I find it fascinating that we are hearing nothing from the MSM about the drought. Absolutely nothing. If you google Midwest drought, you find no articles in the last month from any MSM outlet. Considering it’s an issue that will have a tremendous impact on worldwide food supplies and prices, the silence is deafening. Is the MSM incompetent or are they purposely keeping the ignorant masses in the dark? The two maps below show the drought has not let up. Any improvement has been matched by new drought development in other areas.
The article that I found below shoots a big hole in the storyline that this drought is due to global warming. It seems severe droughts have tracked every Fourth Turning, arriving like clockwork every 80 years.
If this drought continues and/or worsens during 2013 it could be a black swan that pushes food prices past a breaking point. The combination of Bernanke money printing, central banks debasing currencies across the globe, and food shortages could create a perfect storm. We are already seeing cracks in the foundation, as Venezuela and Argentina are experiencing the start of hyperinflation. Iran already has hyperinflation. Middle Eastern and Far East countires cannot withstand rapidly rising food prices. Revolution will follow.
The MSM is keeping the lid on this story because the implications are dire and the oligarchs have no control over it. They only control the message or lack of message.
Year-to-date precipitation (to February 5) has been subnormal in the Far West, central and northern Plains, New England, and along the eastern Gulf and southern Atlantic States. The greatest deficits (3 to 6 inches, locally more than a foot) have accumulated along the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts, in the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains, and from the Florida Panhandle northeastward into the coastal Carolinas. In contrast, surplus precipitation has fallen on the Four Corners Region, southern Plains, most of the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Ohio Valleys, southern half of the Appalachians, and the mid-Atlantic. January 1-February 5 temperatures have averaged below normal in the West, close to normal in the Plains, upper Midwest, and mid-Atlantic, and above normal in the Southeast and New England.
Accordingly, some drought expansion has occurred over the past 3 weeks in Florida, southern Alabama and Georgia, the coastal Carolinas, and parts of Texas. In contrast, improvement was recorded along the northwestern Southeast drought edge and in the mid-Atlantic. Some improvement was also made in parts of the middle and lower Mississippi Valley (from Wisconsin to Arkansas), in the Four Corners region, southern coastal California, and Hawaii. The worst conditions (D3 to D4) have stubbornly persisted in the middle third of the Plains, and in central Georgia.
Midwest droughts on an 80-year cycle
By Cliff Harris/Weather Gems
The Coeur d’ Alene Press
Major solar-induced drought patterns, often lasting nearly a full decade, have recurred across the midsection of the U.S. approximately every 80 years since at least the early 1600s.
We are still in the latest version of this particular long-term drought cycle. We’ve seen some moisture relief in parts of Texas and the eastern Corn Belt in recent weeks, but the western Midwest and much of the Great Plains remain, of this Feb. 1, 2013 writing, in the firm grip of choking drought with no significant precipitation yet in sight west of the Mississippi River.
The latest Palmer Drought Index, released by the National Weather Service on Jan. 26, showed that much of eastern Montana, all of Wyoming, most of Nebraska and large parts of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico were still under “extreme drought conditions.”
Randy Mann and I do not see a major break in the prolonged drought in the nation’s heartland for at least another 60 days, maybe longer. It will take months of above normal moisture in order for these parched regions to even begin to recover from years of extreme dryness.
The last 80-year drought occurred in the Dust Bowl Era of the so-called ‘Dirty 1930s.’ This was one of the worst environmental disasters of the entire 20th Century anywhere in the world.
More than three million people were forced to abandon their farms when their wells and fields went dry in the Great Plains and the western Midwest. Nearly a million farmers went west to California and other Pacific coastal states to seek jobs of any kind, especially in the agriculturally rich valleys of California.
But, the main reason for the drought disaster in the central U.S. was poor land use and inept general farming techniques that saw these regions plowed up for decades before the 1930s as the planting of wheat expanded westward to the eastern slopes of the Rockies.
The natural grasses of the Great Plains could survive, in most cases, these horrible, long-lasting droughts. But, during the 1930s, and again in recent years, the wheat fields shriveled, exposing the bare earth and dust to the high winds. The resulting erosion and dust storms clogged the lungs of thousands of Plains residents. As many as 5,000 people died in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas alone between 1930 and 1937.
