Saturday, February 8, 2014

Living in California or How to Make Tea with Sand

The snowpack for the Sierra Nevada mountains is less than twenty percent of normal.  The snowmelt in the Spring flows, largely, down the Colorado River where it supplies Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and upper Mexico.  Water shortages are already taking place in California and it's tough to imagine what will happen this summer when it really dries up.

End of the world stories are a dime a dozen on Facebook as those old rummies are hanging about waiting for death and they can't imagine the world going on without them.  Nevertheless, it will get on just fine ... just not in California.  It's real and it's immediate ... and very little is being done.  Over the years various efforts have been made to manage the problem but ... obviously ... they did not work.

I get slammed all the time for being negative but it's a negative world and I don't see anyone fucking doing anything about it.  They talk and talk and talk and the Koch Brothers even spend millions, possibly billions, to ENSURE nothing is done about it.  When I talk about America eating itself, that's what I mean and those cancerous bastards perhaps more than anyone.

Where are the desalination plants as you're going to need an army of them.  With the water level in the sea rising, is it not obvious that this is a resource that can be used to help ameliorate the situation on the land.  Suck up some water, boil off the salt, presto, happy people in California who don't have to limit their showers to Sundays anymore.

It also seems obvious to me that a solar plant and a desalination plant will supply multiple demands.  The sun provides the energy as it evaporates the water and the energy which does not evaporate the water is captured by the panels.  Presumably the boiling off of the water can spin a turbine and, presto, there is yet more energy.  This doesn't seem like such a complicated thing for beings that can make space shuttles with a billion or so moving parts.

They love to talk in terms of national security and that's a great justification for spending a trillion dollars on an F-35 fighter but how is it any less a matter of national security to ensure the food production of California remains at its current generally high levels.  Nothing's more sure than prices will go up this summer but that's not quite the extent of it as the drought is now beyond anything measured since the California Gold Rush in 1850.  This isn't Fox News anymore.  This is real and it's right now.

One big plus is that California drying up means there won't be any more lame acoustic covers of Pink Floyd songs.  When it gets really bad the ones who do it will try to take that sorry act to Oregon but the people up there will see them coming and will shoot them.

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