Detroit Three, UAW in talks with White House to set EV sales goals

Crissa

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Can we trigger it? Or is the climate change a natural phenomenon?
Yes. Obviously.
And yes. Obviously.

https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=how+do+we+know+climate+change+is+caused+by+humans

It's pretty simple, really.

Um thats not what I wrote. Less airline particle emissions makes the planet "warm" faster, not slower.
That's weather, not climate.

https://www.wired.com/story/plane-contrails-surprising-effect-global-warming/

-Crissa
Sponsored

 
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Crissa

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JBee

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You're wrong about the amount, not that the effect exists.

The CO2 and contrail reflectivity has a greater effect.
https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/...ge-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment/

-Crissa
So now you agree that aersols are climate forcing? Nice!

You like changing to the winning side Crissa. Or changing the argument. I am immune to your forum jujutsu.

Your article says two degrees temperature rise after 3 days of no flying.

Proof is in the pudding.

Btw I'm not discussing this off topic in this thread anymore.

Back to subject please.
 


Crissa

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So now you agree that aersols are climate forcing? Nice!
I said the effect you're talking about affects local weather, but is not climate inducing. Modern aircraft just don't put out enough particulate.

I haven't changed my position.

Of course, coal plants that produced acid rain, on the other hand...

-Crissa
 

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...Elon is spending all he can, and the economy is thousands of times larger than he could possibly spend. We still need more charging points than he can afford, more trains, more so many things to make our economy hum that he doesn't even touch, like support systems from water to child care.

-Crissa
Actually I had inadvertently meant to specifically say "Broadband Internet Infrastructure" =\ It sort of took my comment in a direction I had not intended.
 
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Water is crucial. Individuals can take care of their own child care as they have been doing since forever. The economy has hummed along in the past and can keep doing so without spending billions subsidizing child care.

But it takes a collective effort to manage water systems.

'Megadrought' threatens Lake Powell, Glen Canyon Dam
Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam are integral to the water and power systems in the Western United States, and the deep drought in the region has caused the water to reach record low levels. Lindsey Reiser reports from the shores of the lake near the Arizona/Utah border.
https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/-megadrought-threatens-lake-powell-glen-canyon-dam-117661253721

40 million Americans depend on two reservoirs that just hit record lows
The Colorado River's Lake Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs haven't been this low since they were first filled up.
https://www.popsci.com/science/lake-mead-lake-powell-drought/

Utah's Great Salt Lake Is Officially at Its Lowest Point in Recorded History
The lake's desperate situation is due to a combination of climate change, drought, and overuse by humans.
https://gizmodo.com/utahs-great-salt-lake-is-officially-at-its-lowest-point-1847370873

California shuts down major hydroelectric plant amid record-low water levels at Lake Oroville

KEY POINTS
  • California shut down a major hydroelectric power plant at Lake Oroville as water levels fell near the minimum necessary to generate electricity.
  • The loss of power could fuel rolling blackouts as the state struggles with a historic drought and record-breaking heat waves.
  • “This is just one of many unprecedented impacts we are experiencing in California as a result of our climate-induced drought,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s water resources department.

74-1627303202344-gettyimages-1234209208-AFP_9GE6YR.jpg

In this aerial photo houseboats sit in low water on Lake Oroville as California’s drought emergency worsens, July 25, 2021 in Oroville, California.
Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — California shut down a major hydroelectric power plant at Lake Oroville as water levels fell near the minimum necessary to generate power, state water officials said.

It’s the first time the state has shut down the Hyatt Power Plant due to depleted water levels since the plant went into operation in 1967.

The loss of power could fuel even more rolling blackouts this summer as the state grapples with a historic drought and record-breaking heat waves.

Officials said the record-low water levels at Lake Oroville, a man-made water reserve in Northern California, are a result of the drought exacerbated by climate change.

Though California consistently experiences drought, climate change fueled high temperatures and dry soil that significantly reduced water runoff into the reservoirs this spring, resulting in the lowest levels ever recorded at Lake Oroville, officials said Thursday.

“This is just one of many unprecedented impacts we are experiencing in California as a result of our climate-induced drought,” Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s water resources department, said in a statement.