I should likewise mention that a preview of the 1930s Dust Bowl occurred during the 1856-65 major 80-year drought that peaked during the Civil War. The war ended and so did the drought in 1865. The ‘weather slaves’ were freed.
More soldiers died of the effects of malnutrition, exposure and disease toward the end of the Civil War than were killed by bullets. Parched croplands and homes in the Southeast were torched by Union soldiers that often resulted in their own demise as food supplies ran out.
Yes, Man can be his WORST ENEMY.
fed says:
So.. the drought causes the 4th turning? that seems awfully obvious and unlikely
Like or Dislike:
0 
4
10th February 2013 at 2:05 pm
Eddie says:
In Texas, rainfall records only go back about 117 years. We had terrible drought in the 1930s, and again in the 1950′s, but the current round is the worst on record. To believe that carbon emissions are not involved is naive, imho.
The saving grace we have is that permaculture is teaching us how to better hold on to the rainfall we do get, and how to survive and thrive with a lot less than we used to.
Deforestation is a major factor in drought. Forests bring rain.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1525/bio.2009.59.4.12
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
9 
4
10th February 2013 at 2:09 pm
Thinker says:
Thanks for staying on top of this. I posted a story about a week ago on your last drought thread, showing that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are each down 29 inches from normal. The Mississippi River is also down far enough to throttle shipments of grain to port. This could have a huge impact on food prices and economic stability worldwide.
It’s already bad across the world. China reported lower food prices just in time for the Lunar New Year — probably manipulated just like U.S. fuel prices are before an election.
The 4T is intensifying, there’s no doubt about that.
Like or Dislike:
4 
0
10th February 2013 at 2:28 pm
Administrator says:
Fed
We haven’t had a dumbass comment in quite awhile.
Maybe you should get a 3rd grader to explain the sentence to you, since reading comprehension appears to be beyond the grasp of a dullard with a 70 IQ.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 2:38 pm
Administrator says:
Was the Dustbowl caused by global warming?
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
10th February 2013 at 2:41 pm
Administrator says:
The Great Drought : Fickle Weather in 1860s Led to Breakdown of Cattle Industry
|Richard Crawford | Richard Crawford is archivist for the San Diego Historical Society.
The climate was bone dry…. There was no moisture and our cattle died off in very great numbers … Before the year 1864 had passed away, there was perfect devastation. Such a thing was never before known in California. –Juan Forster, Rancho Santa Margarita Droughts are common in California, always have been. Long before scientists suggested a “greenhouse effect” and the possibility of permanent climatic change, pioneers coped with erratic and disastrous wet/dry cycles.
The drought of 1862-65 was a catastrophe for the state of California–a bitter dry period, preceded by unusually heavy rains and accompanied by an untimely epidemic of smallpox.
The decade of the 1860s began with little hint of the natural catastrophes ahead. For several years in succession, gentle autumn and winter rains had fallen with consistency, supporting vast grasslands that fed immense herds of cattle.
But in the winter of 1861-62, rains of biblical proportions came to California.
The rain fell for almost a month, inundating river valleys, farmlands and towns. The persistence of the rain led the editor of the Los Angeles Star to comment: “On Tuesday last the sun made its appearance. The phenomenon lasted several minutes and was witnessed by a great number of persons.”
In San Diego, the flooding washed away soil and timberlands, destroyed vineyards, melted adobe houses, and drowned livestock. At San Luis Rey, the raging floods “cut an arroyo 50 feet across.” An estimated 200,000 head of cattle were lost in California.
But in the spring, the rain-soaked grazing lands flourished. Herds of cattle recovered quickly in the abundant pasturage.
Then came three years of intense drought. In the fall and winter of 1862-63, only 3.87 inches of rain fell in San Diego County. As the grasslands dried up, the long-horned cattle grew emaciated and weak. The overstocked ranchers tried to minimize their losses by thinning their herds. The markets became flooded with cowhides and prices fell.
