Posted on 08/02/2014 5:50:31 AM PDT by blam
Tyler Durden
08/01/2014
As we previously commented, when scientists start using phrases such as "the worst drought" and "as bad as you can imagine" to describe what is going on in the western half of the country, you know that things are bad. However, in recent weeks the dreadful situation in California has gone from bad to catastrophic as the U.S. Drought Monitor reported that more than half of the state is now in experiencing 'exceptional' drought, the most severe category available. And most of the state – 81% – currently has one of the two most intense levels of drought.
As WaPo reports,
While California’s problems are particularly severe, that state is not alone in experiencing significant drought right now. There are wide swaths of moderate to severe drought stretching from Oregon to Texas, with problems impacting numerous states west of the Mississippi River.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
our small pond here in MO is the same. I’d hate to lose some of our big bass since we don’t have too many.
MO had a severe drought 2 summers ago and that was bad. This summer is close to the same regarding lack of rain BUT it has been a very mild summer temp wise.
I went through my old home of NE New Mexico last year. It was the first time in my 67 years I saw it GREEN!
The first time! It has always been dry, hot dry, dead dry, dry dry!
Whereas, my other home area in NW New Mexico was just as dry as it has always been, with lots of Arizona blowing over into New Mexico.
that’s some quality Onionesque writing Coloradan. Well done. You had me good for a few sentences.
Zero Hedge is Chicken Little on meth.
Zero Hedge should be banned.
The weather reminds me of the early 1980's.
It practically writes itself.
My greatest wish is that the federal government doesn’t bail CA out, i.e. put taxpayers of other states on the hook in response to idiocy entirely within CA’s borders. This drought has been 50 if not 100 years in coming, and demographic trends (including water usage, and including agricultural water usage) is no more secret than are rainfall averages and the fact the area is a desert. All these things together bring the key, central issues to the forefront of the legislature: gay rights, assault weapons bans, and healthcare for illegal immigrants. Oh, and the multi-billion-dollar light rail project. Why store up grains for seven years, to borrow the Biblical analogy, when you could micromanage the population to advance your ideology, instead? Coupled with a hefty dose of featherbedding, not to mention federal pork.
Is there a way to couple water bills to environmental activism? $10/gal water for those of you who obstructed this desal plant? That would be nice.
the system would be loser pays.
San Diego is driest along the coast and we have to fight the idiots to use water we see every day.
They should move out of the area to lessen the demand for water.
Wjen Gom Bradley was mayor of LA he proposed an aqueduct from the Columbia River to soCal. The gov or WA told him to pound sand. Then tens of thousands of soCals moved to Seattle area. This will happen again.
Then Bradley proposed a pipeline on the ocean floor to bring glacier water from Alaska. $5 billion, now probably $50 billion.
Either move the water to the people or the people will move to the water.
When Tom Bradley……...
Folsom?
and you know that if you posted your previous sarcastic post on 100 comments sections in various MSM news articles, you’d get so much nodding of heads from the “intelligent educated class” that the wind created from the bobbing of heads could be harnessed into gigawatts.
Correct.
My lawn in Los Angeles is now dirt.
Desal is all about cheap energy.
The latest plants are coupled with clean coal and solar energy. You make the Desal plant highly efficient by using energy recapturing technology, use the water to cool the plants, and throw in waste water recovery plant that produces energy. You have millions of gallons of potable water, with a low carbon footprint that will produce thousands of megawatts of energy. Plus the waste water treatment plant would add to the potable water supply and feed power into the output of the plants.
What I thought of was Desal water, water treatment and energy production. Where the sum of the parts are much greater than the whole.
Almost all new Desal plants are using two or three pieces of the puzzle above.
I’m still waiting for the lake at Optima wildlife Refuge at Hardesty, OKlahoma to get filled.
Built years ago it has never been wet enough to fish in. A real boondogle.
Wow.
Optima Dam was completed in 1978. The intended purpose of the refuge was to provide migration and wintering habitat for the shortgrass prairie population of Canada geese and the high plains population of mallards.
Source: US Fish and Wildlife Service
http://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=21661
***
Optima Lake is a reservoir in Texas County, Oklahoma. The lake is located near the towns of Hardesty and Guymon in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
The earthen Optima Lake Dam (National ID # OK20510) was constructed in 1978 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, with a height of 120 feet, and a length at its crest of 16,875 feet.[1] Although designed to contain a maximum of 618,500 acre-feet, the lake has never reached more than 5 percent of its design capacity,[2] and now is effectively empty. Rapid declines in streamflow (related to large-scale pumping from the High Plains Aquifer) coincided with the completion of dam construction[2] to make this lake a dramatic example of unanticipated environmental impacts.[3]
The US Army Corps of Engineers states (emphasis added):
Visitors should be aware that the lake’s level can be very low. Depending on rainfall and evaporation rates, the lake may offer no water-based recreation and may not be suitable for swimming, fishing, boating or other activities.[4]
Lake camping facilities and buildings have been dismantled for public safety by the Corps of Engineers as of October 2012.
Source: Wikipedia
Well, according to some myths and legends, Oregon is a hotbed of liberalism. Repeatedly electing liberal idiots to “represent” us doesn’t do much to dispel those ideas either. But just as every state with concentrations of population, the outlying areas are much more liberal than the more sparsely-populated counties. Even California is pretty conservative outside the cities - as is Nevada which keeps on re-electing Harry Reid.
Oregon has the “I-5 Belt” which runs from Portland down to Eugene. Most of te population resides in that narrow corridor. Twenty to forty miles either way from it you’ll find conservatives outnumber liberals by a hefty margin. Unfortunately, that’s all farmland and the human population isn’t enough to counter the cities.
It isn’t particularly unusual either: pick any “Blue” state and you’ll find that the big cities, the population centers, are predominately Blue, while those counties whose farms feed the cities are predominately Red in sheer area.
I was born here in Oregon. When I got old enough to take care of myself I roamed the world. I even spent a few years in California, but that was when I could walk into a grocery store with a gun on my hip and walk out with the groceries and no SWAT team to greet me. I know first-hand the difference between the two states and yeah, I’m glad I live in Oregon.
If the map is being used to incite fear, to bolster the cause of "global warming," and to make it look like the country is suffering a shortage of potable water, by covering vast swathes in shades of yellow, orange, and red - then you are right: It is not relevant to show that much of the nation still has plentiful freshwater resources.
Regards,
I could do it - but govt won’t let me due to regulatory requirements. The tech is there.
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