Nemeth said the department anticipated the shutdown and planned for a loss of water and grid management. Officials have warned that the plant can no longer generate power if water levels fall below 640 feet above sea level.

21750z_87286454_rc2z1o960nh7_rtrmadp_0_usa-weather.jpg

Dry land is visible, at a section that is normally under water, on the banks of Lake Oroville, which is the second largest reservoir in California and according to daily reports of the state’s Department of Water Resources is near 35% capacity near Oroville, California, June 16, 2021.
Aude Guerrucci | Reuters

Water elevations at Lake Oroville are forecast to reach as low as 620 feet above sea level by the end of October. Nemeth said the state’s water agency is working to “preserve as much water in storage as possible.”

Though the plant is no longer generating power, officials said they will release some water from the dam to the Feather River to maintain river temperature requirements.
Gov. Gavin Newsom asked California residents in July to curb household water
consumption by 15%
to preserve water supply. Grid operators have also urged residents to limit electricity use to avoid blackouts as wildfires scorch the state, including the Dixie Fire, which has been burning for more than three weeks and decimated the gold rush town of Greenville.

“Falling reservoir levels are another example of why it is so critical that all Californians conserve water,” Nemeth said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/06/cal...-hydroelectric-plant-amid-severe-drought.html


Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-08-cmc.jpg

Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

BY JAWEED KALEEMNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT
Photography by
CAROLYN COLE

AUG. 3, 2021 2 AM PT

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. —
The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.
“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-02-cmc.jpg

The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing a years-long drought.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious.

Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears.

The eastern Arizona reservoir that provided much of her water was drying up, leaving empty the canals and ditches that surround her property. Bigger-than-usual summer rains did not prove ample to rescue dead fields. The drought was at her door.

Across the U.S. West, shifting climate patterns are wreaking havoc. An early start to fire season is scorching rural Oregon and parts of Northern California. Record temperatures have led to deaths of hundreds of residents of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Lake Mead, the massive Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas, is at its lowest point since its 1935 federal construction, threatening water supplies to Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and Mexico.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-18-cmc.jpg

Saguaros, which can naturally withstand drought better than non-native plants, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing years-long drought that has accelerated. Large swaths of the region are now in extreme distress and the picture may well get worse, with less reliable mountain snowfall to feed streams and a morphing monsoon season that has only proved a temporary reprieve and even led to flooding. The state, where more than a third of all water can trace itself up the Colorado River to Lake Mead, will also be forced to make do with less beginning next year because of the lake’s dwindling supply.

“Arizona is pretty much an irrigated state and we’ve managed our water resources generally well,” said Stephanie Smallhouse, a fifth-generation cattle rancher on the far outskirts of Tucson who is the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. “But it’s near impossible to manage yourself out of a drought.”
Screen Shot 2021-08-07 at 9.24.00 AM.png


The history of Arizona is the history of water. Before European colonizers and American settlers moved in, Indigenous people relied on the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers outside Phoenix. The Colorado River flowed on what’s now the state’s western edge, while snowmelt from New Mexico’s Black Mountain Range formed the Gila River that came from the east to meet the Colorado, creating a lifeline for tens of thousands of subsistence farmers in Native American communities.

But as technological advances led to the construction of dams and reservoirs in the early 20th century to divert rivers for new residents — like Caywood’s grandfather — Native land went fallow, leading to sickness and poverty. As cities such as Tucson and Phoenix and farmlands between them grew over the decades, they were aided by another feat in water engineering when construction on the Central Arizona Project launched in 1973. Today, the intricate canal system carries Colorado River water hundreds of miles from Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to taps and irrigation ditches across central Arizona.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-19-cmc.jpg

The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

It’s a history that informs who wins and loses amid drought. The state has dozens of irrigation districts that tax customers in exchange for regulating water flow from different sources. The map they form can at times resemble gerrymandered congressional districts, with it not unusual for neighboring farms to get water from canals that lead to mountains and reservoirs in opposite directions.

Longevity also goes into the equation.

