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Post by steev on Jul 23, 2015 20:19:58 GMT -5
Wow! First it was Holly, and now you, T? Look out, Trump! The "steev for Grand Poobah" train is rolling! With world-wide support doubling every two or three years this way, I feel confident in predicting that my program will be enacted shortly after Hell freezes. On such an optimistic note, I am emboldened to announce the campaign slogan under, over, and around which I will run: "Smarter than the Average Rock!" Um, that doesn't sound too elitist, does it? Maybe I'll just stick with "Things will be different, when I'm in charge!"; humble gravitas, that's the ticket; pie-in-the-sky, no legally binding promises; to hell with "cause and effect"; I don't recall voting for the Second Law of Thermodynamics, so who says I'm subject to it; Obama? Is he trying to deny my right to see the world through my navel?
While I am pleased that the tide is turning, it is dis-heartening that things have had to get so bad before it could be seen to be obvious that control should be put in my hands; nevertheless, I am an inveterate optimist, believing that we may yet survive to thrill to that rolling wave of "POP"s, as people pull their heads out of their asses, blinking in sudden enlightenment, or not. Woops! Sorry, when I start thinking globally, I can get a tad bi-polar.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 23, 2015 20:38:44 GMT -5
Wow! First it was Holly, and now you, T? Look out, Trump! The "steev for Grand Poobah" train is rolling! With world-wide support doubling every two or three years this way, I feel confident in predicting that my program will be enacted shortly after Hell freezes. ...I am an inveterate optimist, believing that we may yet survive to thrill to that rolling wave of "POP"s, as people pull their heads out of their asses, blinking in sudden enlightenment, or not. So, hell's frozen over, we have to pull our heads out to vote for you, then I'm sure one of your first acts will be to reverse global warming. Steev, our ears are gonna get cold! I'm afraid I can't vote for you until I'm promised government issued ear-muffs.
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Post by templeton on Jul 24, 2015 19:44:08 GMT -5
Steev, your slogan is too long - you need a TWS ( three word slogan), which you repeat, slowly, multiple times, in all press conferences, and 'doorstops'. Beautifully demonstrated by our current PM. and why are you an invertebrate optimist? Happy you have no spine? T
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Post by philagardener on Jul 24, 2015 20:38:57 GMT -5
I kind of liked "Grand Poobah Steev" - GPS shows the way!
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 25, 2015 19:50:54 GMT -5
Ok, so Hell is not freezing over, would you settle for boiling over? It's hot it's dry. And I'm thirsty. I've been cleaning the barn. YUCK. Entropy is taking over. Hurry take over before you have to become the Grand Pumba....That's Mister Pig to you.
Your slogan: Hakuna matata (What me worry, I'm Alfred E Newman?). What problem? Are there problems? No problema...just watch your sports, go to work, pay your bills, everything will be fine.
Steev, I'm writing you in on the next election. BY the way, I'm a registered Green. Not a yellow, not a brown. Where the hell is my water?
Last year the town planted grass in the "new community center" This year they are not watering it, they put up a sign saying "brown is the new green". What a waste of my money. Should have at least kept the community commons green. Idiots. Instead, they require green strips along the sidewalk. For those of you who haven't seen this, it s a 4 foot strip of grass on between the street and the sidewalk. When they irrigate these, the water flows to the storm drains. Steev, get on it.
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Post by steev on Jul 27, 2015 10:40:23 GMT -5
So much to do, so little time; I'll be all over these problems like brown on California, just as soon as my clones show up; 'til then, "It's Hammock Time!"
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Post by steev on Nov 2, 2015 20:28:27 GMT -5
Having posted before about my concerns/gripes regarding water-mining in Cali for export crops of nuts/wine and its effects on locals who can't afford to drill deeper wells, I've become aware of a new wrinkle in this practice.
It seems that Saudi Arabia (they of vast petro-dollars) having utterly depleted its aquifers to raise dairy-feed, has invested in large swaths of Arizona and California desert on which to grow alfalfa for export, sucking up those aquifers; the UAE also has a large enterprise doing the same in Arizona. Why don't they do it where there's more water? Because those places typically have shorter growing seasons=fewer crops per year. It just makes better short-term business sense to use up the most immediately profitable place, besides, that desert land is so cheap.
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Post by castanea on Nov 2, 2015 21:20:14 GMT -5
Having posted before about my concerns/gripes regarding water-mining in Cali for export crops of nuts/wine and its effects on locals who can't afford to drill deeper wells, I've become aware of a new wrinkle in this practice. It seems that Saudi Arabia (they of vast petro-dollars) having utterly depleted its aquifers to raise dairy-feed, has invested in large swaths of Arizona and California desert on which to grow alfalfa for export, sucking up those aquifers; the UAE also has a large enterprise doing the same in Arizona. Why don't they do it where there's more water? Because those places typically have shorter growing seasons=fewer crops per year. It just makes better short-term business sense to use up the most immediately profitable place, besides, that desert land is so cheap. That is very interesting. Like every other country in the world, our resources are for sale with no thought to long term consequences.
