Not good news:
More than half of all U.S. counties have been designated disaster zones, the Department of Agriculture reported, blaming excessive heat and a devastating drought that’s spread across the Corn Belt and contributed to rising food prices.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday declared disaster zone designations for an additional 218 counties in 12 states because of damage and losses caused by drought and excessive heat.
The states are Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.
Nearly three-quarters of the nation’s cattle acreage is inside a region hit by drought, as is about two-thirds of the country’s hay acreage, the agency reported.
USDA researchers added that an average of 37% of the nation’s soybeans were last week ranked from very poor to poor, the lowest quality recorded since a massive drought in 1988.
That means that all produce and livestock costs will be through the roof this fall, and more than likely there will be global food shortages. I’m not sure how food prices are calculated into the overall inflation index, but soaring inflationary costs in foods will probably spook the Fed, which seems focused only on inflation and not employment, into continuing to not do a damned thing about the economy. Although I’m not sure what the Fed can do other than more quantitative easing, which doesn’t seem to have done much the first two times.
*** Update ***
Interesting piece on how no one is really taking this stuff seriously.
cathyx
Do budget cuts affect disaster relief? But since most of the states are republican controlled states, then I’ll bet they want to take care of it themselves and leave the federal government out of it.
Served
The corn in Central Illinois is pretty much shot for this year. I know a bunch of farmers are getting ready to just use it as feed instead of waiting to harvest. Even worse, the drought means a certain kind of fungus may have a strong enough foothold that it’ll prevent the corn from even being usable as feed.
Beans may be a lost cause as well.
cathyx
Food prices have been rising exponentially even before this problem. $10.00 loaf of bread here we come.
bingbango
So when do these food riots start wrong way Cole? Stay gloomy!
4tehlulz
I didn’t expect the Fed to do anything after reading this:
No QE3 until the end of the year, I think.
TenguPhule
Reduce demand by purging the Republican moochers from the country. With Fire. /not as much snark as there should be
trollhattan
@bingbango:
Good lord, it’s you again.
Anyway, we’ll keep on doing what we’ve been doing and the good news is there’s far more sand in which to stick our heads. The Richard Muller about-face is just a passing fancy. Nao, why is the president at war with coal? Why!?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=1
chopper
@bingbango:
given that egypt flipped it’s shit over a better wheat crop than this year’s, i’d drop the smarmy shit.
chopper
@Served:
lots of ranchers are just selling off large swaths of their herds now, since rangeland is shit. guess beef prices may not be so bad for a few months because of this, but then later it’ll go up.
Lee
I think food is excluded from the inflation index.
Punchy
Maybe all the heat in the fields will produce popcorn, just in time for the elections.
Frankensteinbeck
I already listened to an expert talking about this. He said you’ll see some increase in prices on milk and egg products, but otherwise no real difference.
This, by the way, is one of the biggest reasons why the ‘we should form abbeys and communes and stuff’ guy was being stupid. Droughts like this happen. Do you know what you do when you’re a self-sufficient community not part of a larger society and a drought like this hits you?
You die.
TenguPhule
On the bright side, air quality will definitely improve.
Hill Dweller
@4tehlulz: ADP predicted 176,000 for June, and we saw how that turned out.
Nevertheless, Bernanke is scared of the Republicans.
Dave
Don’t worry John, it’s just sunspots or solar flares. Definitely not the leading edge of global climate change that is going to royally f**k us all.
Soprano2
I live in SWMO, and I haven’t seen it this bad here since the drought year of 1980. On Sunday it was 100 degrees at 8 fucking o’clock at night. I can’t remember it getting this hot here, for this long, ever before. March was one of the warmest on record, and I suspect that the 0.32″ of rain recorded for July will be one of the lowest amounts recorded for the month. It doesn’t matter how much we water the tomatoes, they’re dying because it’s so hot all the time, even at night. Some nights the temps haven’t dropped below 80 degrees!! I think at this point we’re almost 20 inches below normal for rainfall for the past two years. I hope to never see another miserable year like this one.
I read in the paper that half of the area’s blackberries about more than half of the blueberries burned up on the bushes because of the extreme heat in June and July.
PurpleGirl
And those areas getting rain are getting huge storms. Sort of OT but NYC today has dark clouds and quick, very heavy rain and thunder that sounds like bombs in the distance.
