Posts Tagged climate
NASA Warns California Drought Could Threaten U.S. Food Supply: “There will be some definite changes”
Posted by EndlessMemories in Natural Environment & Weather, News on November 5, 2014
via: SHTFPlan.com
Mac Slavo
November 4, 2014
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has sounded a stark warning over California’s sustained drought, publishing its latest findings where satellite surveys show a rapidly depleting groundwater supply.
And with California as the United States’ most valuable agricultural state, and thus key to America’s food supply (and much of the world’s as well) that could mean drastic consequences for food commodity prices and potential shortages.
The Nature Climate Change journal carried the report, which Think Progress summarized:
A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, warns that “most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater depletion.”
The groundwater at some of the world’s largest aquifers — in the U.S. High Plains, California’s Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere — is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.”
The most worrisome fact: “nearly all of these underlie the word’s great agricultural regions and are primarily responsible for their high productivity.”
NASA’s satellite map shows the loss of weight height just in the past three years:
According to NASA:
“California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 km3 of total water per year since 2011 — more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually — over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.”
Yes, of course, California is a desert. So, that isn’t helping things. But it was reformed into a thriving economy by controversial and historically corrupt irrigation scheme, and is now vital to U.S. food security.
The result of these dangerous conditions is, not surprisingly, higher commodity prices – including food and water – creating higher profits for the companies that provide these services. Privatized water could drive prices even higher.
There are storm clouds gathering, so to speak, but they aren’t bringing rain.
In July, California’s state government economic report was already warning of losses in the billions for farmers feeling the weight of drought conditions, though it claimed the national food system would be little impacted.
However, time has made that claim ring hollow. In August, Bloomberg reported on the “global reverberations” occurring because of the drought in California:
“It’s a really big deal,” Sumner said. “Some crops simply grow better here than anyplace else, and our location gives us access to markets you don’t have elsewhere.”
[…]
The success of California agriculture was built in large part on advances in irrigation that allowed the state to expand beyond wheat, which flourishes in dry climates. It’s now the U.S.’s top dairy producer and grows half the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts.
“Water has allowed us to grow more valuable crops,” Sumner said. “Now, we have fruits and vegetables and North Dakota grows our wheat. Without irrigation, we’d be North Dakota.”
[…]
“There will be some definite changes, probably structural changes, to the entire industry” as drought persists, said American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman. “Farmers have made changes. They’ve shifted. This is what farmers do.”
Locals in California are now reporting everything from reduced availability of produce, to higher prices in restaurants and reduced hours and activity at farmer’s markets and local stores.
Most farmers have cutback on what they are growing. In many cases, that means chopping down trees, orchards and not planting as many fields:
“I was just talking to a farmer today who grows olives and almonds. Expect prices of almonds to skyrocket because they’re cutting the trees down because they don’t have enough water to keep them alive,” said Helstrom.
California is by no means the only place facing life threatening shortages. There are similarly alarming trends having all across the globe, particularly in arid and semi-arid places.
Texas ranchers and farmers have been dealing with returning dust bowl conditions in the panhandle and surrounding regions, with very difficult drought conditions and conflicting urban competition for water which strain supply.
Artificial Weather Revealed by Post 9-11 Flight Groundings
Posted by EndlessMemories in Chemtrails, Weather Modification & Geoengineering, False Flags & 9/11, News on July 17, 2012
via: GreenMedInfo
by: Sayer Ji
July 16, 2012
In the three days that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when all commercial flights above the continental US were suddenly suspended, a veil was lifted on the profound, though until that point unconfirmed, effects that aviation-associated artificial clouds are having on our planetary environment.
In the August 2002 edition of Nature, which is ranked the world’s most cited interdisciplinary journal, a report was published titled “Contrails reduce daily temperature range,” where scientists discuss how “a brief interval when the skies were clear of jets unmasked an effect on climate.”
Three Days Without Contrails
The post-9/11 grounding of all commercial aircraft resulted in the sudden disappearance of condensation trails (contrails) from jet aircraft across the entire United States. According to theNature study, the potential of contrails “…from jet aircraft to affect regional-scale surface temperatures has been debated for years…,” but it was not until the three-day grounding period that doubts concerning the existence of the phenomenon could be put to rest.
The Phenomenon: A 1.8 Degree Celsius Increase In Temperature in North America
The study found “…an anomalous increase in the average diurnal temperature range (that is, the difference between the daytime maximum and night-time minimum temperatures) for the period 11-14 September 2001.”
They go on to explain: “Because persisting contrails can reduce the transfer of both incoming solar and outgoing infrared radiation and so reduce the daily temperature range, we attribute at least a portion of this anomaly to the absence of contrails over this period.”
They arrived at their measurements by analyzing maximum and minimum temperature data from approximately 4,000 weather stations through the conterminous United States (excluding Hawaii and Alaska) for the period 1971-2000, and compared them to the three-day post-9/11 grounding period.
They found an increase in the diurnal temperature range (DTR) of approximately 1.1 degree Celsius over normal 1971-2000 values, and an increase of 1.8 degrees during the grounding period in contrast to the adjacent three-day periods analyzed when DTR values were near or below the mean.
This is a highly significant finding as “The increase in DTR is larger than any during the 11-14 September period for the previous 30 years…,” and since “…the 11-14 September increasing DTR was more than twice the national average for regions of the United States where contrail coverage has previously been reported to be most abundant (such as the Midwest, northeast and northwest regions).”