“Water policy in Arizona is also rooted in the idea that a person who comes and diverts water for a beneficial use should have higher priority than the next one who comes along if there is a risk for shortage,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

When it comes to water, one city or farm is not always equal to the other in the state where the $23-billion agriculture industry uses up more than 70% of irrigated water, a large chunk of it on crops the federal government encourages with subsidies, such as cotton. In central Arizona, city dwellers and tribal lands tend to get first dibs on water before farms. Still, nearly everyone is preparing. Cities are raising water prices. The state is locked in a battle with hundreds of lush golf courses over demands that they cut back on water.

Yuma, a major farming region known as the “Salad Bowl” for growing broccoli, lettuce and leafy greens that are shipped across the country each winter, is in many ways spared. It has priority over water from the nearby Colorado River in part because irrigated agriculture has taken place there for more than a century. Vegetables also need significantly less water than crops that are popular inland.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-15-cmc.jpg

A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

It’s farmers in the center of the state who are most worried as shortages loom. Among the hardest-hit are those in Pinal County, a largely rural patchwork of farms and cattle and dairy ranches nestled between Phoenix and Tucson where family farmers live alongside exurbs that are rapidly expanding as agriculture recedes.

Along Interstate 10, typically green farms have turned brown, skinny cattle are left with little grass to graze and saguaros lie dead. “For sale” signs advertise desperate owners looking to sell their land at discount for solar power panels and housing developments.

“There’s nothing nefarious about how the water is divided,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents several irrigation districts in the county. “But because of agreements that have been negotiated and where these farmers have fell in those, you could see up to 30% of farmland in Pinal County no longer irrigated over the next few years.”

For those like Caywood, that time has already come.

Casa Grande, a city of 55,000 founded in 1879 as a mining town that’s named after a structure built by the ancient Hohokam people, is one of those places at the center of the water crisis. Home to dozens of alfalfa, cotton, wheat and corn farms and as well as dairy and beef ranches, it’s long been sustained by a mix of rains, aquifers and canals drawing on the Colorado River, among other reserves.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-04-cmc.jpg

Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field. It went fallow after her family lost access to irrigated water from the San Carlos reservoir because its water levels were too low.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

The Caywood farm has a different source. When Caywood’s grandfather, Lewis Storey, established it in 1930, he agreed to pay for water from canals connected to the San Carlos reservoir 130 miles away. Storey thought the reservoir, formed on the Gila River, would be plentiful for generations with its 1.2 million acre-feet supply. An acre-foot covers the amount of water that could seep a foot deep across a football field.

The family had long used that water to grow cotton that made up towels and sheets found in big-box stores. The seeds went separately for cattle feed. Alfalfa was cut and baled for ranches across the Southwest.

This summer, the San Carlos reservoir hit zero acre-feet.

“If you want to eat ice cream, you need people like us growing the feed,” Caywood said recently as she sat in the small, wooden shed on the property where she keeps a digital slideshow of the once-lively green and white fields to show kids who still come by on field trips. All that survived now were old mesquite and cottonwood trees on the edges of the land.

“We’re wiped clean,” Caywood said. “You can’t grow.”

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-13-cmc.jpg

Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz. “If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line,” said Clay Buck Parsons, who runs the auction house with his father, Clay Parsons.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-12-cmc.jpg

Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards, which has seen an increase in sales amid the decreased feed availability that the drought has caused.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

An hour south of the the Caywood property at the Pinal County line, the ranchers who show up each week at Marana Stockyards are feeling the trickle-down effects of the drought. The Parsons family has auctioned cattle here for 25 years. Business is picking up.

Dozens of men in cowboy hats and leather boots arrive each Wednesday to watch their bulls, cows and calves sold off. Clay Buck Parsons, a third-generation rancher and auctioneer, ushers cattle into holding pens outside the red barnyard-like building while Parsons’ dad mans a computer as locals in the stands make bids and buyers log in online.

“We’ve sold 12,000 more head this year already than last year,” said Parsons, 29. Most go to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

“You can’t feed the animals without grass,” he said, looking out at dozens of black Angus mother cows whose shoulders and ribs jutted out from grazing on dying fields.

“If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line. So the ranchers are cutting down on their herd to maintain smaller numbers where they can still make a profit.”

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-10-cmc.jpg

Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son, Clay Buck Parsons.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-14-cmc.jpg

Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys underweight cows at Marana Stockyards. He feeds them for a few months before reselling them for profit.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Buck said it costs up to $4 a day per cow for hay, four times more than grazing on grass. The cost of raising beef can be several thousand times more than some vegetables, such as lettuce. But ranchers here said family history — and profits — had until recently seemed worth holding on to.