Anoniminous
@chopper:
USDA is predicting lowest cattle numbers since the mid-70s by the end of 2012.
ETA: @PurpleGirl:
If one believes in that science shit one could say weather is following predictions made using Global Warming induced Climate Change.
Brachiator
Some commentary about the impact of the drought on food prices.
The overall impact on US and world food prices does not look good.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
On the plus side, at least here along the Missouri river bottoms and some of their tributaries, we’ve had virtually no mosquitoes this year as a result of everything drying up and dieing.
Which is a good thing because all our bats are doomed since in April we had the first 3 cases of White-nose fungus west of the Mississippi confirmed.
Of course when the mosquitoes eventually return, we’re doomed.
I’m just a glass half full kinda guy.
TenguPhule
Let me guess, this expert moonlights as an election fraud expert on their days off.
Bad Conditions now means big problems next year, when all that stuff grown today actually reaches the shelves.
dead existentialist
Yes, it sucks, but let’s not set our hair on fire. Estimates that I’ve seen predict a 3-4% increase in food prices, which is bad but not unbearable.
This could turn out to be a good thing: with corn priced so high, maybe we can get that gawdawful corn syrup out of most of our food.
Cassidy
Bet them red state MFer’s want them some big gummint now.
jl
I heard estimates on the news of approximately 5 percent increase in food prices in US over next 12 months. There will (Edit: probably should say may, since marketing strategy will play a role. If most destocking goes into fresh produce it will dip) be a big dip (and very brief) in beef, poultry and pork prices before they start to rise due to asap stock reductions in Southwest and Midwest.
Low income countries will get hammered much more than high income since the prices of raw agricultural commodities a higher percentage of their food costs.
TenguPhule
Uh no. Less Food and More People is NEVER a good thing.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
For the Pacifc states the future may well be fewer, wetter, warmer storms that wreck havoc when they hit and reduce our ability to have a reliable water supply through the dry season (late spring through fall). When one considers how much of the nation’s food supply comes from California alone, the implications are mind-boggling.
bingbango
Poor Cole. Never happy unless Greenwald has him convinced Obama is a communist, or the Dow is tanking with no end in sight, or Libby will be the next Vietnam, or ……THE DRONEZZZZ….THE FUCKNING DRONEZZZZ….they are watching US and pretty soon they will be shooting missles into downtown Buttfuck Virginia, or we are all gonna die of starvation because the price of rice went up 5%.
Must be quite the party of doom going on in that pea sized brain of his.
redshirt
I’m sure this is Obama’s fault somehow.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@dead existentialist:
Not that easy on a variety of levels. Everybody should watch the documentary “King Corn”:
http://www.kingcorn.net/
and see exactly why corn syrup became what it is over the last 40 years.
Seebach
LOL. My generation SO does not have a future. I can’t see how the heat problem isn’t going to just get worse and worse.
The Ancient Randonneur
This might be everyones chance to slim down. A few less cheeseburgers and a few more bicycle rides wouldn’t hurt the average person here in the US.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@dead existentialist:
for us, yes, for the Middle East there is going to be hell to pay.
Anoniminous
Bullfuckingshit.
For one, the price of gas will increase due to the subtraction of supplies of ethanol additives which are manufactured from corn.
trollhattan
re. Food prices. Increases disproportionatly affect the poor, that growing population segment already shithammered by the Great Recession. Even relatively small price increases will drive more into poverty and for those barely clinging to the bottom rung, might be truly disasterous.
At least one party does. not. care.
Dork
Bodes well for iPhone sales.
jl
Read an article in paper that sales of processed foods already down and sales of fresh produce and bean type things up, since corn products make up a higher percentage of content of processed foods.
So, for those who can afford to eat what they want, one silver lining is healthier diet.
redshirt
@Dork: [Drums!]
Dave
@bingbango:
Your troll skillz are impressive, but you’re no Brick Oven Bill.
LanceThruster
Anyone know what Global Warming will mean for the CA high desert? We’re already hot and dry. Will we have some sort of effect like the creeping Sahara?
Rafer Janders
Federal disaster zone? Can’t they just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Back in my day, we took responsibility for our own decisions to live in drought zones, we didn’t expect the federal government to pay us for it….
Seriously, it’s going to drive me slowly crazy that these farmers will take the federal handout, and then go right back to crowing about what freedom lovin’ independent livin’ folks they are….
