acid rain

we've all said it it for years - southern california is fucked. now it's official and even californians are beginning to admit it. news blips, appearing from time to time are on the increase. schwarzenegger is talking about it, possibly attempting to soften the blow, when he tells his folks that there will be no more swimming pools, no more clean cars, no more green grass. sounds like the end of the world, doesn't it?

southern california gets it's water from 3 places - regional rainfall, the colorado river and the sierra nevada snowpack. all 3 sources are in decline. global warming has received the blame. it's pretty easy these days to blame anything bad on global warming. katrina - global warming. tornadoes - global warming. droughts - global warming. it's pretty obvious that it does play a part in weather patters, but there are other factors being ignored that are worth noting.

the bulk of the sierra nevada mountains lie to the east of the san francisco bay, sacramento river delta and central valley. these regions have witnessed explosive growth in a relatively short amount of time. an increase in humans requires an increase in human infrastructure - oil refineries, chemical plants, etc. in addition to these large plants are people's personal chemical plants - the automobile. the pollution from all sorts of human activities is absorbed into the air carried away to distant places. the pacific ocean basically acts as a giant fan, pushing air from west to east - from the populated coastline, over the mountains.

it is generally assumed that global warming is causing the severe droughts that now permanently plague california. but there is something that is being overlooked. according to studies, pollution itself affects weather patterns and especially precipitation patterns. global warming, in combination with higher levels of pollution could dramatically reduce precipitation in the sierras, in the levels that we have been seeing.

i am not a global warming naysayer. anyone who denies that an increase in aggregate temperature would affect weather patterns is living in a fantasy world. what i am saying here is that, in our perpetual ignorance, it is easy to blame everything on global warming without so much as consideration of alternative or additional detriments.

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what happens when the tap runs dry? water, just like any other limited commodity gets more expensive. a frenzy of speculation drives the price of water through the roof. soon, only the rich will have uninhibited access to water. poor folks will just have to make due with one more essential they can no longer afford. meanwhile, all sorts of squabbling goes on about wastewater reclamation and desalinization. being as most people are turned off by the idea of drinking water out of other peoples' toilets, people will most likely look to desalinization for an alternative. desalinization is incredibly expensive. also, it requires massive amounts of energy, making it even more expensive. so much so that the only people who can afford to do it in large quantities are people with money, like various saudi satellites. with all of our money going to the iraq war and our next president - john mccain - preaching the need to conduct business as usual, there will be no money left over for pork barrel projects like this.

meanwhile, a 23,000 unit development has been given the red light in los angeles. it never ceases to amaze me, just how stupid we are.

please stop breeding.

link | rss | share | posted: 2008-05-12 14:16:26