It would also mean about a million people in Los Angeles lose their electricity.  

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

The real lesson here is that I think we're approaching the point at which someone has to stand up and say, "Look, this is insane.  We can't support all of this crap in the middle of the desert.  If you want a green lawn and a golf course, go back to the East."  I get that the West is an appealing place.  (Denver ranks high on our household list of Places to Escape to Once We Get the Fuck Out of DC.)  The weather is nice and warm, housing is relatively cheap and incomes (on a COL basis) are relatively high.  And nobody wants to live in New Jersey.  But if Vegas and Phoenix grow to the size of the Big Dogs in the East, it's going to be a problem.

If people don't get that, they're in for a world of hurt down the line, unless they can somehow talk the Midwest into pumping water down there from the Great Lakes (an idea which Midwesterners understandably have no interest in whatsoever).

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

And, unfortunately, the huge aquifer to the north of Vegas, in Nye county, has been massively polluted by both aboveground and underground nuclear testing and the pollution is spreading. There is a highly informative interactive illustration at the link.

Here is a view from above of part of the area.

Shortly after I arrived in Tuscon, Az. in 1963 I had a conversation with our neighbor on the corner, who was a hydrologist. He informed me that in the 19th century the water table was at the surface in a great many of the streams and rivers in the area, such as the Santa Cruz, but that by 1963 the City of Tuscon was pumping fossil water from beneath the valley to the west of the Tuscon Mountains, which were the western edge of the city in those days, when the population was ~125,000. The population today is >500,000 and the Central Arizona Project, which was intended to provide an alternative to groundwater pumping, feeds water from the Colorado River, below Hoover Dam. Tuscon has long encouraged low water residential and municipal landscaping, but possibly could better utilize surface run-off from the 10-14" annual rainfall.

A complicating factor is that various records going back hundreds of years, pollen in sediment, tree-ring data, etc, shows that there have been prior episodes of very long El Nino type weather patterns. I love Tuscon and LA, have family in Tuscon and friends in LA but am glad I don't own property in either city, or in Vegas.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Well I do know quite a bit about European agricultural practices and production in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.  Ask me anything about the proper response to the Romans conquering Gaul.  (Feed-out more moo-moo cows for their meat and leather.)

OR about barley and einkorn production in the Jutland peninsula during the Jastdorf culture!  (Don't.  Isn't worth it.  Spend your time raising little piggies.)

LOL

It's looking like you Brits are going to lose the Fens from rising ocean level.  Which which case ag production in England is, as we say, fucked.  BSE wiped-out the flocks and herds in the whatchamacallit (Dorset?) area & etc.  That can recover if the government gets off it's ass ... like Right Now ... and stops wasting the CAP money on maximizing grain production, like you said.

Shouldn't get rid of all of it.  Grains have their place in proper crop rotation.  Hops is a perennial and can be used as part of the basic structure of a farm, in the right area.  (Do they still grow hops in Kent?)  


By popular request ... Madness takes it's toll. Have exact change ready.

We grow too much grains because we do too much meat and dairy. It mostly goes into feeding cattle, pigs, chicken, etc., with concentrates in intensive conditions.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Helen:

We have to switch from grain agriculture.

It's more like we need to switch how we farm our grains:

The future is Green: Perennial Polyculture Farming

For three decades, the Land Institute has been working to create a sustainable system of agriculture that is patterned after nature itself, that is, in the words of Director Wes Jackson, "more resilient to human folly."

In Jackson's eyes, modern agriculture wages war on nature. Every year erosion eats away 5.5 tons of soil for every acre of farmland in the U.S. Petrochemical based fertilizers and pesticides kill the soils fertility.

The land Institute's Kansas farm is working to reverse this damage by developing cropping systems that mimic the prairie. Rather than planting annual crops, Jackson and the Institute are developing perennial crops that need no plowing or planting. A farm that looked like the prairie would require fewer inputs by farmers, allowing them to keep more of the profit. It would feature a mixture of crops that could be harvested from the early spring to late fall; and perhaps most importantly, it would regenerate the soil into a thriving ecosystem.

The main problem farming with perennials is that they must devote more energy into building a larger root system and have less energy for growing seeds, thus have a lower food yield. Researchers at the Land Institute and several universities are searching for varieties of perennials whose yields can compete with annual crops. The Land Institute has had some success with wheat, sorghum, and sunflowers by cross breeding perennial strains with annual strains. Some lines of wheat have been developed that yield 70% of the best annual varieties. Perennials are hardier than annuals and more resistant to weeds once they are established. In addition they contain stronger resistance to disease. A polycrop field, imitating the prairie, further increases resistance to disease since each type of plant is further separated making the spread of disease more difficult.

There's no such thing as original sin - Elvis Costello

Looking at the map and deserts I remembered a cool thing I once learned: Rainforests cause rain to fall on them.

IIRC, the large dark surface collects the suns heat, warms the air that then goes upwards, sucking in wind from the the sea, carrying moisture. The moist air floats upwards and drops the rain on the forest.

Cut down the rainforest and the weather patterns change and you might even get desert instead.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

We have rivers in Ireland too! And perversely, global warming seems to be giving us more rain than ever - whilst Spain is desertifying....
Let's do a deal - we'll give you 100 litres of water for every litre of wine...

notes from no w here

It's not so much MILF appeal as the fuck-yeah attitude - the semi-comatose but pointedly self-righteous defiance of honesty, truth, morality, decency, and intelligent awareness.

She's a walking narrative - the idea that all you have to do is believe in yourself hard enough, and wish mightily enough, and you can tell any lie, put up any front, rant any rant, and you can still make it to the top, against small-minded naysayers who don't appreciate your own personal asteroid of awesome.

Plus, guns.

Also.