Maude
Rice is eaten by far more people than corn or wheat. If rice goes way up in price, that would cause great distress.
@Soprano2:
What rotten weather. When the blackberries can’t stand it, it’s really hot and dry.
Punchy
Their export of a vegetable called “hippie lettuce” is at an all-time high.
/rimshot. tip your waitresses.
jrg
On the bright side, real ‘murica is probably halfway to understanding that “Yes, Maybelle, CO2 is a fucking greenhouse gas, and cars do emit CO2. No, JesseJonny, climate change is not a librul plot to force you to have gay sex with a polar bear”.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
Where does your water come from now? (e.g., groundwater, CVP, SWP, etc.?)
dead existentialist
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: I’ve seen that, and it was fascinating. However, I have a farmer friend who had breathlessly been telling me about the “market” for corn in recent years. Corn is sugar anymore.
Of course he sells his crop to Cargill to make ethanol. Because of the flood last year (he’s in the Missouri bottom lands), he had the foresight to only plant beans this year (to rejuvenate the soil), so he’s sort of okay. Plus he has crop insurance.
Maude
@PurpleGirl:
It came through here before you and it is awfully humid now. Don’t know if there are more storms. Supposed to be 90ish and very humid Friday.
4tehlulz
@Maude: You just made the Chinese Communist Party shit itself.
quannlace
Here in NJ, we’ve had thunderstorms and periods of heavy downpours almost every day since the weekend. On Saturday we had almost 3 inches in an hour. I keep saying, “God, can’t you divert this over to Kansas?’
trollhattan
@Punchy:
Doood!
peach flavored shampoo
Fixed.
jl
Impact of corn prices on food? Not what you think
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505247_162-57484496/impact-of-corn-prices-on-food-not-what-you-think/
Twinkies are mostly corn, and cheap to manufacture (fabricate? synethesize?), so sad day for twinkie and gourmand snacking cake addicts. Wither Tastee Cake prices? Oh, the humanity!
If you like processed breakfast cereal (corn flakes), they are ridiculously expensive already compared to cost of agricultural commodity input, cause you got all the processing, high volume of product (mostly air, include that puffed into the bag to protect the crunchies and maybe as an excuse to charge you for air) and packaging, and short shelf life of crispy stuff that adds cost.
Anoniminous
@LanceThruster:
Weather is subject to sensitivity to initial conditions so prediction beyond about 5 days gets real hard and impossible after 8 days. The best Rule of Thumb for Complex Systems undergoing phase transition(s) to a new regime is: More So. If you’ve mostly got hot/dry interspersed with brief heavy rain you’ll most likely[1] get REALLY hot/dry interspersed with REALLY heavy rain ( = flooding.)
[1] Unless your area undergoes an Emergent Property shift to something else ;-)
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@jrg:
I can guarandamntee you that here in my little slice of (un)Real ‘Murka, they aren’t even 1% to undestanding that. The only thing they understand is the price of gas: cheaper, they can a)drive more, and b) keep the Suburban Panzer for the missus and the honkinbigassed pickemuptruck for the bubba of the house.
It’s kinda like the Romans with bread and circuses only here it’s cheap gas and the NFL.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@dead existentialist:
That really was the take away from the documentary. Yeah, they discussed the economy of the corn industry but it really all boiled down to not wanting to buy sugar from Castro.
Another Nixonian policy, like the War on Drugs, that we’re still dealing with a generation plus later.
Maude
@4tehlulz:
I’ll sell those wipes to them. Want to go in on it?
Chris T.
Food and energy are not part of “core CPI” (they’re in the “headline number” which is what Republicans will quote, but the Fed is bigger on core and also on several other less-volatile measures).
Also, while corn and wheat prices could double, the price of the commodities themselves are a small part of “end buyer” pricing. For instance if wheat goes from $4/bushel to $8/bushel (doubling), a loaf of bread may go from $2.30 to $2.40 (4% increase). (All numbers made up and very approximate, and obviously bread prices vary widely anyway.) Cotton vs clothing prices behave similarly: there’s no more than $3 of cotton in those $100 designer jeans. (Of course there’s the same $3 of cotton in the $15 Costco jeans, so the low-end product prices have more commodity pressure.)
All that said, right now is a really good time to be buying durable items.
jrg
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Yeah, I keep underestimating the stupidity. If we go into a major dust bowl, it’ll probably be because Baby Jesus is angry because we didn’t eat enough Chick-fi-A or something.
