California's New 'Dust Bowl'

[EE_]

California's New 'Dust Bowl': "It's Gonna Be a Slow, Painful, Agonizing Death" For Farmers
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/15/2014 20:26 -0500


"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."

Via NBC,

"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.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWu2xbdPpGI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kAgm7ijBaM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4v-_p5dU34

[Sparky]

Why doesn't Obama just issue some bonds to the Fed and have them print water?

[midnight rambler]

Why did you feel compelled to post a video of the world's #1 Satan worshiping band??

[Ponce]

If you have water stock (like I told you to buy) " Buy water stock and learn Chinese and Spanish" you would be on your way to richness.

V

[Ares]

the driest spell in 500 years has prompted President Obama to make $100 million in livestock-disaster aid available within 60 days

Typical government response. Just throw money at it. Hey Fed.Gov people can't eat FRN's. Fucking idiots.

[EE_]

Why did you feel compelled to post a video of the world's #1 Satan worshiping band??

Eric Clapton worships Satan?...I didn't know http://www.modacity.net/forums/styles/smilies/shrug.gif

[old steel]

According to the jewish big black book God and Satan had an interesting conversation regarding one old jewish dude named Job.

According to the written word God allowed Satan to tempt/try Job with everything at his disposal save taking Job's life.

Now if Satan is such a bad dude why would he be allowed into the very presence of God to discuss this matter?

Sounds to me like this Satan personage is in the good graces of God.

[Libertarian_Guard]

…….. you would be on your way to richness.

V

But I am happy right where I am at, in the pour house.

[BrewTech]

Why did you feel compelled to post a video of the world's #1 Satan worshiping band??

I had no idea Clapton was a devil worshipper!

[Libertarian_Guard]

Now if Satan is such a bad dude why would he be allowed into the very presence of God to discuss this matter?

Sounds to me like this Satan personage is in the good graces of God.

Sounds like whatever you want it to sound like.

[old steel]

Sounds like whatever you want it to sound like.


We need a 4th dimensional look at this subject and i bet it would answer a whole lot of questions.

[Cebu_4_2]

This has little to do with the drought, much more to do with shutting off the water... Propaganda is everywhere.

[Barbaro]

EE_,

Can you put up a source / link?

Then I can check it and pass it on.

[BrewTech]

This has little to do with the drought, much more to do with shutting off the water... Propaganda is everywhere.

I will personally guarantee you there ain't shit for water in this state right now. Flew 500 miles over it and saw pretty much nothing but dirt where there should have been a healthy snow pack.

[EE_]

EE_,

Can you put up a source / link?

Then I can check it and pass it on.

Here ya go,

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-15/californias-new-dust-bowl-its-gonna-be-slow-painful-agonizing-death-farmers

Sorry bout that...didn't think anyone was paying attention to the drought anymore.
Me, I'm planting things all over the property.
Blueberries, blackberries, rasberries, figs, potatoes and vegetable gardens anywhere I can get sunlight.

I figure I'll not be eating anything coming out of CA again in my lifetime..if at all possible.

If you thought it was a good time to garden a few years ago when we though the economy would collapse, you really have to like the idea now with the drought, Fukushima and the imminent collapse of the dollar.
Food prices are going up as we speak.

[mick silver]

anyone needing water i have some for sale . we are seeing just how bad it maybe getting in California then why are we nothing hearing anything about Las Vegas ? i know they have to move water for that city and yet they grow nothing like they do in California .

[Tumbleweed]

I will personally guarantee you there ain't shit for water in this state right now. Flew 500 miles over it and saw pretty much nothing but dirt where there should have been a healthy snow pack.

I have a friend in the Sacramento area and she told me recently they had gotten a lot of rain. She said she didn't have a rain gauge up but was hearing reports of ten inches or more in places. Don't know if it was a local gully washer or a more general rain.

The money made available for livestock is to help the owners pay for supplemental feed shipped in from other areas. It's an attempt to help people hold on to their herds until it rains. I guess they figure if they want to continue eating they'd better help the people who know how to grow food stay in business.

[EE_]

The US west coast may be on the front lines of battle, but we all will be contaminated in a few years or less. Our fate is sealed.