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Post by steev on Nov 3, 2015 0:07:09 GMT -5
Sorry to be so long responding, T, but I'm starting to process slower than a Tunicate; I posted "inveterate"; please note there's only one "R" in that; in some circles, I'm reputedly spinier than I ought to be.
castanea: as for selling our resources with no thought for consequences, I think those charged with guarding the general welfare are mostly concerned with their own welfare; those living where they'll be most affected by these aquifer rip-offs are too few and too powerless for their "elected representatives" to give a husky fuck if their wells are sucked out from under them. Shades of the Highland Clearances, the Irish Clearances, and Big Ag driving subsistence farmers off the land in so many parts of the world in pursuit of fungible products and profit. "What do I care if I destroy your home, so long as I can live somewhere nice?"
This is not to say that I have any beef with foreign investment. My rag is with foreign exploitation/extraction (granted; exactly what First World countries have been doing to Third World countries for centuries: killing the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs).
Not to disparage our "friends" the Saudis, but aren't those the folks who are spending their copious petrodollars to fund Wahabi madrassas wherever they can, preaching a very fundamentalist take on Islam (beheading, amputation, female subordination, and such)? I realize they've got lots of oil, but can't we get off the fossil-fuel tit and thereby stop funding this retrogressing dogma? Wasn't once through the Seventh Century enough?
So how do you like that Paris action? A bunch of hopeless, resentful, deluded assholes talk themselves into feeling powerful by committing general carnage; wow!; is that really holy war? I don't think those fools are going to get any virgins; I wish they'd be held to account for every instance of backlash against innocent muslims that flows from their self-indulgent stupidity. I'll go out on a limb here and declare that I have no use whatsoever for religious fundamentalism of any stripe. In my opinion, the reality-based world is wondrous enough; I don't need fairy-tales, nor do I think I should be subject to other peoples' fairy-tales. If some be-devilled fool wants to kill himself; fine; go with "god", but commit no sin against anyone else and leave me out of your lunacy.
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Post by steev on Jul 25, 2016 12:52:38 GMT -5
To and from the farm this week-end, I saw a few hundred more acres of new pop-up nut orchards; it's the middle of July; triple digits all over the Central Valley; there's no way those are going to survive without copious irrigation; I suppose they're being planted as soon as the trees are available, given the great demand; this week is seeing renewed attention to the governor's dream of running tunnels under the Sacramento River Delta so as to ship even more water to SoCal; fisheries, estuaries, and nurseries for marine life must not be as important as Big Ag, so we can impoverish the ecosystem in pursuit of profit and then whine about the "unforeseeable" instability. Apparently, we need SoCal produce (lettuce) more than we need Pacific Ocean sea-food; fine, we need protein less than lettuce, I guess. There's always Soylent Green, I suppose; fiddipoor!
I am ever less optimistic of human capacity to subject its short-term desires to long-term welfare; it seems to be all about "me", with no thought even about one's grandchildren, nor of theirs. So many people seem to be acting as though the world will not out-last them; what hubris! These self-centered narcissists may not care what destruction their ignorant avarice visits on the world on which we all depend, but it will come home to roost, May Earth still be habitable for our species after it does! I'm getting a tad worked up, here, so I'll stop, not wanting to vilify/expose our species unduly. I firmly believe that whatever we do, some of our cousins will carry on: whether they be vertebrates, insects, bacteria, or fungi, I have no idea; I doubt not that Life will survive whatever suicidal stupidity of which we are capable.
It's just sad that we tell ourselves that we're intelligent and autonomous while we do this stupid shit; can't we read the directions, printed on the bottom, of how to pour the piss out of this boot?
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Post by steev on Aug 1, 2016 22:58:14 GMT -5
This week-end, I drove to-and-from Los Angeles, center of SoCal population (where the votes are); along the way, it was obvious who had water-rights and who had planted orchards without (enough) water-rights (the ones with dried-up trees). There were thousands of acres of recently-planted nuts and grapes; these are the folks with water-rights converting to less labor (undocumented alien) intensive crops; these are also more exportable crops (nuts and wine). Fine; they have a right to run their farms, and if they choose to run them in a way that subverts their local and national interests, so be it. We will deal with that shit in time.
The problem is that there are sign-posts all along the highway (I-5) bitching about how government has created drought (by not shipping enough water South, destroying the Sacramento River Delta ecosystem, the San Francisco Bay ecosystem, and a significant part of the Pacific Coast ecosystem, IMHO), how water=food (so the government is starving people by not SEWS), and how water=jobs; this is unmitigated bullshit, in the interests of corporate farming: field, annual crops are being replaced by perennial crops, largely machine serviced/harvested, largely for export. Aside from the mechanization, this is what I saw in Central America forty years ago. A few large interests control the land, they grow crops for export (money for them), the local populace gets no benefits, their diet is restricted, and they suck hind tit.