PurpleGirl
@Maude: Yes, the humidity is starting to rise here now.
Culture of Truth
You’ll pry that twinkie from my cold dead hands!!
Seriously, go ahead, it’ll still be edible in 30 years.
rachel
Which of the inveterate trolls is bingbango? I recognize the style, but the other handle escapes me.
GIndy53
@Served:
If the corn does not reach at least a certain height, it cannot be used as cattle feed. My neighbor can’t use her corn because she had it tested and it contains too much nitrogen for her cattle. She’s just going to plow it under as “fertilizer” instead of harvesting it. Maybe her soy beans will do better next year. The age old way of farming, crop rotation with a year of fallow fields, has to be brought back or else this will only get worse.
MeDrewNotYou
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Say what you will about anything else, but leave the NFL out of this!
The horrible screwing the players (labor) gets aside…
Another Halocene Human
And when the food riots start, they’ll blame it, like Romney, on “bad culture.”
trollhattan
@Chris T.:
There’s a long and proud tendency for consumer goods manufacturers to take advantage of the headlines and raise prices far beyond what the actual impact is to their cost of production. I guarangoddamntee we’ll see price increases disproportionate to the raw material cost, and once they’re raised they won’t drop even after grain prices plummet.
Also, too, they’re nothing if not clever about dropping the amount in the package while retaining the retail price. Who notices when the big box of Fruity Pebbles goes from 18.25 to 16.75 ounces?
Frankensteinbeck
@jrg:
Dust bowl won’t happen again, at least not under current circumstances. The drought was only a small part of what created it. The major cause was a radical change in plowing practices that has since been fixed.
Jennifer
It’s been over 95 every day since mid-June here; Monday it was 110, and NO RAIN to speak of for over a month. I was late getting tomatoes planted this year – I direct-sow them and they didn’t get sowed until Mother’s Day…they’re still only about 18″ tall and forget about any blooms. If the weather pattern breaks in the next 2 or 3 weeks, I might be able to harvest some tomatoes come October; otherwise I’ll get nothing. Even with adequate water, stuff just doesn’t GROW when the temps are 105 or above for day after day after day. The growth I have gotten on the tomato plants all happened pretty much in one week where the temps were “only” 98 – 99 degrees.
I wouldn’t expect failure of the corn crop to have much impact on the price of gasoline, though, since ethanol isn’t really any cheaper to begin with – corn ethanol uses a gallon of gas for every gallon of ethanol produced, so it’s basically always just been the invisible hand giving the ag lobby a handjob rather than anything else.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan: I’m connected to the local water service that uses indigenous aquifers/groundwater but I’ve also read that our area (Palmdale/Antelope Valley) taps into the California Aqueduct.
I was actually thinking more in terms of the local flora and fauna though. How might the harshness of the desert change? I suppose the stock answer is wetter wets (flash floods and the like) and drier drys (as well as more extreme highs and lows). The region got its name from the indigenous antelope population that apparently completely died out in the 1890’s due to an extreme drought then.
Another Halocene Human
@The Ancient Randonneur: What about the person with hungry children who can’t pay their bills now?
The food at the food bank is not exactly conducive to good health.
cathyx
@trollhattan: They do that with almost everything. Chips are really bad right now. The regular size is what the big grab size used to be and the family size is what the regular size used to be. Icecream is 1.5 quarts instead of a half gallon. Ground Coffee is 12oz instead of a pound.
wrb
@Punchy:
Not dry on the coast. The rising inland heat draws moist air off the ocean resulting in cool, fog and rain in places like Humbolt.
Everybody’s gonna be bumpin’ into shit, living on hippie lettuce.
qwerty42
@Rafer Janders:
From Catch-22:
…Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. he was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism.
Another Halocene Human
@Rafer Janders: You don’t get it: they and the USDA are business partners. This is just another fruitful public-private partnership, which is necessary because gubmint can’t do anything right and shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers, like concluding that maybe growing cotton in the high desert is a monumentally dumb idea.
The rest of you are some damn welfare cheats. Now shut up while the adults are talking.
hep kitty
@Another Halocene Human: God doesn’t love them so it doesn’t matter.
Another Halocene Human
@Maude: Not really. Because of commodity substitution these crops have a push and pull effect on each other. The ethanol storm of ’08 had an effect on rice prices that was felt ’round the world.
catclub
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: “all boiled down to not wanting to buy sugar from Castro.”