Gov't Test Finds Radiation in California Cattle Feed - Beware Milk and Beef from California
Sunday, 16 February 2014 09:48

Sunday, February 16, 2014 -- (TRN) -- Government tests detected radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site, in cattle feed at California Dairy Farms. California Department of Public Health deliberately tried to conceal the danger, waited 9 months before sending sample to lab for testing so as to allow radiation levels to decay; then sat-on the report until now to keep citizens in the dark. We have the report, now so do you! BEWARE milk and beef from California.

Winter forage vegetation at the California dairy farm had combined cesium 134 + 137 equaling 0.299 pCi/gram or 299 pCi/kg. This means cattle in California are EATING radioactive feed. The radiation has to go somewhere, and it does; into the skin, muscles, blood and bodily fluids (like milk).

Readers are strongly advised to BEWARE milk and beef from California.

SIDENOTE: Cesium-134 levels would be even higher than reported due to the 9 months of radioactive decay that took place before testing occurred (37.5% into its 2-year half-life).

No reason is stated for the 9-month gap between when the vegetation sample was harvested and when it was tested.

Read the full report HERE http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/images/radiaionfoundincaliforniacattlefeed.pdf




Everyone should know by now, we all got dosed in 2011

SEVERE BIRTH DEFECTS SOAR IN WASHINGTON STATE; FUKUSHIMA RADIATION TAKES HOLD
Monday, 17 February 2014 06:43

Monday, February 17, 2014 -- (TRN) -- Radiation released into the atmosphere by the Fukushima, Japan nuclear accident has begun taking a human toll via newborn babies. A cluster of severe genetic birth defects, 4 times the national average, has emerged in a 3 county area around Yakima, Washington on the US west coast. Local Doctors are "stunned" and cannot find a reason for cluster of deformed babies; others know it is from Fukushima Radiation which saturated Washington in March, 2011. This will get worse. Much worse.

Babies in a 3 county area near Yakima Washington are being born without parts of their brain or skull (anencephaly), another birth defect in which the neural tube, which forms the brain and spine, fails to close properly (spina bifida) and a sac-like protrusion of the brain through the front or back of the skull (encephalocele) . As of 14 months ago, by January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly two dozen cases in three years, a rate four times the national average.

Health officials originally were alerted to the problem by a nurse, Sara Barron, 58, who was in charge of infection control and quality assurance at Prosser Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed medical center in the farm town set on the Yakima River. A 30-year nursing veteran, she’d seen perhaps one or two devastating cases of anencephaly in her wide-ranging career.

“And now I was sitting at Prosser, with 30 deliveries a month and there’s two cases in a six-month period,” Barron said. “Then, I was talking to another doctor about it and she has a third one coming. My teeth dropped. It was like, ‘Oh my god.’”

At a regional medical meeting, there were more anecdotal reports. So Barron notified state health officials, who started looking into the problem.

“This is bizarre,” Barron said. “This is a very, very small area.”

Investigators pored over medical records of the 27 area women with affected pregnancies and 108 matched controls who received care at the same 13 prenatal clinics, Stahre said. They examined where the women worked, what diseases they had, whether they smoked or drank alcohol, what kind of medications they took and other factors. They looked at where they lived and whether they got their water from a public source or a private well. They looked at race and whether the problem was more pronounced in the area's migrant farm workers or in other residents.

In the end, there was nothing — “no common exposures, conditions or causes,” state officials said — to explain the spike.

NO ONE CHECKED FOR RADIATION

Of all the testing, of all the research, no one bothered to look at what some see as the most-obvious cause: radiation from the Fukushima, Japan Nuclear Disaster site.

In March, 2011, an earthquake off the coast of Japan caused a tsunami which enveloped the Fukushima nuclear power plant and overwhelmed its sea wall. The water shorted-out all electricity, stopping the pumps that provide water to cool the reactor cores. Of the six reactors at Fukushima, Four melted down, three of those exploding in the process.

The disaster released countless TONS of highly radioactive materials into the air and weather patterns carried that radiation across the pacific ocean into north America with days. According the the French Nuclear Agency, north America was literally SATURATED with intense radiation as early as March 21, 2011. The map below was provided by the French nuclear Agency and shows the radiation cloud from Fukushima. (Click Image to Enlarge)

Yakima, being on the U.S. west coast, was hit particularly hard as demonstrated by the darker coloring of the radiation plume above.