One of the regulars to come that day was Mike Mercer. At 54, he has been ranching since his teens. For many years, his land in Mammoth, a village of 1,650, provided for 700 mother cows. Now, he can’t have more than 100 at a time as grass disappears.

“You can’t run cattle. It’s just — everything’s gone,” Mercer said. “A lot of guys are switching into copper mining or welding or trucking.”

These days, Mercer buys skinny, sickly cows, feeds them for a few months on hay in a covered feedlot, and resells them at a profit. On that day, he sold 88 to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-11-cmc.jpg

The Parsons family’s auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year. Many ranchers can no longer afford to feed their cattle because of the drought.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)


A Christian who believes God is responsible for the drought, he prayed for a change.

“You just keep saying we can’t have another year this bad and then we have another year even worse.... Leave it in God’s hands. Because I don’t know what else to do. You pray for rain. Oh, God, yeah. Pray for rain.”

Caywood, a former farming teacher at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Division in El Centro, Calif., also questions those who say climate change is to blame for her struggles.

“I don’t believe in it. I believe things are cyclical. But I can’t believe that it’s happening so quickly,” said Caywood, who has a master’s degree in agricultural education.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-07-cmc.jpg

Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, 14, stand at the office of Caywood Farms. Hartman is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Her son, Travis, built a home on the farm where he lives with two sons. She is thankful that he has continued in the family tradition. But she is more thankful that he is also a firefighter and paramedic, a job that provides a stable income. Her `14-year-old grandson Thomas is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. She has encouraged them but also told them to consider backup plans.

In the good years, the farm would easily make tens of thousands of dollars in profits, more than enough to cover $22,000 in annual property taxes. This year, Caywood, who had hoped to retire, may dip into savings to cover the bill.

Recently, her son leased two 80-acre plots in different irrigation districts that have access to canal water from the Colorado River. Just a few miles from Caywood Farms, corn stalks reach 5 feet into the air. They’ll be chopped up for dairy cow feed.

The family didn’t want more farming land but found it necessary to cover the taxes on its dying historic property.

Except there’s one problem.
Because of the drought, Arizona will have 18% less water from the Colorado River next year. Farms like Caywood’s son’s will be hit hardest because of rules governing how water is divided in the state.
photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-05-cmc.jpg

“We have no cotton. It’s gone. It’s dead. The alfalfa barely exists,” Caywood said. She may be forced to use her savings to cover taxes on the farm, which isn’t making money anymore.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

“It seems there’s really no way out of drought,” Caywood said the other week, browsing old photos of her parents and son standing by cotton bales.
Sometimes, she felt as though it wasn’t just a farm but a family and way of life slipping away. Her father, Tommy, died in January at 98. Her 94-year-old mother, Sammie, was in and out of the hospital.

All around her, farms were disappearing. Next door, the Wuertzes sold much of theirs for solar panels. Down the street, an abandoned construction project stood where alfalfa once grew. Caywood had gotten offers from buyers too. She rejected them.

She looked at the barren fields where her grandfather taught her how to examine the changing color of a cotton blossom to tell where the plant was in its life span. She thought back to when water flowed freely in the dried-up irrigation canals where she would sneak away to swim as a kid.
Days like those seemed long gone. She prayed for them to come back again.


https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-08-03/arizona-water-drought-farmers-cattle



Drought woes: More boat ramp closures, hay shortages, and now fecal matter in water
August brings worsening drought conditions to Utah

By Amy Joi O'Donoghue@Amyjoi16 Aug 4, 2021, 10:00pm MDT
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/8...ried-up-rangeland-weather-water-supplies-heat


Impacts of California drought, water woes threaten energy, agriculture
The historic drought has parched the state's critical reservoirs
https://www.foxnews.com/us/impacts-of-california-drought-water-woes-threaten-energy-agriculture
 
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California shuts down major hydroelectric plant amid record-low water levels at Lake Oroville

KEY POINTS
  • California shut down a major hydroelectric power plant at Lake Oroville as water levels fell near the minimum necessary to generate electricity.
  • The loss of power could fuel rolling blackouts as the state struggles with a historic drought and record-breaking heat waves.
  • “This is just one of many unprecedented impacts we are experiencing in California as a result of our climate-induced drought,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s water resources department.