And not from Brazil either, right?
SatanicPanic
@rachel: I wondered about that myself.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
One theory has a permanent shift of storms to the north, meaning less rainfall for southern California, on average. What I don’t know is how much of your desert region’s rain might come this time of year from tropical storms wandering up from Mexico, and how much is from traditonal winter storms from the Pacific. In El Nino conditions (one is forming now) you tend to get fewer Pacific storms down there and less rain overall. That directly impacts vegetation and wildlife, with another hit on aquifer recharge (lowering groundwater supply).
SWP contractors in your area have varying water availability from the system, hinging on what happens in northern California, mostly the Feather River region. Last winter was very dry and the current 65% allocation is mostly carryover from the prior, wet year. The system can’t support two dry years in a row, so next winter needs to be wet or that allocation is going to drop dramatically.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@trollhattan:
Maybe I’m the only one. Dannon yogurt, 8 oz to 6 oz. I switched to the store brand and then they did the same thing.
Beer. Lots of the imports are down from 12 to 11 oz now. Not St Pauli Girl, though!
Maude
@Frankensteinbeck:
65
Thank you. That always gets left out of the Dust Bowl discussion.
pseudonymous in nc
@jrg:
Nah. There were pieces over the weekend from the Droughtbowl with people who get their climate science from the Bible and Rush Limbaugh. The plains could turn into the Sahara before they’d get a quarter-way along.
Jennifer
Another note about the hot, dry conditions: don’t forget the wild critters. I have tame squirrels and keep water out for them; they’ll come down at least once a day and get a good, long drink. The birds love it too, of course – I usually have to re-fill the water at least once because they watch to see when I put it out & within 10 minutes they’ll come down and jump in and splash most of it out bathing themselves. As for the squirrels, I noticed one of them one day several hours after I had watered one of the trees in the backyard, she found a spot with bare dirt, dug down below the surface where the soil was still moist, and just laid down flat to cool off. After a few minutes, she got up, dug down some more, and laid down again. Now I haul water to the spot (which I think of as “the squirrel wallow”) every day in the morning, so that when it gets really hot in the late afternoon, the squirrels can come down and cool off a bit.
NancyDarling
@Anoniminous: I talked to my neighbor yesterday about the cattle situation. He has about 14 cows + calves. He said feed lots are full up and no one is buying. I suggested he talk to friends in town and see if they are interested in a side of beef and sell them that way.
I just walked up to my pond to check it’s level, and it’s waaay down—lower than I have seen it since I moved here in ’06. There is a very small spring that feeds it so I’m hoping it doesn’t go completely dry. Springs have been drying up in NW Arkansas for 50 years including some of the springs in Eureka Springs which was founded because of them in the 1800’s.
I’m thinking of digging another pond to catch the winter and spring rains—hopefully they come this year. My old pond is very old and silted up so I can’t irrigate from it. I have a dry creek bed which is a torrent in heavy rains. I suspect once upon a time it was year round—like a 100 years ago.
I haven’t heard much about eastern Montana and the Dakotas. A friend grew up on a ranch outside of Rapid City and several years ago they were hit hard. Her brother ranches the place now and they were able to ride it out because they had 20,000 acres and could keep a herd to re-build. Guys with 10,000 acres or less were SOL.
Jennifer
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Breyer’s ice cream pulled the same shit about 18 months ago – reduced the package size by a quarter. I stopped buying it. I’d rather see a price increase than this sneaky bullshit of shrinking the package, because if the truth be told, and Breyer’s did a price increase, I’m pretty damn sure it wouldn’t have gone up by anything like 25%. I know food prices have gone up, but they haven’t gone up that much.
Face
80+ comments in and nobody clowns on Cole for grossly misspelling “Drier” in the title? Unless he was referring to the appliance that removes clothing moisture.
Just where did my fellow spelling nazis go?
Gretchen
here in Kansas it’s gone over 100 degrees every day with no rain, for weeks. I’m very afraid this is the new normal. I usually have trouble with wildlife poaching in my garden, but there is no wildlife this year.
NancyDarling
@Maude: Texas rice farmers have had their water allotments cut off. My brother (lives near Austin) says that Texas has not spent any tax dollars on water infrastructure in 50 years. So now they have double the population with the same amount of water.