From Santa Margarita (modern-day Camp Pendleton), rancher Juan Forster would write in January, 1863: “We poor Rancheros have had a damned bad string of luck these last two years and if it is going to continue I don’t know what will become of us.” To cut losses, Forster drove his herds into the mountains, saving perhaps half his cattle.
At Rancho Guajome near San Luis Rey, rancher Cave Couts complained in early spring that there was no grass, that it was as dry as August, and that smallpox was beginning to take a toll.
The outbreak of smallpox in California added human misery to the growing economic toll. Appearing in the fall of 1862, the plague quickly spread throughout Southern California. Effective quarantines proved impossible and vaccine could only be obtained from San Francisco.
Cave Couts reported: “Smallpox is quite prevalent–six to eight per day are being buried in S. Juan Capistrano–Indians generally. . . . I vaccinated the whole rancheria at San Luis some six weeks since, & hope they may escape, thus saving our community of the terrible disease.”
By late spring, the smallpox epidemic had run its course, but the drought continued. A little more than five inches of rain fell in 1863-64. More and more ranchers drove their cattle into the mountains in the search for grass and water. Other cattlemen moved their herds to Baja California. From San Luis Rey, Couts would moan: “I am badly in want of money . . . taxes on hand, no goods in my shop & no money.”
As the drought lingered, the bad luck of ranchers continued. A violent storm that broke in May killed famished cattle grazing in the mountains. Forster lost 300 head in one night at San Ysabel. When summer came, strong dry winds were reported and grasshoppers appeared, which soon stripped the remaining forage.
The drought finally began to ease in November, 1864. Two and half inches of rain fell, followed by more than five inches in the next two months. Not until the 12-inch season of 1864-65 did the cattlemen feel secure.
The Great Drought virtually ruined the once-great cattle industry of California. Statewide, herds declined by about 46% in the 1860s. The numbers are unknown for San Diego County but in Los Angeles County the loss was more than 70%.
The long-term impact did show a few benefits. Ranchers learned to plant feed crops in order to lessen their reliance on natural forage. The raising of sheep (a far more “drought-tolerant” animal than a cow) became popular. In North San Diego County, a more diversified agricultural economy slowly developed.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
10th February 2013 at 2:45 pm
Administrator says:
MUST HAVE BEEN COW FARTS CAUSING THOSE DROUGHTS THAT OCCUR ONCE OR TWICE PER CENTURY GOING BACK 500 YEARS.
The Last 500 Years
A gridded network of tree-ring reconstructions of Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for the last 300 years has been used to create a set of maps of the spatial pattern of PDSI for each year, back to AD 1700. This set of maps enables an assessment of the droughts of the 20th century compared to droughts for the past 300 years. An inspection of the maps shows that droughts similar to the 1950s, in terms of duration and spatial extent, occurred once or twice a century for the past three centuries (for example, during the 1860s, 1820s, 1730s). However, there has not been another drought as extensive and prolonged as the 1930s drought in the past 300 years.
Longer records show strong evidence for a drought that appears to have been more severe in some areas of central North America than anything we have experienced in the 20th century, including the 1930s drought. Tree-ring records from around North America document episodes of severe drought during the last half of the 16th century. Drought is reconstructed as far east as Jamestown, Virginia, where tree rings reflect several extended periods of drought that coincided with the disappearance of the Roanoke Colonists, and difficult times for the Jamestown colony. These droughts were extremely severe and lasted for three to six years, a long time for such severe drought conditions to persist in this region of North America.
Coincident droughts, or the same droughts, are apparent in tree-ring records from Mexico to British Columbia, and from California to the East Coast (See examples in the graph to the right). Winter and spring drought conditions appear to have been particularly severe in the Southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico, where this drought appears to have lasted several decades. In other areas, drought conditions were milder, suggesting drought impacts may have been tempered by seasonal variations.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 2:49 pm
sangell says:
Rock meet hard place
The Center on Budget Policies and Priorities (CBPP) issued a report today, Feb. 8, that estimates Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits will decrease by $8 per month per person — approximately $25 a month for a family of three — when a temporary increase to the program expires Nov. 1….