While the Fukushima disaster was taking place, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made the deliberate decision to NOT deploy its portable radiation monitors to the west coast. It seems that someone in the EPA knew things were spiraling out of control and instead of taking action to protect the public, they stuck their collective heads in the sand like an Ostrich. After all, if they didn't deploy the radiation measuring devices, they would not have any proof of danger. The idiotic government view was simple: No proof=no danger. Now, we see the danger.

Persons living anywhere in the western United States - especially in states along the west coast - must seriously worry about having children due to the genetic damage suffered by PARENTS exposed to Fukushima Radiation. Put simply, YOUR genes, YOUR chromosomes may be forever damaged by what YOU were exposed to. If you try to have a child, you may end up with a mutant.

All because the nuclear industry throws its money around to buy government approval for these hideously dangerous power plants, and that same government sticks its head in the sand to cover-up the danger; even when it is literally in the air around us, because they don't want to be blamed for unleashing this nightmare on the public.

None of the babies suffering from the deformities mentioned above, have, to this date, been checked for radiation.

Incidentally, the International Olympic Committee has approved TOKYO as the venue for the 2020 Summer Olympics. As our young, healthy athletes travel to that nation to compete, little will they know that their bodies will be silently pummeled by radiation, and their ability to have children later in their lives, may be destroyed.

SOURCE: NBC News
http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/news/292-mjt

[mick silver]

remember a few years back texas had a real bad drought hell they were buying hay anywere they could get it then .

[Tumbleweed]

remember a few years back texas had a real bad drought hell they were buying hay anywere they could get it then .

They were buying all the hay they could get out of the Dakotas and it's a long hall to Texas.

[mick silver]

guys around here were shipping hay there also , ky

[Sparky]

I will personally guarantee you there ain't shit for water in this state right now. Flew 500 miles over it and saw pretty much nothing but dirt where there should have been a healthy snow pack.

Has this impacted residential water supplies yet, either tap water or availability of bottled water in stores? Has pricing changed?

[old steel]

That is a lot of brown down there which would usually be green.


6046

Robert Thiel of Thiel AirCare, Inc. in Chowchilla, Calif., pilots his helicopter over brown fields in the western San Joaquin Valley on Feb. 15. His family's aerial application business would usually be spraying these fields now if there were crops growing. Doug Thiel, Robert's father and owner of the business, said "We're probably at 20 to 25 percent of normal operation for the winter months" due to reduced planting by farmers because of ongoing drought. "It's really kind of bleak," he said of his outlook for the spring and summer seasons.

[BrewTech]

Has this impacted residential water supplies yet, either tap water or availability of bottled water in stores? Has pricing changed?

Not so far, but the "save frickin' water!" message is starting to get louder. City of SD is offering financial incentives/rebates for people to tear out their lawns and collect rainwater in barrels.

[zap]

Not so far, but the "save frickin' water!" message is starting to get louder. City of SD is offering financial incentives/rebates for people to tear out their lawns and collect rainwater in barrels.

And isn't it funny a few years back they wanted to charge you for collecting rainwater?

Its going to get real bad, 1 1/2 inch since October 2013, Its almost March, I am hoping the April showers will be gully-washers.

[Hitch]

Everything has turned green again up here..thanks to the rains from last week. Dry again though. I know that rain did not help much in the big picture, but it is nice to see the hillsides green again.

[zap]

Nothin' is green down this way, folks selling cattle as fast as they can, some folks over the hill are only going to keep 10 cows and a bull, they just got a truckload of hay for $7500.00.

[EE_]

Everyone should be praying for rain, not just those in the west.

