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Unprecedented Mass Die Offs as Pacific Ocean “Turning Into a Desert” Off California Coast
Unprecedented Mass Die Offs as Pacific Ocean “Turning Into a Desert” Off California Coast
“Ocean’s dying, plankton’s dying… it’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them!”
It was the dying cry of Charlton Heston in the creepy 1973 film Soylent Green… and it could resemble our desperate near future.
The ocean is dying, by all accounts – and if so, the food supply along with it. The causes are numerous, and overlapping. And massive numbers of wild animal populations are dying as a result of it.
Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction.
A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health:
The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.
[…]
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California State of Emergency: Up To 105,000 Gallons of Oil Spill in Santa Barbara from Plains All American Pipeline
California State of Emergency: Up To 105,000 Gallons of Oil Spill in Santa Barbara from Plains All American Pipeline
Up to 105,000 gallons of oil obtained via offshore drilling have spilled from a pipeline owned by Plains All American at Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County in California. At least 21,000 gallons have poured into the Pacific Ocean and the spill’s impacts stretch nine miles, according to the Associated Press.
As a result, California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency in Santa Barbara County, which he said in a press statement “cuts red tape and helps the state quickly mobilize all available resources.”
“The 11-mile Plains American Coastal Pipeline connects Exxon’s Las Flores Canyon facility – which provides basic processing for crude produced from California’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) – to Plain’s larger Line 63 pipeline system,” the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) explained in a blog post. “[T]his incident demonstrates the real risks associated with industry plans to inundate California’s coastal waters, pipelines, rail lines and refineries with tar sands crudes.”
The spill, reminding some of the much-bigger 1969 Santa Barbara offshore oil spill, comes just several months after the Environmental Defense Center filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for secretly permitting offshore hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the deepwater areas off the coast of California. Both ExxonMobiland the American Petroleum Institute issued motions to intervene as co-defendants in that case, which the judge granted.
Photo Credit: Greenpeace USA
“This spill shows, yet again, that safe and responsible oil and gas drilling are myths,” Marissa Knodel, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said in press release. “Despite these terrible impacts, the Obama administration wants to open up new areas for drilling, which presents a dangerous and unjust risk to the homes and livelihoods of coastal communities,
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection
Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection
Environmentalists filed a motion requesting a preliminary injunction today in a California court to immediately stop the daily illegal injection of millions of gallons of oil field wastewater into protected groundwater aquifers in the state.
Last week, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity in Alameda County Superior Court that challenges California regulators’ emergency rules meant to rein in the state’s disastrous Underground Injection Control (UIC) program.
Officials with the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) have admitted that their agencyimproperly permitted more than 2,500 wells to pump oil industry wastewater and fluids from enhanced oil recovery techniques like acidization and steam flooding into groundwater aquifers that should be protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
Instead of shutting down the offending wells, however, DOGGR issued emergency rules last February that would allow many of them to continue operating until 2017, according to the complaint filed by Earthjustice, which seeks to have the new rules thrown out and the wells operating in protected aquifers shut down while new regulations are being developed.
“Both the emergency regulations and the status quo fail to protect California’s underground drinking water sources from harm,” the complaint states. “Since DOGGR continues to fail in implementing its regulatory duties, this Court must vacate the emergency regulations and ensure that DOGGR complies with the law by ordering DOGGR to take all immediate action necessary and available to it to meet its obligations to prohibit illegal injection of wastewater into protected aquifers.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Water Wars Officially Begin In California
Water Wars Officially Begin In California
A century of government meddling has turned the issue of water rights on its head, and further centralized control of waterways in local, state, and federal governments; and, as Acuweather reports, with the state of California mired in its fourth year of drought and a mandatory 25% reduction in water usage in place, reports of water theft are becoming increasingly common. With a stunning 46% of the state in ‘exceptional’ drought, and forecast to worsen, huge amounts of water are ‘going missing’ from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a state investigation was launched. From illegally tapping into hydrants in order to fill up tanks to directly pumping from public canals, California continues toformulate new strategies to preserve as much water as possible and fight the new water wars that are emerging.