HIGHER MEAT PRICES FORECAST
Grocery shoppers can expect record high beef prices in 2013,
with the retail price seen on average at $4.85 per lb, up 4 pct
from 2012, said Blach…
In addition to record beef prices, Blach said pork and
poultry prices have also increased in the last few months.
“All of those protein prices are going to get higher,” he
said….
Locally, 20 or 30 Sweetbay supermarkets are closing as Walmart crushes its competition. Of course the markets scheduled to be closed tend to be in low income/underclass areas. Worse,
because these stores were ‘underperforming’ they were ‘outperforming’ in the amount of produce, dairy and meat products they could donate to local foodbanks and soup kitchens. Those donations are kaput now.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:12 pm
Eddie says:
The dust bowl was at least partly caused by the rise of mechanized farming and a lack of understanding on the part of farmers about how to deal the consequences of prolonged drought.
I take your point about droughts having occurred periodically throughout recorded history, and that carbon emissions are a new problem. That doesn’t mean they don’t play a role in our current predicament, nor does it mean that our problems will automatically get better in the fullness of time.
We are in uncharted waters, and the future is hard to call. I think sufficient science exists to suggest that reducing carbon emissions would be a good thing, insomuch as we can do so without giving up our entire way of life.
Unfortunately, the way it looks to me, carbon emissions may in fact have already permanently destabilized the weather of the entire planet only decades before they would have inevitably fallen anyway as fossil fuels dry up and the cost of fuels makes us change our globalized economy to a more local one. I wish we had run out of oil 30 years ago…maybe our chances of survival would be better.
I do not believe that carbon emissions are likely to fall until they do so from the exhaustion of fossil fuels. There is no political will here for change, and m anyway,whatever fuel we don’t use will be burned by the Chinese.
I’m not an idealogue. I’m a pragmatist. My goal is my own survival and that of my children. Whatever is causing the drought, the drought is a really big problem. and it affects me very personally, because I live in the big middle of a zone where your map above says the drought is likely to persist and intensify. I take the drought very personally. It is my enemy, and I have to plan for how to best deal with it.
Permaculture is the only thing I see that makes sense. Local agriculture, local government, local strategies.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
7 
1
10th February 2013 at 3:16 pm
Administrator says:
“Midwest farmland prices were rising at a 13% annual rate last fall even after a summer of crippling drought. How could drought-stricken farms be gaining value so rapidly, other than through inflation generated by cheap credit? House prices also are climbing again in many areas, much as they were during the asset inflation of the 2000s. Those are the same houses that were on the down escalator not long ago. Call it “asset reflation.”
Asset inflation often produces something called “wealth illusion,” the belief that pricier asset holdings necessarily make one permanently richer. Illusions are dangerous. Eventually, painful reality intervenes.
We’ve been down this road before.”
George Melloan
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:18 pm
Administrator says:
“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
John Maynard Keynes
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:19 pm
sangell says:
OTOH manmade carbon emissions might be just what the planet needed to stave off another Ice Age and create a warmer, moister atmosphere. If you are an acolyte of Jame Lovelock’s Gaia theory why wouldn’t it be so? An ant or a bee knows not the effect it is having on the environment when it goes about its business, it just does what it needs to do to survive. Well, people maybe doing the same and by doing so preventing the earth from becoming too cold to support life.
We’ve had periods where atmospheric carbon were much higher than now. The waters off New York and Europe were as warm as modern day Florida. Herds of dinosaurs grazed on grasses at latitudes that today are home only to polar bears and seals. Due to an accident of plate tectonics much of the world’s land area exists in arctic and semi arctic latitudes. The entire 5 million square mile area of Antarctica is under ice, vast areas of northern Canada and Russia are uninhabitable and unsuitable for agriculture owing to extreme cold. A warmer world might open up far more land for human cultivation and settlement than is lost to sea level rise.
Finally, since nothing man builds lasts for much longer than a century and as any sea level rise that would flood New York or Tokyo would take at least that long mankind would not face any catastrophic loss of cities only a gradual relocation of our cities and ports in a multi-decade process no different than the rate we currently must replace our buildings and infrastructure.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:36 pm
Stan says:
There has always been droughts,blizzards ,tornados, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes,
And extreme weather.