15 Reasons Why Your Food Bill Is Going To Start SOARING
February 17, 2014
Source: Michael Snyder, Economic Collapse

Did you know that the U.S. state that produces the most vegetables is going through the worst drought it has ever experienced and that the size of the total U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been since 1951? Just the other day, a CBS News article boldly declared that “food prices soar as incomes stand still“, but the truth is that this is only just the beginning. If the drought that has been devastating farmers and ranchers out west continues, we are going to see prices for meat, fruits and vegetables soar into the stratosphere. Already, the federal government has declared portions of 11 states to be “disaster areas”, and California farmers are going to leave half a million acres sitting idle this year because of the extremely dry conditions. Sadly, experts are telling us that things are probably going to get worse before they get better (if they ever do). As you will read about below, one expert recently told National Geographic that throughout history it has been quite common for that region of North America to experience severe droughts that last for decades. In fact, one drought actually lasted for about 200 years. So there is the possibility that the drought that has begun in the state of California may not end during your entire lifetime.

This drought has gotten so bad that it is starting to get national attention. Barack Obama visited the Fresno region on Friday, and he declared 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.”

According to NBC News, businesses across the region are shutting down, large numbers of workers are leaving to search for other work, and things are already so bad that it “calls to mind the Dust Bowl of the 1930s“…

In the state’s Central Valley — where nearly 40 percent of all jobs are tied to agriculture production and related processing — the pain has already trickled down. Businesses across a wide swath of the region have shuttered, casting countless workers adrift in a downturn that calls to mind the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

If you will recall, there have been warnings that Dust Bowl conditions were going to return to the western half of the country for quite some time.

Now the mainstream media is finally starting to catch up.

And of course these extremely dry conditions are going to severely affect food prices. The following are 15 reasons why your food bill is going to start soaring…

#1 2013 was the driest year on record for the state of California, and 2014 has been exceptionally dry so far as well.

#2 According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 91.6 percent of the entire state of California is experiencing “severe to exceptional drought” even as you read this article.

#3 According to CNBC, it is being projected that California farmers are going to let half a million acres of farmland sit idle this year because of the crippling drought.

#4 Celeste Cantu, the general manager for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, says that this drought could have a “cataclysmic”impact on food prices…

Given that California is one of the largest agricultural regions in the world, the effects of any drought, never mind one that could last for centuries, are huge. About 80 percent of California’s freshwater supply is used for agriculture. The cost of fruits and vegetables could soar, says Cantu. “There will be cataclysmic impacts.”

#5 Mike Wade, the executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, recently explained which crops he believes will be hit the hardest…

Hardest hit would be such annual row crops as tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, cantaloupes, garlic, peppers and corn. Wade said consumers can also expect higher prices and reduced selection at grocery stores, particularly for products such as almonds, raisins, walnuts and olives.

#6 As I discussed in a previous article, the rest of the nation is extremely dependent on the fruits and vegetables grown in California. Just consider the following statistics regarding what percentage of our produce is grown in the state…

-99 percent of the artichokes

-44 percent of asparagus

-two-thirds of carrots

-half of bell peppers

-89 percent of cauliflower

-94 percent of broccoli

-95 percent of celery

-90 percent of the leaf lettuce

-83 percent of Romaine lettuce

-83 percent of fresh spinach

-a third of the fresh tomatoes

-86 percent of lemons

-90 percent of avocados

-84 percent of peaches

-88 percent of fresh strawberries

-97 percent of fresh plums

#7 Of course it isn’t just agriculture which will be affected by this drought. Just consider this chilling statement by Tim Quinn, the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies…

“There are places in California that if we don’t do something about it, tens of thousands of people could turn on their water faucets and nothing would come out.”

#8 The Sierra Nevada snowpack is only about 15 percent of what it normally is. As the New York Times recently explained, this is going to be absolutely devastating for Californians when the warmer months arrive…

Experts offer dire warnings. The current drought has already eclipsed previous water crises, like the one in 1977, which a meteorologist friend, translating into language we understand as historians, likened to the “Great Depression” of droughts. Most Californians depend on the Sierra Nevada for their water supply, but the snowpack there was just 15 percent of normal in early February.

#9 The underground aquifers that so many California farmers depend upon are being drained at a staggering rate…

Pumping from aquifers is so intense that the ground in parts of the valley is sinking about a foot a year. Once aquifers compress, they can never fill with water again. It’s no surprise Tom Willey wakes every morning with a lump in his throat. When we ask which farmers will survive the summer, he responds quite simply: those who dig the deepest and pump the hardest.

