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Tuesday, June 02, 2015

California’s largest lake is slipping away amid an epic drought

ALONG THE SALTON SEA, CALIF. — The bone-dry lake bed burned crystalline and white in the midday sun. Ecologist Bruce Wilcox hopped out of his truck and bent down to scoop up a handful of the gleaming, crusty soil.

Wilcox squeezed, then opened his fist. The desert wind scattered the lake bed like talcum powder.

“That’s disturbing,” Wilcox said, imagining what would happen if thousands of acres of this dust took flight. It’s the kind of thing that keeps him up at night.

The Salton Sea is the largest lake in California, 360 square miles of unlikely liquid pooled in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. Now the sea is slipping away. The Salton Sea needs more water — but so does just about every other place in California. And what is happening here perfectly illustrates the fight over water in the West, where epic drought has revived decades-old battles and the simple solutions have all been tried.

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9 comments:

  1. Maybe they can use those illegals and prisoners that California loves releasing to dig holes for water?

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  2. Run a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean & fill the rivers and lakes with salt water.Desalinization will occur naturally.Irrigate from the same rivers and lakes.For the fish in the empty lakes it's already too late so the brief salt inflow won't matter.The river fish and marine life will suffer early phase fatalities during the salinity decrease,but not catastrophic.Construction should begin immediately & should continue even if massive rainfall occurred in the meantime.Nature can no longer be trusted.

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  3. There is much debate over how many people this planet can sustain. Much of it revolves around food. The truth is that there is much more to it than just food. It is estimated that globally we add 360,000 people to our population each day. Yet only approx.151,000 die each day so we are experiencing a net addition of 210,000 human beings each day. Over 76,000,000 every year. Since human beings are approx. 80% water, the Earth must "create" an ADDITIONAL 900,000,000 gallons of water every year just to allow for the composition of human beings.

    The law of conservation of mass states that, despite chemical reactions or physical transformations, mass is conserved -- that is, it cannot be created or destroyed -- within an isolated system. This means that water that exists now is the same water (or atoms that make up the water molecule) that existed a million years ago. How that water is dispersed or used is the the problem. If it's being used to make up additional human bodies, it cannot be available to sustain those that already exist. Nor can it be available to grow food to sustain those that already exist. This is a major problem. It is common sense that inevitably we will run out of available drinking water. What then? Will we scientifically combine oxygen and hydrogen atoms that exist in our atmosphere to make water molecules to sustain human life? I would proffer that this would readily upset the delicate balance of our atmosphere and render the air we breath unsuitable in just a short period of time.

    Now think about the heat these new bodies create. Have you ever gone into a large room for a wedding reception and noticed how cold it is when you first get there and that by the end of the night it's very warm? Think about our atmosphere in the same way. The more living animals, human or otherwise, the more heat generation. This is substantially changing the temperature of our atmosphere.

    There is but one solution: reduce the population Famine, plagues, natural disasters, and war have prolonged the inevitable overpopulation problem for millenia. Science has been effective at reducing plagues, famine, and have significatly extended life expectancy. As a result, overpopulation has become a significantly larger problem which will multiply exponentially.

    Since the government has all the answers, what do you think will happen? Could this be one of the reasons for the perpetual state of war since 1990? Could this also be the hidden agenda of the ACA (Obamacare) when they determine who is too old to receive life saving procedures? Hmmmmm..........

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  4. there is no drought... They are sucking the water out to bottle it and to sell it to you... Look at the water Walmart sells... It is directly from the state of California and I can tell you this, the state of CA charges .99 cents per gallon or per 1k gallons I can not remember so do not hold it to me... Then Walmart sells it for .89 to $2 a bottle...

    This is no coincidence that, there happens to be a so called drought in CA, and where as Walmart pays to get water from them to sell, and the fact that they have Walmart's closing in that area, and that they have so called military training going on in the whole south...

    I think they are up to something big and my bet is, they are making it harder for people to stock pile water and food for something big they have planed...

    Just so you know, they have been sucking the waters of ponds and estuaries for years... They even do it to the great lakes which is why in one year it dropped in 5 feet in level, which is near impossible via evaporation...

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  5. 8:58 you have the right idea, but the reason isn't water, it is why other flora and fauna have decreased to compensate for the additional people. Change one biomass for another.

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  6. The almond farms in CA use more water per crop than all of the people in CA do in a year.

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  7. 8:58 is an idiot. This is no plan you moron, this is the result of generations of humans kicking the can down the road on global warming (exacerbated by humans, if not straight up caused by them - can't believe everything Faux News tells you) WITHOUT any plan. That's why there's such a huge drought in the West, and why we get such temperature extremes (like for example polar vortices and 57 degree days in June).

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    1. No 4:15 YOU are the idiot. You look only at the symptom rather than the problem. You just keep putting band-aids on the symptoms. You state "huge drought in the west" and "global warming". These are symptoms. The problem is over population. Like 11:11 plainly stated - we are simply changing one biomass for another. More water dedicated to human bodies that use oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, the less available for plantlife that provides our planet with oxygen. Hmmm....logic tells us this is unsustainable at the current rate of population growth. THINK!!

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    2. Oh...and you are obviously the idiot - and a liberal. Your mantra? It's big business and human greed causing global warming - lets all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya".

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