Always will be no matter how much the democrats raise taxes.
Like or Dislike:
5 
2
10th February 2013 at 3:37 pm
Administrator says:
Eddie
There is plenty of politcal will among the liberal class to address climate change. The problem is that government control, carbon credits, and government picking winners and losers will make the situation worse. The world discovered coal and oil. We’ve been burning it for 150 to 200 years. The U.S. is driving less miles today than in 1999. We have converted light bulbs to those that use less energy. Our cars are more fuel efficient. Our factories are more efficient.
What more can we do without pulling the plug on our existing society? China, India and the rest of the developing world aren’t going to listen to our liberal politicians. They are driving the increase in oil and coal usage.
Are human activities having a greater impact than the sun and normal cycles of heating and cooling that have happened for centuries? I don’t know. And neither do the “experts” in climatology.
George Carlin captures the truth. Human arrogance knows no bounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:47 pm
IndenturedServant says:
I just checked and my half steer and half a hog are still keeping my meat prices down to just under $4/lb. and should continue to so for the next 18-24 months.
I bet I’ll be suffering sticker shock when it’s time to buy again!
I_S
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:58 pm
Administrator says:
Johnna Rizzo
National Geographic News
Published January 31, 2013
Woe is the Mississippi. A barge carrying light crude hit a bridge near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Sunday, causing an oil spill.
But if you think that is the worst thing that’s happened this winter to the river, you’d be wrong.
The middle Mississippi—the 200-mile (322-kilometer) stretch from St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois—is experiencing drought conditions unrivaled in the last 50 years. That’s been the case since November.
From December to March, this part of the river is always at its lowest because extra feed from the Missouri is cut off when that river’s navigation season ends. The Mississippi typically loses about three feet at St. Louis as a result.
But this winter the river has lost more depth, since spring ice melt and rains weren’t forthcoming and reservoirs that help feed the river didn’t get filled.
The result is that transport along the Mississippi is down dramatically. In December, total barge cargo was down more than 1,100 kilotons from December 2011. (Video: Drought 101)
Barges have had to lighten their loads considerably to avoid bottoming out. Right now barges on the middle Mississippi can only afford to sink 9 feet (2.7 meters) into the water, some only 8 feet (2.4 meters). They usually run 12 feet (3.7 meters) deep, more laden with goods to get them to market faster and cheaper.
If that doesn’t sound like a lot, consider that barges lose about a hundred tons of capacity for each 6 inches (15 centimeters) less deep they can sink in the water.
According to the American Waterways Operators (AWO), in December and January alone more than $7 billion worth of goods was at risk of not reaching their destination.
“It’s not like someone is going to put up a sign and say the Mississippi River is closed, but there’s not very many vessels that can move in those conditions,” says AWO spokesperson Ann McCulloch. (Read “Road Trip on the Northern Mississippi.)
One of the effects is that farmers on the middle Mississippi, the drought-strapped area, are paying a dollar more to ship each bushel of crops than are farmers on the lower Mississippi, who can fully load barges before sending them down the river, says Joe Kellett, deputy district engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Louis District.
For middle Miss farmers, it’s more trips—so higher fuel costs—with less cargo.
Spreading the Costs of Drought
If you don’t live along the waterway, likely you don’t think often of the Mississippi beyond its Huckleberry Finn-fueled place in American mythology.
But you should be thinking of Big Muddy in more concrete terms. If you live in the United States and many other parts of the world, the Mississippi carries an awful lot of stuff you use every day—corn, cement, coal, and crude oil, among other things.
And the Mississippi is more central on the world stage than those who don’t live beside it realize.
“Harvest to market also means Centralia, Illinois, to Tokyo,” says Mike Peterson, a spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers, which constructs and maintains the riverbed of the Mississippi, kind of like a watery Department of Transportation. He notes that Japan gets 90 percent of its livestock feed off the river.