74-1627303202344-gettyimages-1234209208-AFP_9GE6YR.jpg

In this aerial photo houseboats sit in low water on Lake Oroville as California’s drought emergency worsens, July 25, 2021 in Oroville, California.
Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — California shut down a major hydroelectric power plant at Lake Oroville as water levels fell near the minimum necessary to generate power, state water officials said.

It’s the first time the state has shut down the Hyatt Power Plant due to depleted water levels since the plant went into operation in 1967.

The loss of power could fuel even more rolling blackouts this summer as the state grapples with a historic drought and record-breaking heat waves.

Officials said the record-low water levels at Lake Oroville, a man-made water reserve in Northern California, are a result of the drought exacerbated by climate change.

Though California consistently experiences drought, climate change fueled high temperatures and dry soil that significantly reduced water runoff into the reservoirs this spring, resulting in the lowest levels ever recorded at Lake Oroville, officials said Thursday.

“This is just one of many unprecedented impacts we are experiencing in California as a result of our climate-induced drought,” Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s water resources department, said in a statement.

Nemeth said the department anticipated the shutdown and planned for a loss of water and grid management. Officials have warned that the plant can no longer generate power if water levels fall below 640 feet above sea level.

21750z_87286454_rc2z1o960nh7_rtrmadp_0_usa-weather.jpg

Dry land is visible, at a section that is normally under water, on the banks of Lake Oroville, which is the second largest reservoir in California and according to daily reports of the state’s Department of Water Resources is near 35% capacity near Oroville, California, June 16, 2021.
Aude Guerrucci | Reuters

Water elevations at Lake Oroville are forecast to reach as low as 620 feet above sea level by the end of October. Nemeth said the state’s water agency is working to “preserve as much water in storage as possible.”

Though the plant is no longer generating power, officials said they will release some water from the dam to the Feather River to maintain river temperature requirements.
Gov. Gavin Newsom asked California residents in July to curb household water
consumption by 15%
to preserve water supply. Grid operators have also urged residents to limit electricity use to avoid blackouts as wildfires scorch the state, including the Dixie Fire, which has been burning for more than three weeks and decimated the gold rush town of Greenville.

“Falling reservoir levels are another example of why it is so critical that all Californians conserve water,” Nemeth said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/06/cal...-hydroelectric-plant-amid-severe-drought.html


Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-08-cmc.jpg

Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

BY JAWEED KALEEMNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT
Photography by
CAROLYN COLE

AUG. 3, 2021 2 AM PT

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. —
The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.
“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-02-cmc.jpg

The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing a years-long drought.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious.

Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears.

The eastern Arizona reservoir that provided much of her water was drying up, leaving empty the canals and ditches that surround her property. Bigger-than-usual summer rains did not prove ample to rescue dead fields. The drought was at her door.

Across the U.S. West, shifting climate patterns are wreaking havoc. An early start to fire season is scorching rural Oregon and parts of Northern California. Record temperatures have led to deaths of hundreds of residents of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Lake Mead, the massive Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas, is at its lowest point since its 1935 federal construction, threatening water supplies to Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and Mexico.

photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-18-cmc.jpg

Saguaros, which can naturally withstand drought better than non-native plants, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing years-long drought that has accelerated. Large swaths of the region are now in extreme distress and the picture may well get worse, with less reliable mountain snowfall to feed streams and a morphing monsoon season that has only proved a temporary reprieve and even led to flooding. The state, where more than a third of all water can trace itself up the Colorado River to Lake Mead, will also be forced to make do with less beginning next year because of the lake’s dwindling supply.

“Arizona is pretty much an irrigated state and we’ve managed our water resources generally well,” said Stephanie Smallhouse, a fifth-generation cattle rancher on the far outskirts of Tucson who is the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. “But it’s near impossible to manage yourself out of a drought.”
Screen Shot 2021-08-07 at 9.24.00 AM.png


The history of Arizona is the history of water. Before European colonizers and American settlers moved in, Indigenous people relied on the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers outside Phoenix. The Colorado River flowed on what’s now the state’s western edge, while snowmelt from New Mexico’s Black Mountain Range formed the Gila River that came from the east to meet the Colorado, creating a lifeline for tens of thousands of subsistence farmers in Native American communities.

