sent a representative to vote in favor of the unprecedented plan at a hearing in Chicago Tuesday afternoon. A veto by any state in the Council would have derailed Waukesha’s plan. Great Lakes Basin The...

At a campaign event in Springfield, Illinois Wednesday afternoon presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton warned Donald Trump would use the military and IRS "to go after his critics and opponents."

Who knows how liberals come up with wonderful ideas like Multiculturalism and Identity Politics I recently read about how early-arriving Olympic contestants in Brazil are complaining about the condition of the waters they train by and in—oil slicks, the odd body part, mosquitoes, “superbugs” and such—picky, picky, picky. It struck me how opposed to the spirit of multiculturalism such provincial and benighted attitudes are—how xenophobic, how paternalistic, how…white. Which led me to think about Kanye West’s recent request that Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and other “white” publications stop commenting on black music. Right on Kanye!

A short history of Obama administration accountability: 1. No one fired at ATF or the Justice Department over Fast and Furious gun walking scandal 2. No one fired at IRS, two employees temporarily demoted over targeting scandal 3. Only 6 managers at the VA fired or allowed to resign over falsifying wait time records 4. No HHS employee fired over Obamacare exchange fiasco 5. No senior officers have been demoted or removed from CENTCOM for "cooking the books" on ISIS intelligence 6.. No EPA employee disciplined for toxic spill at Colorado mine As for that last scandal, Interior Secretary Sally...

Penn State researchers have used a custom 3D photolithographic process similar to stereolithography to 3D print micro-patterned anion exchange membranes. The membranes, patterned for improved performance, could be used in energy, water purification, desalination, and other applications. Although they might resemble small pieces of run-of-the-mill kitchen plastic wrap, ion exchange membranes play a vital role several different practical processes. The thin, flat polymer sheets can be used in fuel cells and batteries, while food processing, heavy metals removal, and water purification can also benefit from the membranes. While these polymer membranes have traditionally been made flat and smooth, scientists have...

Warning: House office water tainted with lead By Rachael Bade and Jake Sherman 06/28/16 07:37 PM EDT A House office’s water supply has been tainted by high lead levels and may be unsafe, according to a warning blasted out to congressional offices Tuesday night. In a “dear colleagues” letter, House office buildings superintendent William Weidemeyer told members and staff that the Cannon House Office Building was experiencing lead levels above normal, according to a recent water test. “This week, the AOC received results within the Cannon House Office Building that indicate lead levels in drinking water sources are slightly above...

California has put the green lobby elite ahead of the normal human need for water, building no new reservoirs in decades and diverting the water of the Central Valley to flow to sea in order to protect a locally endangered smelt. Now an Israeli company is coming to the rescue of San Diego County, soon to be providing 10% of their water and creating 2,500 jobs through state-of-the-art reverse-osmosis technology. IDE Technologies dedicated the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere on Monday ..quenching the thirst of roughly 10 percent of San Diego County... The plant, which will be operated...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Even in 2015, the New York Times is still pretending that desalination does not exist The New York Times just published this article on California’s water shortage:California Drought Tests History of Endless GrowthA punishing drought is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been the state’s engine has run against the limits of nature.April 4, 2015LOS ANGELES — For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and...

Making drinking water out of sea water is a growing trend, but the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says it is a potential threat to the environment that also could exacerbate climate change. The global review of desalination plants worldwide: "Making water: Desalination -- option or distraction for a thirsty world?" -- states that some of the driest and thirstiest places are turning to desalination. These include regions where water problems affect large, populous areas -- Australia, the Middle East, Spain, the United Kingdom and United States, with India and China following suit. "Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy-intensive and...

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle. The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington State University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union. Looking down deep The pair analyzed more than...

The researchers compiled data from the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, which tracks oil and gas wells around the state. Researchers determined if water had been detected while drilling, and also gathered data about depth, salinity and pressure. After looking at 360 oil and gas fields spread across eight counties, the researchers say that they’ve documented a trove of fresh water just over half the size of Lake Michigan hidden in California’s bedrock 1,000 to nearly 10,000 feet below the surface. This is almost three times more groundwater than what was indicated in previous studies, many conducted...

The Environmental Protection Agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on military-style weapons to arm its 200 “special agents” to fight environmental crime. Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books. “Protecting the environment just got real. With millions of dollars spent on military style weaponry, the EPA is now literally ensconced with all institutional force,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books and the author...

Meanwhile it’s not safe for anybody now that Barry’s come out of the school bathroom and into the parkland The Pirate in the Oval Office is not only fleecing American citizens out of more than 265 million acres of public lands and waters, he’s rubbing their noses in his park acquisition on his way out of the door. Barack ‘Captain-Kidd-you-not” Obama spent Father’s Day weekend hanging out in the park.