Now, I don't hate citrus (a very thirsty crop), nor nuts (somewhat less thirsty); I have reservations about expanding orchards onto land that is ONLY productive with irrigation, dependent on water taken from hundreds of miles away, in a state with a Mediterranean climate, currently in a drought.
However! SoCal has very limited water; it's arguably desert. We hear no efforts to dam the rivers in that area; granted, excess water there is sporadic and infrequent, but why not stop it from flowing to the sea, when it comes? Oh, yes; SoCal can get dependable water from NorCal.
One of the more ubiquitous signs suggests that less water=higher food prices. What horseshit! Their remedy is more tunnels, aquaducts, and dams! Who the fuck is going to pay for those!? Do they really think nobody knows that shit comes out of taxes? I understand that if they can get the whole state to pay for something that will benefit them, they make out like bandits, but that they have the balls to suggest that this will result in lower cost produce for everybody else (everybody having paid for their infrastructure) is really beyond the fringe. These bell-ends should go to some less literate part of the world to rip off the locals.
Technophobe that I am, I am glad for the global access the www affords to people who would otherwise be exploited; may their concerns be known!
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Post by steev on Aug 2, 2016 20:57:44 GMT -5
I'm still steaming about the SoCal water situation! Why isn't the copious treated (to the point that you could generally drink it safely; I have that assessment of drinkability from a sanitation engineer whom I trust) sewage waste-water being piped out for irrigation? Here in NorCal, many municipalities allow people to fill trailer-tanks with this effluent (free) for their irrigation; I don't doubt that the same is true in SoCal, but how about industrial-scale transfer to take industrial ag off the NorCal tit, whining for more NorCal snow-melt while pissing treated sewage water out to sea?
San Diego has/is building an energy-intensive de-salinization facility to satisfy their otherwise greatly-restricted water needs; where is the super-salty effluent from that plant going? Back into the sea, to destroy the ecosystem which can't handle such salinity? Has nobody learned anything from the destruction of the coastal sea off Saudi Arabia from desalinization plants? I understand that San Diego dumps half a million gallons of treated sewage effluent into the sea every day. I'm not wedded to that figure, but even if it's only a tenth of that, why can't it be pumped out to irrigation or to re-charge groundwater?
I know people freak out about the thought of poo-poo and pee-pee in their water, as well as the drugs and chemicals that people may flush down the crapper, but we may need to EDUCATE on many fronts, if we are to survive; these same issues haunt people about composted sewage sludge, so it can't be sold retail anymore, but it is definitely being sold (very cheaply, basically cost of transport, like steer-manure, to get rid of that shit) to farmers. Out of sight, out of mind; don't flush down the crapper what you don't want back on your plate; right?
If I've spoiled anyone's appetite, I doubt you were all that hungry, anyway.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 3, 2016 9:35:37 GMT -5
A city out here is injecting the effluent from the sewer into the city's irrigation water system. I predict a "mystery disease" epidemic in the areas of the city closest to the sewer plant, as people water their gardens and then eat the produce from them. Or as the kids play on lawns that have been irrigated with the sewer water.
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Post by steev on Aug 3, 2016 12:40:04 GMT -5
Which is why injection for ground filtration and biota-utilization is likely the best approach. I wouldn't advocate spraying or surface irrigating, for the concerns Joseph mentions, but sub-surface irrigation is feasible and there are newer materials specifically for that, like root-excluding in-line-emitter tubing. Irrigating long-lived perennials, like orchards and vineyards, comes to mind; the nitrates and trace elements in sewage effluent could be a bonus (of course, contaminants might be a problem, but as I said, EDUCATE). Let us hope there are gifted grad-students studying this.
I suppose my main orientation is toward recycle/reuse, rather than "seek more sources and continue discarding". Is anyone confused about what is done on the space-station? I'm sure they haven't got a hose-connection to the Great Lakes and they don't flush to outer space. I think we will get in line with the notion that Earth is our real space-station and we need to treat it rationally and creatively, if we want to survive as communities, cultures, or perhaps a species.
Are we not learning that expensive big-fixes may not only be no more to the point than re-thinking the problem, but may sometimes make things worse? I realize that there is money to be made in big-fixes, but what if we were to think of long-term benefit, rather than short-term profit? As Joseph has mentioned, he can irrigate his fields thanks to his forebears, who built a water-system that continues to serve.
If SoCal continues to irrigate desert for today's profit, regardless of impoverishing NorCal ecosystems, how long before SoCal revisits the salinized soil conditions experienced when the Fertile Crescent irrigated desert soils with big irrigation projects? This isn't a matter of politics, economics, or belief; it's about pragmatic facts of soluble, transportable minerals, evaporation and precipitation, and the movement of compounds that have been locked in place since the climate got too dry for them to move.
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