But as technological advances led to the construction of dams and reservoirs in the early 20th century to divert rivers for new residents — like Caywood’s grandfather — Native land went fallow, leading to sickness and poverty. As cities such as Tucson and Phoenix and farmlands between them grew over the decades, they were aided by another feat in water engineering when construction on the Central Arizona Project launched in 1973. Today, the intricate canal system carries Colorado River water hundreds of miles from Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to taps and irrigation ditches across central Arizona.

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The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

It’s a history that informs who wins and loses amid drought. The state has dozens of irrigation districts that tax customers in exchange for regulating water flow from different sources. The map they form can at times resemble gerrymandered congressional districts, with it not unusual for neighboring farms to get water from canals that lead to mountains and reservoirs in opposite directions.

Longevity also goes into the equation.

“Water policy in Arizona is also rooted in the idea that a person who comes and diverts water for a beneficial use should have higher priority than the next one who comes along if there is a risk for shortage,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

When it comes to water, one city or farm is not always equal to the other in the state where the $23-billion agriculture industry uses up more than 70% of irrigated water, a large chunk of it on crops the federal government encourages with subsidies, such as cotton. In central Arizona, city dwellers and tribal lands tend to get first dibs on water before farms. Still, nearly everyone is preparing. Cities are raising water prices. The state is locked in a battle with hundreds of lush golf courses over demands that they cut back on water.

Yuma, a major farming region known as the “Salad Bowl” for growing broccoli, lettuce and leafy greens that are shipped across the country each winter, is in many ways spared. It has priority over water from the nearby Colorado River in part because irrigated agriculture has taken place there for more than a century. Vegetables also need significantly less water than crops that are popular inland.

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A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

It’s farmers in the center of the state who are most worried as shortages loom. Among the hardest-hit are those in Pinal County, a largely rural patchwork of farms and cattle and dairy ranches nestled between Phoenix and Tucson where family farmers live alongside exurbs that are rapidly expanding as agriculture recedes.

Along Interstate 10, typically green farms have turned brown, skinny cattle are left with little grass to graze and saguaros lie dead. “For sale” signs advertise desperate owners looking to sell their land at discount for solar power panels and housing developments.

“There’s nothing nefarious about how the water is divided,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents several irrigation districts in the county. “But because of agreements that have been negotiated and where these farmers have fell in those, you could see up to 30% of farmland in Pinal County no longer irrigated over the next few years.”

For those like Caywood, that time has already come.

Casa Grande, a city of 55,000 founded in 1879 as a mining town that’s named after a structure built by the ancient Hohokam people, is one of those places at the center of the water crisis. Home to dozens of alfalfa, cotton, wheat and corn farms and as well as dairy and beef ranches, it’s long been sustained by a mix of rains, aquifers and canals drawing on the Colorado River, among other reserves.

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Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field. It went fallow after her family lost access to irrigated water from the San Carlos reservoir because its water levels were too low.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

The Caywood farm has a different source. When Caywood’s grandfather, Lewis Storey, established it in 1930, he agreed to pay for water from canals connected to the San Carlos reservoir 130 miles away. Storey thought the reservoir, formed on the Gila River, would be plentiful for generations with its 1.2 million acre-feet supply. An acre-foot covers the amount of water that could seep a foot deep across a football field.

The family had long used that water to grow cotton that made up towels and sheets found in big-box stores. The seeds went separately for cattle feed. Alfalfa was cut and baled for ranches across the Southwest.

This summer, the San Carlos reservoir hit zero acre-feet.

“If you want to eat ice cream, you need people like us growing the feed,” Caywood said recently as she sat in the small, wooden shed on the property where she keeps a digital slideshow of the once-lively green and white fields to show kids who still come by on field trips. All that survived now were old mesquite and cottonwood trees on the edges of the land.

“We’re wiped clean,” Caywood said. “You can’t grow.”