When one of the river lock’s gates broke during the 1997 harvest season, Jack Yui of Japan’s Zen-Noh grain corporation sent a fax to the corps’ lockmaster: “I need to know when lock and dam 27 will be repaired to know if the government will need to release the grain reserves of Japan,” it read. Yui wanted a daily report.
He likely wasn’t the only one. Sixty percent of farm exports for the entire U.S.—largely corn and soybeans—move along the Mississippi.
“We are blessed to have our great breadbasket and river system line up,” says Dave Busse, the chief of engineering and construction for the corps’ St. Louis District. “In Brazil, they grow soybeans but spend a lot to get it to the water. The Nile [and] Congo don’t have much grain around them.”
And choked-off agricultural exports can affect Americans too. If Kobe cattle can’t get their feed, for instance, fancy burger prices would soar in the U.S.
There are plenty of other domestic implications. If road salt, shipped only in the winter months, can’t shimmy northward, northern towns are hard-pressed to deal with icy streets. Fertilizer can’t make it to farms for spring planting.
As the oil spill suggests, the Mississippi is carting petroleum and crude, too. Barges and tankers carried almost 48,000 barrels from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast in 2011, nearly double the amount in 2007.
It’s important for other energy sources as well. If the river doesn’t run at full capacity, coal from West Virginia is slow to get to St. Louis, where it fuels the power plant that fires the Anheuser-Busch factory there, one of only a handful of places in the U.S. where Budweiser gets made.
There are dozens of other power plants that pepper the river’s shores that also rely on it to get coal.
How to Run a River
The Army Corps of Engineers is tasked by Congress to maintain the Mississippi as a channel that’s 9 feet (2.7 meters) deep and 300 feet (91 meters) wide.
It’s often a bit wider in the bends: Tugs have to tow through bends sideways, a process called planking, then let the flow turn the barges straight.
Tugs pulling rafts of 15 barges at a time—three wide and five deep—can fit through the middle Mississippi simultaneously and often do.
During winter the river is typically helped by a system of reservoirs, which allows the corps to keep the Mississippi running at its prescribed height and depth.
Water control managers make decisions on whether and how much to tap reservoirs every two hours, all day, every day.
They have to be vigilant. Water levels in the last year have dropped more than 30 feet (9 meters) from 2011′s flood to current conditions.
The drought is challenging reservoirs already stretched to their limit; they didn’t get enough rain to fill them enough to start with. “There’s an entire ballet going on to squeeze every last drop out of the system to make sure the river stays open without impacting the other purposes of those reservoirs,” says Kellett.
During a drought, the corps’ annual dredging is even more important. The typical dredging season in St. Louis runs from July to December, when flow is at its lightest, to keep sediments deposited by the flow from building up.
“It’s repetitive,” says Busse. “The next time the water comes up, all that work disappears.”
This year’s dredging is more intense. “We’re gathering close to twice as much as a regular year, and we’re going out earlier and staying out later,” says Petersen.
As a more drastic measure, the corps is in the process of lowering the river bottom at Thebes, Illinois, removing limestone and shale pinnacles that range in size from that of a bowling ball to that of a small car and that can make navigation impossible if the water goes any lower.
In the meantime, engineers have been releasing just enough extra water from reservoirs to keep navigation moving. “It was a fight of inches,” says Busse.
There is 12 days-worth left of supplemental water. Busse says pinnacle removal should be completed before that water runs out. For now at least, engineering seems to be outpacing natural disaster.
Kellett notes that current low water levels are not unprecedented in the modern era. The year 1963 saw a similar low.
“The river is cyclical—in the ’40s, the ’60s, the ’80s, the early 2000s—every other decade or so we have hit these levels of lows,” he says. “What I don’t know is the role that climate change is playing here.”
The long-term National Weather Service forecast is for temperatures above normal, which dry out soil and evaporate more water.
“What we know is that droughts rarely occur for only one year,” says Busse.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
10th February 2013 at 4:05 pm
IndenturedServant says:
“Woe is the Mississippi.”
Just one more way that we live beyond our means.
I_S
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 4:28 pm
DaveL says:
The drought continues here in the valley. I haven’t got any in two years. Oh, sorry, you were talking about rain.