Homeowners in Modesto, California, were fined $1,500, as Accuweather reporrs, for allegedly taking water from a canal. In another instance, thieves in the town of North San Juan stole hundreds of gallons of water from a fire department tank.
In Madera County, District Attorney David Linn has instituted a water crime task force to combat the growing trend of water theft occurring throughout the state and to protect rightful property owners from having their valuable water stolen.The task force will combat agriculture crime through education by instructing farmers how to prevent crime before it occurs, Linn said in a news release back in March.
“Since the business of Madera is agriculture, I intend to make its protection a top priority,” he said.
Jennifer Allen, spokesperson for the Contra Costa Water District in Concord, about 45 minutes from San Francisco, said it’s not uncommon for her agency to receive reports of water theft, but as the drought has continued, she said there has been an uptick in reports.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Greatest Water Crisis In The History Of The United States
The Greatest Water Crisis In The History Of The United States
What are we going to do once all the water is gone? Thanks to the worst drought in more than 1,000 years, the western third of the country is facing the greatest water crisis that the United States has ever seen. Lake Mead is now the lowest that it has ever been since the Hoover Dam was finished in the 1930s, mandatory water restrictions have already been implemented in the state of California, and there are already widespread reports of people stealing water in some of the worst hit areas. But this is just the beginning. Right now, in a desperate attempt to maintain somewhat “normal” levels of activity, water is being pumped out of the ground in the western half of the nation at an absolutely staggering pace. Once that irreplaceable groundwater is gone, that is when the real crisis will begin. If this multi-year drought stretches on and becomes the “megadrought” that a lot of scientists are now warning about, life as we know it in much of the country is going to be fundamentally transformed and millions of Americans may be forced to find somewhere else to live.
Simply put, this is not a normal drought. What the western half of the nation is experiencing right now is highly unusual. In fact, scientists tell us that California has not seen anything quite like this in at least 1,200 years…
Analyzing tree rings that date back to 800 A.D. — a time when Vikings were marauding Europe and the Chinese were inventing gunpowder — there is no three-year period when California’s rainfall has been as low and its temperatures as hot as they have been from 2012 to 2014, the researchers found.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Wal-Mart Exposed Bottling Water from Sacramento Municipal Supply in the Middle of a Drought
Wal-Mart Exposed Bottling Water from Sacramento Municipal Supply in the Middle of a Drought
Wal-Mart is facing questions tonight after CBS13 learns the company draws its bottled water from a Sacramento water district during California’s drought.
According to its own labeling, the water in the gallon jugs appears to come from Sacramento’s water supply.
Sacramento sells water to a bottler, DS Services of America, at 99 cents for every 748 gallons—the same rate as other commercial and residential customers. That water is then bottled and sold at Walmart for 88 cents per gallon, meaning that $1 of water from Sacramento turns into $658.24 for Walmart and DS Services.
– From the CBS News in Sacramento article: Wal-Mart Bottled Water Comes From Sacramento Municipal Supply
We all know there’s a severe drought plaguing much of California. I haven’t focused on this topic much, but I did publish a very powerful post on it last fall titled: Video of the Day – Stunning Scenes from California’s Central Valley Drought. I suggest checking it out if you missed it the first time.
Now we learn of some pretty troubling news that Wal-Mart is sourcing some of its bottled water from the Sacramento water supply, despite the fact that: “Sacramento-area water districts are preparing to enforce residential water-use cuts as high as 36 percent.”
As we all know, you should never let a historic drought get in the way of corporate profit margins; and these appear to be some really nice margins. We learn from CBS News in Sacramento that:
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Wal-Mart is facing questions tonight after CBS13 learns the company draws its bottled water from a Sacramento water district during California’s drought.
According to the label, the water comes from the Sacramento Municipal Water Supply. This comes on the heels of Starbucks opting to move sourcing and production of its Ethos bottled water from California to Pennsylvania.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Despite drought, California is still bottling water for export
Despite drought, California is still bottling water for export
There is an old saying “as goes California, so goes the Nation.” If that is true, I would say that the nation had best strap on its seat-belt for some hard-times ahead — and some battles over resources between ordinary citizens and big corporations.