#10 According to an expert interviewed by National Geographic, the current drought in the state of California could potentially last for 200 years or more as some mega-droughts in the region have done in the past…

California is experiencing its worst drought since record-keeping began in the mid 19th century, and scientists say this may be just the beginning. B. Lynn Ingram, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California at Berkeley, thinks that California needs to brace itself for a megadrought—one that could last for 200 years or more.

#11 Much of the western U.S. has been exceedingly dry for an extended period of time, and this is hurting huge numbers of farmers and ranchers all the way from Texas to the west coast…

The western United States has been in a drought that has been building for more than a decade, according to climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Ranchers in the West are selling off their livestock,” Patzert said. “Farmers all over the Southwest, from Texas to Oregon, are fallowing in their fields because of a lack of water. For farmers and ranchers, this is a painful drought.”

#12 The size of the U.S. cattle herd has been shrinking for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that it has been since 1951. But our population has more than doubled since then.

#13 Extremely unusual weather patterns are playing havoc with crops all over the planet right now. The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Lizzie Bennett…

Peru, Venezuela, and Bolivia have experienced rainfall heavy enough to flood fields and rot crops where they stand. Volcanic eruptions in Ecuador are also creating problems due to cattle ingesting ash with their feed leading to a slow and painful death.

Parts of Australia have been in drought for years affecting cattle and agricultural production.

Rice production in China has been affected by record low temperatures.

Large parts of the UK are underwater, and much of that water is sea water which is poisoning the soil. So wet is the UK that groundwater is so high it is actually coming out of the ground and adding to the water from rivers and the sea. With the official assessment being that groundwater flooding will continue until MAY, and that’s if it doesn’t rain again between now and then. The River Thames is 65 feet higher than normal in some areas, flooding town after town as it heads to the sea.

#14 As food prices rise, our incomes are staying about the same. The following is from a CBS News article entitled “Food prices soar as incomes stand still“…

While the government says prices are up 6.4 percent since 2011, chicken is up 18.4 percent, ground beef is up 16.8 percent and bacon has skyrocketed up 22.8 percent, making it a holiday when it’s on sale.

#15 As I have written about previously, median household income has fallen for five years in a row. So average Americans are going to have to make their food budgets stretch more than they ever have before as this drought drags on.

If the drought does continue to get worse, small agricultural towns all over California are going to die off.

For instance, consider what is already happening to the little town of Mendota…

The farms in and around Mendota are dying of thirst. The signs are everywhere. Orchards with trees lying on their sides, as if shot. Former farm fields given over to tumbleweeds. Land and cattle for sale, cheap.

Large numbers of agricultural workers continue to hang on, hoping that somehow there will be enough work for them. But as Evelyn Nievesrecently observed, panic is starting to set in…

Off-season, by mid-February, idled workers are clearly anxious. Farmworkers and everyone else who waits out the winter for work (truckers, diesel providers, packing suppliers and the like) are nearing the end of the savings they squirrel away during the season. The season starts again in March, April at the latest, but no one knows who will get work when the season begins, or how much.

People are scared, panicked even.

I did not write this article so that you would panic.

Yes, incredibly hard times are coming. If you will recall, the 1930s were also a time when the United States experienced extraordinarily dry weather conditions and a tremendous amount of financial turmoil. We could very well be entering a similar time period.

Worrying about this drought is not going to change anything. Instead of worrying, we should all be doing what we can to store some things up while food is still relatively cheap. Our grandparents and our great-grandparents that lived during the days of the Great Depression knew the wisdom of having a well-stocked food pantry, and it would be wise to follow their examples.

Please share this article with as many people as you can. The United States has never faced anything like this during most of our lifetimes. We need to shake people out of their “normalcy bias” and get them to understand that big changes are coming.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/15_Reasons_Why_Your_Food_Bill_Is_Going_To_Start_SO ARING/32952/0/38/38/Y/M.html


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN6Sw3Rh6ug

[Neuro]

If there is any relation to the thirties dust bowl/depression. Government and food corporations will start to destroy agricultural produce shortly.

[mick silver]

many will die . beat ponce to it

[Ponce]

many will die . beat ponce to it

It should be......."and many will die"........... :)

Three weeks ago the lady next door had a sign in her front yard........ "Please pray for rain"........we have had so much rain that she covered the sign up............ what we really need is snow for summer water, none up on the mountains.