Like or Dislike:
4 
0
10th February 2013 at 8:16 pm
JIMSKI says:
Just the other day I was thinking about the Mississippi under a defferent thread, where not to live. Think about how much we take flood control for granted. We do still have storms that can take out whole countiies but for the most part this happens after the corps has used spillways and reserviors to mitigate as much damage as they can. In some cases theyhave chosen to throw a hundred farms into the creek to save 5000 houses. Yay for mankind we rock.
Now what happens a few months after a currency collaps and no one at the army corps of engineers answers the phone.
Near my home we have a place called ceasars creek that is part of the little miami watershed flood control system. It has kept a dozen small towns from flodding fir the past 30 years. Used to be about a semi-anual event and the police station has flood markers all overitwith dates. What happens if the spill gates do not open to channel the water?
My guess.is that America has many more places to not live when you take into consideration flood control.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 9:11 pm
Welshman says:
N.G. How to run a river.
That was informative, enjoyed the article.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 9:46 am
ThePessimisticChemist says:
@Eddie –
“In Texas, rainfall records only go back about 117 years. We had terrible drought in the 1930s, and again in the 1950′s, but the current round is the worst on record. To believe that carbon emissions are not involved is naive, imho.”
117 years of records you say? And we’ve had other severe droughts before but this one is “the worst one on record?”
Perhaps that is because our records are pathetically brief with respect to the Earth’s timeline?
“permanently destabilized the weather of the entire planet only”
Funny, I was unaware that the weather was stable. You must not live in Missouri.*
Here’s a new flash: The weather happens to us, we don’t happen to it.
*
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
10th February 2013 at 9:57 am
Bob says:
Sangell, the cycles of planetary climate change dwarf the inputs of human society.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
10th February 2013 at 3:56 pm
Eddie says:
TPC
You of all people should understand how easy it is to alter the balance of a system by making relatively small changes in one or more conditions.
With all the junk science in the world, and all the special interests using their money to distort the facts where convenient, it still looks to me from where I’m sitting that this particular little drought just might be at least partly due to climate change brought about by unintended consequences of using carbon fuels.
Other droughts have happened. Obviously carbon emissions weren’t much of a factor in the past. I get that.
I’m not here to preach about the role of carbon emissions in climate change. To me, it’s really irrelevant. The change is here, regardless of what is causing it. But there is a preponderance of evidence that CO2 is a problem. The data is there. I’m not a climate expert. I’m just a guy who reads a lot, and I like to think I’m capable of critical thinking.
As I’ve said, I have absolutely no expectation that CO2 will ever be reduced until we run out of coal and gasoline and diesel fuel, or at least are forced by cost concerns to change our way of life forever.
I would be the first to say that things like carbon credits, carbon taxes and all that BS are just examples of opportunistic financial predators finding a way to get free money from John Q. Public. I’m not a fan of how the Green Movement is being exploited by money interests, which it certainly is. Whatever policy comes out of Washington, there will be some special interest that benefits.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
10th February 2013 at 5:08 pm
Thinker says:
Just another update on repercussions from last year’s drought:
Dog food recall underscores toxic danger in drought-hit U.S. corn
If anyone has pets, check your ingredient labels for corn. If it’s in the feed you use, just be aware of what some of the symptoms of poisoning can be.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 10:50 am
sensetti says:
Thanks Thinker
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
10th February 2013 at 11:24 am
TPC says:
@Eddie – The preponderance of evidence really isn’t as cut and dried as you make it out to be.
The contributions of man are nothing when compared with what 1 or 2 volcanoes can unleash.
The planet is going to be fine; the people are fucked – George Carlin
Right now our #1 biggest problem is that we are burning down the world’s best regulators (trees) for no gain. Without these beauties, we can begin to worry about oxygen levels (they are falling, this is very very bad) and look forward to a life where we all walk around with respirators on our faces.
Burning fossil fuels isn’t the problem, poor ignorant farmers in poor ignorant countries are the problem.
PS: I think the drought is fixed lift in my little part of the world. A couple good rainstorms will put us almost on track.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
10th February 2013 at 12:29 pm