California is currently four years into the worst drought in recorded history. While the word “drought” gives the impression that this is a short-lived, inconvenient condition with which we have to live for a little while, things are actually far more serious.
NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti recently warned that California’s water reservoirs have just one year remaining before a catastrophic collapse. In his own words, as published in the LA Times:
The state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought…[groundwater] pumping rates are excessive and unsustainable…Wells are running dry. In some areas of the Central Valley, the land is sinking by one foot or more per year.
It isn’t just that no fresh water, via rain or snow, is coming into California, but that underground aquifers and other former backup sources are also running dry. According to research published in the journal Science, the entire Western United states has lost an astounding 240 gigatons of water since 2013, an amount equivalent to 1 billion tons.
UC Santa Cruz Professor Lisa Sloan co-authored a 2004 report in which she and her colleague Jacob Sewall predicted that the melting of the Arctic ice shelf would cause a decrease in precipitation in California and hence a severe drought. The Arctic melting, they claimed, would warp the offshore jet stream in the Pacific Ocean.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/05/despite-drought-california-is-still-bottling-water-for-export/#sthash.F1cocoPm.dpuf
A Thirst for Economic Change?
A Thirst for Economic Change?
I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it. –John Stuart Mill, On the Stationary State
In the face of global resource shortages and the alarming rate at which we are losing species, many of us share the hope that J.S. Mill so ominously communicates in one of his better-known quotes. But what will it take to catalyze the shift to an economic state that respects our natural boundaries? Perhaps the catalyst could be a life-altering dearth of a critical resource that, until recently, most of us in the United States have taken for granted: water.
The idea that a water shortage like the one California is currently facing could cool the economic engines that have elevated the state to the eighth-largest economy in the world has been discussed in local media and state government offices alike. The Desert Sun, a paper serving the rapidly-growing Coachella Valley in the southern part of the state, recently posed the question of whether water worries will slow development in the valley. The New York Times expressed its worries about California’s continuing economic vigor by stating the drought “. . . is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California Adopts “Unprecedented” Restrictions On Water Use As Drought Worsens
California Adopts “Unprecedented” Restrictions On Water Use As Drought Worsens
Early last month we warned that California’s drought was approaching historic proportions and that if climatologists were to be believed, the country may see a repeat of The Dirty Thirties as experts cite “Dust Bowl” conditions. Governor Jerry Brown has called for statewide water restrictions aimed at reducing consumption by 25%.
Now, the conservation calls are getting much louder as the state’s water regulators have approved “unprecedented” measures aimed at curtailing the crisis.
Via AP:
California water regulators adopted sweeping, unprecedented restrictions Tuesday on how people, governments and businesses can use water amid the state’s ongoing drought, hoping to push reluctant residents to deeper conservation.The State Water Resources Control Board approved rules that force cities to limit watering on public property, encourage homeowners to let their lawns die and impose mandatory water-savings targets for the hundreds of local agencies and cities that supply water to California customers.
Gov. Jerry Brown sought the more stringent regulations, arguing that voluntary conservation efforts have so far not yielded the water savings needed amid a four-year drought. He ordered water agencies to cut urban water use by 25 percent from levels in 2013, the year before he declared a drought emergency…
Despite the dire warnings, it’s also still not clear that Californians have grasped the seriousness of the drought or the need for conservation. Data released by the board
Tuesday showed that Californians conserved little water in March, and local officials were not aggressive in cracking down on waste.
A survey of local water departments showed water use fell less than 4 percent in March compared with the same month in 2013. Overall savings have been only about 9 percent since last summer.