V

[BrewTech]

It should be......."and many will die"........... :)

Three weeks ago the lady next door had a sign in her front yard........ "Please pray for rain"........we have had so much rain that she covered the sign up............ what we really need is snow for summer water, none up on the mountains.

V

Very true... local rain doesn't do it. Heavy snow in the Sierras and other ranges are what keeps us from shriveling up and blowing away.


#8 The Sierra Nevada snowpack is only about 15 percent of what it normally is. As the New York Times recently explained, this is going to be absolutely devastating for Californians when the warmer months arrive…

That is some serious doom. Between this and Fuku... ugh.

[EE_]

There's still hope and two months left to get a few storms.

What the West's Ancient Droughts Say About Its Future

The American West could face centuries of parched land, as it has in the past..

The Dust Bowl drought in the 1930s forced many farmers off their land. This farm family makes do in a ramshackle cabin north of Shafter, California.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Resettlement Administration/Time Life Pictures/Getty
.By Lisa M. Krieger

for National Geographic

Published February 13, 2014

A millennium ago—just yesterday, in geologic time—Native Americans waited all winter for rains that never came. They waited the next winter and the next. Then the marshes of their sacred San Francisco Bay turned from cattails to salt grass. Fishing declined and the Native Americans could no longer rely on the bounty of the bay. Finally, they left, hungry and thirsty, in search of water.

Now, as modern Californians hope for fierce storms to break a dangerous dry spell, the questions arise: Is the current drought just an aberration? Or might it signal the beginning of a more fearsome era, with echoes of the ancient drought that uprooted Native Americans? Is it a megadrought?

Most scientists sidestep a yes or no answer. But they agree that the past century has been unusually moist—and warn that California is now vulnerable to a drought that is measured not in years, but decades. Perhaps even centuries.


Photograph by Loomis Dean, Time Life/Getty
An empty reservoir shows the effects of drought in 1948.On a trip to California's Central Valley on Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to link the drought to climate change and to announce federal aid aimed at "climate resilience."

But ancient clues in the landscape show this is not the first time the American West has been severely parched. It's unlikely to be the last. And the recent spate of dry years is nothing next to the ancient "megadroughts" that have occurred multiple times in human history. "What research shows is a roughly 50- to 90-year cycle of wet and dry periods over the last few thousand years, with some droughts lasting over a decade. But between 900 and 1400 A.D., during the 'Medieval Warm Period,' there were a couple of droughts that were over a century long," said B. Lynn Ingram, professor of Earth and planetary science and geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the book The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow.

"The 20th century was a relatively wet time, and a time when all of our modern societies were built," she said. "We've had centuries where it was far drier. We're not prepared."

This winter is on track to be California's driest since it became a state in 1850, with reservoirs at record-low levels, farmers fallowing fields, and fire danger high. Although one recent storm offered a respite from months of sunshine, California needs four more similarly sized storms to catch up to the season's average precipitation, according to meteorologist Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services. And there's not much winter left.


Photograph by Jodi Cobb, National Geographic
The Owens River (mid-1970’s) in southeastern California nourishes little but its own banks.Whether or not more rain comes this winter, the culmination of three years of below-average precipitation means that the state is entering its traditionally dry period from May to October with a dire water shortfall.

Weeks of dry skies conjure up uneasy memories of the drought of 1976-77, when Californians added bricks to toilet bowls and captured shower water in buckets. Or, more ominously, the Great Plains' devastating Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, when the world's greatest grasslands blew away, soil blackened the sky, and lungs were packed with dirt and sand. Farmers fed thistles and cactuses to cattle so they wouldn't starve, and many abandoned their homes in search of rain and relief. The region lost a quarter of its population.

But the prehistoric record, re-created by paleoclimatologists, is even more alarming—and could explain why Native Americans abandoned their settlements and began wandering. Archeological records show that Native American populations expanded in wet years, creating flourishing civilizations. Then, during periods of abnormally low precipitation, settlements collapsed.

Clues From Ancient Trees

Like investigators at a crime scene, scientists are piecing together seemingly random evidence about ancient climates, deciphering clues about prehistoric droughts in sediments, tree rings, species distribution, and other natural evidence—a science known as dendrochronology.