T. Boone has some hare-brained scheme to pipe water to Dallas/Fort Worth from the Ogallala which extends from Nebraska down to West Texas. Problem is the Ogallala is being drawn down much faster than the re-charge rate. If they fuck the aquifer up with a Keystone pipeline spill, we are really screwed.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan:
THX for that. It’s almost as if we’re part of a food ‘web’ (what my grade school science teacher explained that the “food chain” really was) and that what affects other life might actually affect us (if you were the type to buy into that book learning stuff).
I’ll leave my science information to those busy calculating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!
trollhattan
@Face:
Present.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
Happy to chime in. My meandering career now has me in the water bidnez, and I find myself constantly waving my arms frantically, trying to convince the unconvincable that climate and water supply are not an important thing but the important thing we face.
Evidently, depriving women of birth control and poor people of the vote are more important.
Jennifer
@NancyDarling: Texas has no business growing rice in the first place, just like no one has any business growing rice in California’s central valley. Rice requires copious amounts of water and it’s just asking for trouble to grow it in areas where average annual rainfall won’t support it. Same goes for corn in Nebraska. Our aquifer in east Arkansas is also being drawn down much more quickly than it’s being re-charged as well, due mostly to rice farming.
As for T. Boone’s plan for the Ogallala, he was trying to sell it as a wind energy plan in order to get the easements to run the pipeline…his plan is to take water out of the aquifer, for free, and sell it to Dallas. The wind energy bullshit was just a cover for the real plan, which was to steal the water that everyone from West Texas to Nebraska depends on for crops, drinking, everything, and sell it for a profit. The good news is, T Boone is really old and will probably be dead well before he can ever loot the aquifer for personal profit.
liberal
My dad, who used to grow corn as a hobby, claimed he saw some stat that still predicted it’d be the 3rd biggest corn harvest ever. Claimed that a couple decades ago 150 bushels/acre was what you could do, but now it’s 200, largely due to more breeding, genetic tech, and lotsa herbicides and pesticides.
trollhattan
@Jennifer:
Believe it or not, California rice growing makes decent sense. The land used has poor percolation and the fields comprise a critical remnant of the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds. Without the flooded rice fields they’d lose a key link in the pathway.
To wind me up, start with growing cotton and alfafa in the San Joaquin Valley….
A moocher
Of some relevence to the discussion, a paid troll in the commentariat of Canada’s National Newspaper insisted that there was no drought in the USA, because precipitation was normal.
I am beginning to thing that the deaths of all decent humans are a price worth paying to free the universe (or at least this corner of it) from evil of this magnitude. By which I mean: Asteroid? Bring it.
I would prefer that actual justice be done upon these paid liars, malicious idiots and their employers, for accessory to ecocide, but that will never happen.
NancyDarling
@Jennifer: The Arkansas River, just east of the Colorado border is flowing at less than a cubic foot per second. Normally it should be at about 350+. The plantation class which includes former Senator Lincoln is supporting this plan to replenish their dwindling ground water.
Our Senator Boozman supports this plan.
Soprano2
@Maude:
It seems like the average high has been around 90-95 since the beginning of June, with way more days than I like to think about being at 99 or 100 or higher. March was one of the warmest on record, and spring was dry. It’s bad, bad, bad here with no relief in sight, and we’re far from the worst area in MO.
Rafer Janders
@GIndy53:
I’m no farmer, but I believe that the measuring unit for corn length is “an elephant’s eye”, so it would need to reach at least 0.31 elephant’s eye to be useable.
Rafer Janders
@qwerty42:
Ah yes. As always, Heller got there first.
catclub
@trollhattan: “Evidently, depriving women of birth control and poor people of the vote are more important.”
Well, they come first. Then they’ll get to fucking up the water and the atmosphere.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan:
It’s much appreciated. Years ago my pal Bernie the Attorney was prognosticating that the next round of wars would be over the supply of food and water. I always wonder doesn’t he get sick of being right all the time?
Just like some Cassandra wanting to harsh my buzz!
LanceThruster
@catclub: Keep your government hands off my right to foul the air and water!
And if the climate can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch!
NancyDarling
@LanceThruster: The Pentagon agrees with Bernie. A couple of quadrennial reviews ago, the military brass emphasized just those things—wars over water sheds, border rivers, etc.