Under the new rules, each city is ordered to cut water use by as much as 36 percent compared with 2013.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
1930s Dust Bowl Drought – and Current California Drought – Caused By Warm Ocean Anomalies
1930s Dust Bowl Drought – and Current California Drought – Caused By Warm Ocean Anomalies
A scientific paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics by a scientist from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and three universities found that the 1930s drought was exacerbated by an anomalous warm spots in the ocean:
Unusually hot summer conditions occurred during the 1930s over the central United States and undoubtedly contributed to the severity of the Dust Bowl drought. We investigate local and large-scale conditions in association with the extraordinary heat and drought events, making use of novel datasets of observed climate extremes and climate reanalysis covering the past century. We show that the unprecedented summer heat during the Dust Bowl years was likely exacerbated by land-surface feedbacks associated with springtime precipitation deficits. The reanalysis results indicate that these deficits were associated with the coincidence of anomalously warm North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific surface waters and a shift in atmospheric pressure patterns leading to reduced flow of moist air into the central US. Thus, the combination of springtime ocean temperatures and atmospheric flow anomalies, leading to reduced precipitation, also holds potential for enhanced predictability of summer heat events. The results suggest that hot drought, more severe than experienced during the most recent 2011 and 2012 heat waves, is to be expected when ocean temperature anomalies like those observed in the 1930s occur in a world that has seen significant mean warming.
Similarly, a warm “blob” of ocean water is currently floating off the West coast of the U.S. And – as reported by the Washington Post, NBC News, and CBS – scientists say that the warm anomaly may be causing the California drought.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Much Water Does The California Oil Industry Actually Use?
How Much Water Does The California Oil Industry Actually Use?
When California Governor Jerry Brown issued mandatory water restrictions for the first time in state history, he notably excluded the agriculture and oil industries from the conservation efforts, a decision that was heavily criticized.
The oil industry, for its part, insists it is a responsible user of water. The Western States Petroleum Association, an oil industry lobbying group, for instance, wrote that “Oil companies are doing their part to conserve, recycle and reduce the water they use to produce oil and refine petroleum products.”
Some perspective is certainly needed here: the amount of water used to produce oil in California is, in fact, dwarfed by the amount used for agriculture. But the thing is, the state can’t make any fully informed decisions about whether or not to include oil development in water cuts because no one knows exactly how much water the California oil industry is using in the first place. That all changes on April 30, however.
Last September, Governor Brown signed into law SB 1281, which requires companies to make quarterly reports to state regulators at the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) detailing the source and volume of water — whether fresh, treated, or recycled — used during oil development processes, including extreme oil extraction methods like fracking, acidization and steam injection. The first set of data required to be reported to DOGGR under SB 1281 is due at the end of the month.
Required reporting on water usage is an important first step in devising an effective water conservation plan for drought-wracked California, Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, tells DeSmogBlog.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Another Reason To Move Away From California: ‘Conditions Are Like A Third-World Country’
Another Reason To Move Away From California: ‘Conditions Are Like A Third-World Country’
As if anyone actually neededanother reason to move out of the crazy state of California, now it is being reported that conditions in some areas of the state “are like a third-world country” due to the multi-year megadrought that has hit the state. In one California county alone, more than 1,000 wells have gone dry as the groundwater has disappeared. The state is turning back into a desert, and an increasing number of homes no longer have any water coming out of their taps or showerheads. So if you weren’t scared away by the wildfires, mudslides, high taxes, crime, gang violence, traffic, insane political correctness, the nightmarish business environment or the constant threat of “the big one” reducing your home to a pile of rubble, perhaps the fact that much of the state could soon be facing Dust Bowl conditions may finally convince you to pack up and leave. And if you do decide to go, you won’t be alone. Millions of Californians have fled the state in recent years, and this water crisis could soon spark the greatest migration out of the state that we have ever seen.
Back in 1972, Albert Hammond released a song entitled “It Never Rains In Southern California“, and back then that was considered to be a good thing.
But today, years of very little rain are really starting to take a toll. In fact, one government official says that conditions in Tulare Country “are like a third-world country”…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Making Every Drop Count
Making Every Drop Count
Last week, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order requiring urban centers to reduce their water consumption by 25%. With the driest winter on record and only a one-year supply of water stored in the state’s reservoirs, many are questioning whether the burden of conservation should fall so heavily on cities, when no restrictions have been placed on agriculture, which uses 80% of the state’s water but generates only 2% of its economic activity.