The varying widths of tree rings, for instance, reveal that several pernicious dry spells gripped the West in the late 1500s. In a landmark study conducted in the 1940s, Edward Schulman reconstructed 600 years of Colorado River flow using ring records from long-lived Douglas firs, and found several sustained periods of low flow. It was so dry in 1580 that the giant sequoias in the Sierra Nevada essentially failed to grow at all; all the cores show either extremely thin or absent tree rings.


Photograph by Walter Zeboski, AP
The Pardee Reservoir near Jackson, California, supplies San Francisco with water. The reservoir was 103 feet below normal due to drought in 1977.Another tree study, lead by University of Arkansas dendrochronologist David Stahle and Edward Cook of Columbia University, used more than 1,400 climate-sensitive tree-ring chronologies from multiple species across North America to reconstruct what's called "the Great Pueblo Drought," which occurred from 1276 to 1297 and may have contributed to the Anasazi tribe's abandonment of their magnificent cliff-dwellings in the northern Colorado Plateau.

Other megadrought evidence can be found in forests at the bottoms of lakes and streams, using tree-ring analysis and radiocarbon dating. Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory, found a forest in the Sierra Mountains dating back to the medieval era. A drought from 850 to 1150 drained the alpine Fallen Leaf Lake, leaving it barren enough for tall trees to grow, he concluded. Then the water returned, and the trees were preserved. An 800-year-old pine branch, recently salvaged from the lake, still smells pungently of sap.

Ancestral forests can also be found in recently exposed shorelines of eastern Sierra lakes and creeks. Scott Stine of California State University in East Bay tramped across an old lakebed and found dozens of ancient cottonwoods and Jeffrey pines rooted in place. Dating revealed that they grew when two severe and long-lasting droughts—from 900 to 1100, and 1200 to 1350—lowered the water level in the lake, then died when a return to a wetter climate filled the lake and drowned them.


Photograph by Vincent Laforet, National Geographic
Drought increases the risk of wildfires. Here, a helitanker douses flames in the 2007 Zaca Fire near Santa Barbara, California."Water dropped to 60 or 70 percent of what today we consider normal precipitation," he said. "The trees could colonize newly exposed shorelines." Stine has also discovered submerged tree trunks along the shoreline of California's Mono Lake, suggesting that the water level was once tens of feet lower than it is now. Studies of the lake's sedimentary stone show that the water fell to a very low level between 960 and 1460. Research in other Sierra lakes reveal a similar scenario: long dry-wet-dry-wet intervals.

With the drought came adaptation. Frances Malamud-Roam, Ingram's co-author, took sediment core samples in San Francisco Bay that indicate that the bay grew saltier due to the lack of freshwater runoff from the mountains, the presumed result of decreased rain and snowfall. She found evidence that the plant life shifted from tules and cattails, which thrive in fresh or brackish water, to saline-loving salt grass and cord grass.

Frightening Implications

If this is the past, what is the future?

Some scientists think we are already in a megadrought. Bill Patzert, research scientist and oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, believes the drought began in 2000. He has identified patterns in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean that alter the flow of the jet stream, creating a ridge of high pressure off California that sends warm air to Alaska and freezing cold to the eastern United States. This pattern can hold steady for years, he said. (Related: "Could California's Drought Last 200 Years?")


Photograph by David McNew, Getty
A dry canal is filled with weeds on February 6, 2014, near Bakersfield, California.If true, the implications are frightening: More wildfires. Stress on sensitive ecosystems. Less water for agriculture, cities, and wildlife. Wells would go dry, lawns would turn brown, fields would go fallow. There would be an earlier spring, with snowpack that melts quickly. The federal government would likely need to step in with billions of dollars of emergency aid. (Related: "Behind California's January Wildfires: Dry Conditions, Stubborn Weather Pattern.")

And modern Californians, unlike earlier populations, are not so easily uprooted. More than 38 million people, from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, depend on access to water. We've built cities, highways, universities, industries, and vast acres of irrigated farmland.


