A Pretty Good Idea
The drought has gotten so bad in Texas that the cow are giving powered milk and we have three year old ducks who don’t know how to swim.
Since Governor Perry swears it has nothing to do with climate change, all we’re left with is the reassuring and abiding belief that God does not listen to Rick Perry’s prayers. I find some comfort in that.
Texas now publishes a big ole honkin’ list of places where the water has gone missing.
Customer Bernie has an idea. Maybe if immigrants brought water over in their calves?
Couldn’t hurt.
Thanks to Bernie for the heads up.
And folks continue to water and vacuum their perfect front lawns.
1I’ve noticed a number of folks talking about how the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” study from 40 years ago about running out of resources was a bunch of liberal silliness, and that we’d have unlimited resources forever.
I remember thinking at the time that the idea of unlimited resources seemed to contradict the First Law of Thermodynamics (conservation of mass/energy). After all, if one can’t create matter or energy – resources are limited to those present on the planet.
Now, the problems predicted by the Club of Rome’s dirty freaking hippies are starting to occur. Darn reality and its liberal bias.
2Why can’t oil companies frak with salt water from the Gulf instead of fresh drinking water. There still is a Gulf to the east of Texas, isn’t there? Or is there already too much oil in that water?
3W C Peterson–Engineers are working on ways to purify salt water enough to frac with it, but sea water has a lot of contaminants that mess up the other stuff in frac fluids. Note that it’s the sea water that is contaminated; the frac water really is stuff you could drink (although you probably don’t want to–unless you actually like kaopectate, for example).
I work with the industry, so I’m not deathly afraid of fracking, but they can’t move too fast to stop using freshwater for that operation….we need it too much to sustain life!
4The water problems are worse than that list indicates. Apparently the only date that is updated is when they first put a water district on the list. Austin Water has been on stage 2 for at least a year and is close to going to stage 3. Parts of Williamson County, Hays County and Bastrop are already stage 3. Other places probably are also. Combined storage of the Highland Lakes that serve Austin and surrounding areas is below 700,000 acre feet of water. The usage between Austin, downstream, leaks, and Matagorda Bay is around 500,000 acre feet per year with conservation. “Normal” rainfall provides 1.2 mil acre feet a year. In 2011, it was 0.2 mil acre feet, 2012 only provided about .5 mil acre feet. 2013 is running about the same as 2011.
5There are 8 foot trees growing where there used to be deep water and sometimes island is now large enough to build an apartment complex with parking and a strip mall. People just keep right on watering their lawns as most of them have no clue where their water comes from and probably don’t care. Bottom line – we need rain! Soft, gentle, prolonged and frequent rain.
Earth Overshoot Day is when we’ve used up all the resources that the Earth can produce in a year, if we started even on January 1. It’s been getting earlier, and this year it was on August 20. This is one deficit that the GOP doesn’t give a frack about, and I haven’t heard any Dems mention it, but it is more serious than any other deficit they care to yell about.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/earth-overshoot-day-environmental-deficit
6Rhea, honey, these guys don’t say boo about the missing water cuz all that thinking, it would hurt their heads. I have no sympathy for them at all. Spoiler alert: my area of the country to supposed to have a very cold, snowy winter which means that the water table will be absolutely lovely and my gardens will once again stop traffic. Just sayin’ . . .
7Everybody gets up tight when gas prices rise.
8Just wait until the cost of water hits the roof.
Of course, the 98% will bear the brunt and the 2% will keep on wasting it. Global warming is here and it’s ugly.
Maggie you can stop gloating ANYtime!! 😀 what part of country do you live in? As you can tell by my moniker, I live within 40 miles of my alma mater, TAMU whoop! My soil is Axtell-Tabor sand though, so at least I have drainage…
9Ladies and gentlemen, when the aquifers go dry, they stay that way a long time.
And no amount of fracking with brakish water can cover up the fact that the water won’t be fit to drink.
Today, Texas is the 2nd most populous state. In 10 years, it might not be in the top 10.
10“Using current trends in water usage as a guide, the researchers estimate that 3 percent of the [High Plains] aquifer’s water was used up by 1960; 30 percent of the aquifer’s water was drained by 2010; and a whopping 69 percent of the reservoir will likely be tapped by 2060. It would take an average of 500 to 1,300 years to completely refill the High Plains Aquifer, Steward added.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/huge-aquifer-runs-through-8-states-quickly-being-tapped-out-8C11009320
11Aggieland Liz, I live just down the road from George Washington’s old estate, Mt. Vernon, where at one time he planted everything he could get his hands on. From all that I can tell I don’t live over an aquifer. There are some but not around here. Instead we still have pretty much the original creek system that the Native Americans knew and, of course, the Potomac. Would ya believe that when we get hit by drought like the major one that occurred some years ago no one was allowed to take water from the Potomac to wet down their farms or home vegetable gardens? Never understood that thinking and I still don’t know why!!!
12There’s an online petition to have NOAA name hurricanes after prominent climate-change denialists. I’ll try to dig it up and tweet it later today (@lexalexander).
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