Despite these criticisms, the Governor has defended his position: “The farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of land…They’re not watering their lawn or taking longer showers. They’re providing most of the fruits and vegetables of America.”
It’s true. California produces over half of the country’s fruits and vegetables: roughly 71% of the country’s spinach, 90% of its broccoli, 97% of its plums, and 99% of its walnuts—and that’s justthe tip of the fruit (and vegetable) bowl. It’s also true that those crops require billions of gallons of water. But are all farms at fault in this water crisis?
Practices, Practices, Practices
In the drought blame game, almonds have become a “poster crop” for the excesses of agricultural water use. Articles have pointed to how water-intensive almonds are to grow and have told dark tales of greedy investors buying up land and draining California’s water to grow almond monocrops for export.
Before you run off and boycott almonds, it’s important to note that not all almond farms follow this model. Take Greg Massa of Massa Organics, a diversified family farm in the Sacramento Valley. A fourth-generation farmer, Massa and his wife, Raquel Krach, grow organic almonds and rice, along with raising pork and lamb. They sell mostly at farmers markets in northern California.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California’s Record-Breaking Heat & Drought “Is Only The Beginning”
California’s Record-Breaking Heat & Drought “Is Only The Beginning”
The California heat of the past 12 months is like nothing ever seen in records going back to 1895, notes Bloomberg’s Tom Randall, and with the already record-low snowpack starting its melt early, “we aren’t nearing the end of California’s climate troubles. We’re nearing the beginning.”What’s happening in California right now is shattering modern temperature measurements – as well as tree-ring records that stretch back more than 1,000 years.
What makes this drought so troubling, as Bloomberg reports, is that while the 4.5 degree above-normal temps that California has seen are unprecedented; they are not entirely unexpected.
The International Panel on Climate Change, with more than 1,300 scientists, forecasts global temperatures to rise anywhere from 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, depending largely on how quickly humans reduce dependence on fossil fuels.The chart below shows average temperatures for the 12 months through March 31, for each year going back to 1895. The orange line shows the trend rising roughly 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, just a bit faster than the warming trend observed worldwide.
The last 12 months were a full 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 Celsius) above the 20th century average. Doesn’t sound like much? When measuring average temperatures, day and night, over extended periods of time, it’s extraordinary. On a planetary scale, just 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit is what separates the hottest year ever recorded (2014) from the coldest (1911).
California’s drought has already withered pastures and forced farmers to uproot orchards and fallow farmland. It’s costing the state billions each year that it goes on. Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order this month for the first mandatory statewide water restrictions in U.S. history, with $10,000-a-day penalties against water agencies that fail to reduce water use by 25 percent.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California drought to squeeze produce prices, but so will other factors
Price of lettuce has gone up 40 cents, but some of that is due to low Canadian dollar
Drought may have gripped California’s agricultural heartland for a fourth consecutive year, but it’s not the only factor putting pressure on imported produce prices at the supermarket.
More than 93 per cent of the state is currently experiencing “severe” to “exceptional” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and the governor recently implemented new rationing measures for cities and towns to cut water use by 25 per cent.
Farmers have so far been exempt from those restrictions — even though they use 80 per cent of the state’s developed water supply. Still, many have had their usual federal allocations of water reduced to zero for the second year in a row and have had to draw more heavily on groundwater sources or purchase water from contractors and other farmers — for as much as 10 times the usual rates. Others are switching to more efficient irrigation methods and less water-intensive crops or letting some land go fallow.
John Bishop, a produce buyer for distributor Fresh Start Foods in Milton, Ont. says his Californian tomato suppliers are planning for a smaller crop this June.
- California imposes water restrictions
- Cost of fruit and veg rising due to drought
- PHOTOS: California’s drought hits livestock
“They have told me that they are reducing their acreage by 20 per cent because they don’t have enough water to be able to continue to grow the way they’ve grown in the past,” he said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