Photograph by NOAA/AP
Snow cover in northern California and Nevada was drastically diminished in January 2014 compared with the year before, as seen in these images by the Suomi NPP satellite.It is time to begin facing that future now, scientists say, by reducing and improving the efficiency of water use. Increased emission of greenhouse gases will create a global one-way trend toward higher temperatures—making a dry landscape even drier.

"Today, in our technologically sophisticated world, it is easy to believe we are immune to such an outcome. But we have not been seriously tested," wrote Sandra L. Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project and a National Geographic Fellow, in the introduction to Ingram and Malamud-Roam's book. "We have so successfully masked aridity that we have become imbued with a false sense of security about our water future."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140214-drought-california-prehistory-science-climate-san-francisco-2/

[mick silver]

we all need to pay more in taxes to fix this mess that all of you have made bah bah bah

[Ponce]

No more taxes but more brains......I just to live right next to this BIG canal that takes the rain water to the ocean, once in a while it over floded into the strees, I say, extend the canal into some kind of man made lake where it could be use by the people.

V

[mick silver]

ponce that would be to easy . they dont take the easy road

[Cebu_4_2]

I will personally guarantee you there ain't shit for water in this state right now. Flew 500 miles over it and saw pretty much nothing but dirt where there should have been a healthy snow pack.

October 2, 2009

The Delta Smelt is a small fish in the middle of a big controversy in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Valley. The tiny fish has a lifespan of one year and is a primary food source to striped bass and large-mouth bass, which are invasive species in Sacramento Delta. The population is much smaller than historically and the species was listed in 1993 as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) and Federal Endangered Species Act (FESA). In 2008, the California Fish and Game Commission moved to up list delta smelt to endangered under CESA.
On August 31, 2007, California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California)

Federal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_courts)
Judge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge) Oliver Wanger of Federal District Court (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_District_Court) protected the rare declining fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish) delta smelt by severely curtailing human use water deliveries at San Joaquin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Joaquin)-Sacramento (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento)

River delta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_delta) from December to June.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_smelt) These are the pumps at the Banks Pumping Plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banks_Pumping_Plant) that send water to Central and Southern California for agricultural and residential use.

The results of this water shut-off has devastated the San Joaquin Valley and destroyed the lives of the people who live there. The delta smelt is a fish that exists only in California and has no commercial value. The Pacific Legal Foundation is representing three Joaquin Valley farmers hit hard by the water cutbacks in a pending court case that will address the constitutionality of the water shut-down.

Oral arguments will take place Friday, October 2, 2009 at the Fresno Federal Courthouse (San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority v. Salazar; Case # 1:09-cv-407). A summary of the complaint, which was filed on May 21, 2009 follows:


Summary:
“In a misguided scheme to help a fish that’s on the Endangered Species Act list—the delta smelt—federal restrictions have severely cut the pumping into the water system that serves millions of people in Central and Southern California.

“These are “the most drastic cuts ever to California water…the biggest impact anywhere, nationwide,” according to the California water agencies.
“While farms and businesses are starved of water, more than 81 billion gallons of water have been allowed to flow out to the ocean—off-limits to human use or consumption, thanks to federal regulators’ environmental extremism. That’s enough to put 85,000 acres of farmland back into production.

“In the Central Valley, California’s agricultural heartland, up to 90,000 jobs are threatened by the pumping cutbacks. In some urban communities of Southern California, water rationing is a prospect. Moreover, in a real sense, national security is also at issue: By starving America’s breadbasket, the feds make us more dependent on foreign sources for the basic need of life: food.

“Representing farmers affected by the water cutbacks, PLF’s federal lawsuit focuses on both statutory and constitutional causes of action:


“In violation of administrative law, federal officials haven’t fulfilled their duty under their own regulations to show that the water cutoff will actually help the smelt, or to consider and weigh the economic costs.



“Because the smelt is not sold in interstate commerce, the federal government has no Commerce Clause authority to regulate it. “In other words,” said PLF attorney Damien Schiff, “the regulatory drought is not just morally wrong—it is flat-out unconstitutional.”


In the case of the delta smelt, a fish being eaten by invasive species, let us all hope that the judge uses common sense when issuing a ruling.

[mick silver]

a few telling a whole lot what they can an cannot do again . you guys like how they keeps taking place all over this country