We are going to have to dust off that old western saying—Whiskey’s for drinking; water’s for fighting.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan:
Next you’ll be saying hemp and “hippie lettuce” is good for the soil!
(Actually I like learning new and useful info – thx).
That percolation factor made a lot of sense. I tried digging a shallow grave for a dead bird I found on the property, and got a taste of how the seasonal cycles compacted the earth so much. Granted it was on the backfill the house was built on, but still. I’m on a slopping lot and the “lower 40” is much like a sandy delta as far as topsoil, but if it weren’t for the ants and gophers, a lot more rainwater would just completely run off.
LanceThruster
@NancyDarling:
I don’t know why that made me laugh so much…because it’s really not funny.
Rafer Janders
@LanceThruster:
This is why I tell my Canadian friends they have to go nuclear.
No joke — at some point, someone is going to want Canada’s abundant cool weather and fresh water, and the Forces had better be prepared to defend them.
LanceThruster
@Jennifer:
That is so cool of you (literally and figuratively).
I like feel good stories like this from others. You are also right in that once you start supplementing what’s available, you have to stick with it.
LanceThruster
@Jennifer:
That is so cool of you (literally and figuratively).
I like feel good stories like this from others. You are also right in that once you start supplementing what’s available, you have to stick with it.
Jennifer
@LanceThruster: Heh. My squirrely is out there right now, lying flat on her belly in the “squirrel wallow.” She’s been there for about 30 minutes. A nice break from the 105 degree heat, no doubt.
LanceThruster
@Jennifer: Even in these days of internet squirrel memes, I always associate them with a comic from what I think was National Lampoon or the New Yorker where two rats are watching a squirrel being fed in the park and observe, “If only *we* had bushy tails.”
xD
LanceThruster
@Rafer Janders:
That makes me think of the line from “The New World” —
(from memory) “God wants the land to go to those who will exploit it!”
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I knew a scientist who was an advisor to the California PUC a few years back, who said that when the issue of climate change would come up the GOP appointees would poo-poo it as being not existant, but a few minutes later would complain about the trend of snow-pack melting faster and earlier in the year, affecting summer water supplies and hydropower generation.
Cognitive dissonance? Yep.
The really, really tragic thing is that even 10 years ago, the cost of mitigating emissions to keep us below 2 deg C warming was pretty small – maybe 1% of GDP. Now, like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist article suggests, there’s virtually no hope of keeping warming below 2 deg C.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Try this: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5866/1080.short
or
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016819230600308X
As I understand it, at least until a few years ago it was too computationally demanding to reduce the grid elements used in climate models to a size where you could get good projections of regional impacts. It’s only recently that you’re seeing climate modeling of impacts at the regional (e.g. California-level). Specific to the high desert, I don’t know. There have been a few models of impact on the Sierras because of the role of the Sierra snow-pack as a free water reservoir.
There’s other scenario-based projections, but those aren’t quite as rigorous as projections based on a climate model.
Original Lee
I find it amazing that the red state Congresscritters are getting ready to head off to a 6-week recess without passing the farm bill with drought relief. Or even a simple natural disaster package.
I find it amazing that the red state Congresscritters are getting ready to head off to a 6-week recess without passing a postal service reform bill. The USPS is poised to go bankrupt, and red state types depend on snail mail a lot more than blue and purple state residents do.
I find it amazing that the red state Congresscritters are getting ready to head off to a 6-week recess without passing a small business tax break extension.
All of these things are important to their constituents, but I guess they think their voters are stupid.
Hell, I KNOW the people who vote for them can be depended on to vote against their own self interests almost all of the time, but I would think keeping farmers from filing for bankruptcy, or keeping the Post Office from filing for bankruptcy, or keeping small businesses from filing for bankruptcy, is a break point of sorts.
But there I go thinking logically again.
LanceThruster
Thank you all for the info and links re: the high desert. Along those same lines of the subject of our water future, I highly recommend the doc “Waterlife.” It’s a Canadian film that focuses on the Great lakes. It’s beautifully done and has Brian Eno music to boot.
You can see the entire thing online in this awesome interactive site – http://waterlife.nfb.ca/
LanceThruster
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
That sounds like our head-in-the-sand California legislators.
LanceThruster
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Many thanks. These are very good and that 1st one is exceptional.
DrBobby
@Punchy: Speaking of lettuce, doesn’t anybody know how to work the soil? A garden can save you a ton of money and provide fresh food almost year round.