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Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz. “If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line,” said Clay Buck Parsons, who runs the auction house with his father, Clay Parsons.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
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Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards, which has seen an increase in sales amid the decreased feed availability that the drought has caused.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

An hour south of the the Caywood property at the Pinal County line, the ranchers who show up each week at Marana Stockyards are feeling the trickle-down effects of the drought. The Parsons family has auctioned cattle here for 25 years. Business is picking up.

Dozens of men in cowboy hats and leather boots arrive each Wednesday to watch their bulls, cows and calves sold off. Clay Buck Parsons, a third-generation rancher and auctioneer, ushers cattle into holding pens outside the red barnyard-like building while Parsons’ dad mans a computer as locals in the stands make bids and buyers log in online.

“We’ve sold 12,000 more head this year already than last year,” said Parsons, 29. Most go to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

“You can’t feed the animals without grass,” he said, looking out at dozens of black Angus mother cows whose shoulders and ribs jutted out from grazing on dying fields.

“If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line. So the ranchers are cutting down on their herd to maintain smaller numbers where they can still make a profit.”

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Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son, Clay Buck Parsons.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
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Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys underweight cows at Marana Stockyards. He feeds them for a few months before reselling them for profit.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Buck said it costs up to $4 a day per cow for hay, four times more than grazing on grass. The cost of raising beef can be several thousand times more than some vegetables, such as lettuce. But ranchers here said family history — and profits — had until recently seemed worth holding on to.

One of the regulars to come that day was Mike Mercer. At 54, he has been ranching since his teens. For many years, his land in Mammoth, a village of 1,650, provided for 700 mother cows. Now, he can’t have more than 100 at a time as grass disappears.

“You can’t run cattle. It’s just — everything’s gone,” Mercer said. “A lot of guys are switching into copper mining or welding or trucking.”

These days, Mercer buys skinny, sickly cows, feeds them for a few months on hay in a covered feedlot, and resells them at a profit. On that day, he sold 88 to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma.

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The Parsons family’s auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year. Many ranchers can no longer afford to feed their cattle because of the drought.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)


A Christian who believes God is responsible for the drought, he prayed for a change.

“You just keep saying we can’t have another year this bad and then we have another year even worse.... Leave it in God’s hands. Because I don’t know what else to do. You pray for rain. Oh, God, yeah. Pray for rain.”

Caywood, a former farming teacher at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Division in El Centro, Calif., also questions those who say climate change is to blame for her struggles.

“I don’t believe in it. I believe things are cyclical. But I can’t believe that it’s happening so quickly,” said Caywood, who has a master’s degree in agricultural education.

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Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, 14, stand at the office of Caywood Farms. Hartman is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Her son, Travis, built a home on the farm where he lives with two sons. She is thankful that he has continued in the family tradition. But she is more thankful that he is also a firefighter and paramedic, a job that provides a stable income. Her `14-year-old grandson Thomas is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. She has encouraged them but also told them to consider backup plans.

In the good years, the farm would easily make tens of thousands of dollars in profits, more than enough to cover $22,000 in annual property taxes. This year, Caywood, who had hoped to retire, may dip into savings to cover the bill.

Recently, her son leased two 80-acre plots in different irrigation districts that have access to canal water from the Colorado River. Just a few miles from Caywood Farms, corn stalks reach 5 feet into the air. They’ll be chopped up for dairy cow feed.

The family didn’t want more farming land but found it necessary to cover the taxes on its dying historic property.

Except there’s one problem.
Because of the drought, Arizona will have 18% less water from the Colorado River next year. Farms like Caywood’s son’s will be hit hardest because of rules governing how water is divided in the state.
photos-1staff-811734-na-drought-small-farms-05-cmc.jpg

“We have no cotton. It’s gone. It’s dead. The alfalfa barely exists,” Caywood said. She may be forced to use her savings to cover taxes on the farm, which isn’t making money anymore.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

“It seems there’s really no way out of drought,” Caywood said the other week, browsing old photos of her parents and son standing by cotton bales.
Sometimes, she felt as though it wasn’t just a farm but a family and way of life slipping away. Her father, Tommy, died in January at 98. Her 94-year-old mother, Sammie, was in and out of the hospital.

All around her, farms were disappearing. Next door, the Wuertzes sold much of theirs for solar panels. Down the street, an abandoned construction project stood where alfalfa once grew. Caywood had gotten offers from buyers too. She rejected them.

She looked at the barren fields where her grandfather taught her how to examine the changing color of a cotton blossom to tell where the plant was in its life span. She thought back to when water flowed freely in the dried-up irrigation canals where she would sneak away to swim as a kid.
Days like those seemed long gone. She prayed for them to come back again.


https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-08-03/arizona-water-drought-farmers-cattle



Drought woes: More boat ramp closures, hay shortages, and now fecal matter in water
August brings worsening drought conditions to Utah

By Amy Joi O'Donoghue@Amyjoi16 Aug 4, 2021, 10:00pm MDT
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/8...ried-up-rangeland-weather-water-supplies-heat


Impacts of California drought, water woes threaten energy, agriculture
The historic drought has parched the state's critical reservoirs
https://www.foxnews.com/us/impacts-of-california-drought-water-woes-threaten-energy-agriculture
California's Dixie Fire explodes in size, grows into nation's largest wildfire
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...des-size-nations-largest-wildfire/5512114001/
 

Red61224

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California's Dixie Fire explodes in size, grows into nation's largest wildfire
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...des-size-nations-largest-wildfire/5512114001/
I did not "Start This Fire" but here is some water to throw on it.

https://www.city-journal.org/html/scorching-california-13704.html

How Green extremists made a bad drought worse

" In mid-December, the first large storms in three years drenched California. No one knows whether the rain and snow will continue—only that it must last for weeks if a record three-year drought, both natural and man-made, is to end. In the 1970s, coastal elites squelched California’s near-century-long commitment to building dams, reservoirs, and canals, even as the Golden State’s population ballooned. Court-ordered drainage of man-made lakes, meant to restore fish to the 1,100-square-mile Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, partly caused central California’s reservoir water to dry up. Not content with preventing construction of new water infrastructure, environmentalists reverse-engineered existing projects to divert precious water away from agriculture, privileging the needs of fish over the needs of people. Then they alleged that global warming, not their own foolish policies, had caused the current crisis. "

They would not listen to sound water management and now karma revisits. Read the article. I have a relative who works with a water management district in Arizona and she is livid with the mismanagement of resources by " special interest groups" and so now the chickens have come home to roost.


"Water is to California as coal is to Kentucky—yet its use is being curtailed by those least affected, if affected at all, by the consequences of their advocacy. But environmentalists, who for 40 years worked to undermine the prudent expansion of the state’s water infrastructure, have a rendezvous with those consequences soon. No reservoir water is left for them to divert—none for the reintroduction of their pet salmon, none for the Delta smelt. Their one hope is to claim possession of the water in the ground once they’ve exhausted what was above it. Redistribution, not expansion of supplies, is the liberal creed for water, just as it is for wealth.


As the Hetch Hetchy reservoir drains, Bay Area man-made storage lakes will necessarily follow. Another year of drought will deplete even southern California’s municipal reserves sooner rather than later. When Stanford professors and Cupertino tech lords cannot take a shower and find themselves paving over their suburban lawns and gardens, perhaps they, too, will see the value of reservoir water for people rather than for fish. The new dust bowl may soon see a different generation of Joads abandoning California for a wetter—and more prosperous—Midwest.


Could California still save itself? New reservoirs to store millions of acre-feet of snowmelt could be built relatively quickly for the price of the state’s high-speed rail boondoggle. Latino voters—the state’s largest minority—might come around to the view that the liberal coastal elite’s obsession with environmental regulations leads to higher electricity rates, gasoline prices, and food costs, along with fewer jobs and economic opportunities. Barring that, there may be only two things left for California farmers to do: pray for the recent wet weather to continue; and, if it does, pray further that environmentalists do not send the precious manna from heaven out to sea."

Compliments of CITY JOURNAL 2015
 
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Ford, GM & Dodge just announced they'll go bankrupt together
Aug 7, 2021
The Electric Viking from Australia


 
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Ford, GM & Dodge just announced they'll go bankrupt together
Aug 7, 2021
The Electric Viking from Australia



Sandy Munro says if the U.S. doesn't have 50% EV auto sales by 2028 there will not be an OEM in North America(GM, Ford, Chrysler/Dodge/Ram)
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