NP - The Drought Report for August 7, 2012

[Madeleine Maudlin]

" In Nebraska, a stretch of the Platte River from Kearney in the central
part of the state to Columbus in the east has gone dry and killed a
"significant number" of sturgeon, ca "

Richard Powers will be pissed.  Nobody tell him.  He'll write about it.

"Kansas, it should be noted, is governed by Sa"

I don't know anything about that state.

But speaking of drought.  It's a trip driving through the fields.  The
golden fields.  Before this whole catastrophe I thought that farms all had
massive water hoses strung through them.  I thought they had greenhouse
domes over them for the winter.  It's just death out there, man.  Couldn't
we maybe help out the farmers at least with a little water?  Sure, the
domes, work on that later.  At least string through some water hoses.  Dial
the FD heros, get them out there.  Horizon to horizon.  Just golden.  Not
like bright flashy kernels bursting out golden.  Dead gold.

You think it's a bummer when your little home lab bombs, imagine 40 acres.

I'm just sayin.

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 2:09 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/dead-fish-drought-11446131
>
> Remarkably, if it gets really hot, and there is no rain, and the
> rivers and streams start drying up, then things get really bad for the
> fish. Of course, the sneaky — and very wealthy, Lamborghini-driving —
> scientists behind the Great Climate Change Hoax are trying to endanger
> further all those endangered species (like the Pallid Sturgeon) so
> they can have an excuse to fasten onto liberty-loving Americans even
> more firmly the shackles of the Endangered Species Act during Obama's
> second term. Or something.
>
> [...]
>
> ----------------------------
> So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an
> intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point
> that the station had to shut down one of its generators.
> ----------------------------
>
> It's almost as though things have consequences or something.
>
> ------------------------------------
> The fish are victims of one of the driest and warmest summers in
> history. The federal U.S. Drought Monitor shows nearly two-thirds of
> the lower 48 states are experiencing some form of drought, and the
> Department of Agriculture has declared more than half of the nation's
> counties — nearly 1,600 in 32 states - as natural disaster areas. More
> than 3,000 heat records were broken over the last month. Iowa DNR
> officials said the sturgeon found dead in the Des Moines River were
> worth nearly $10 million, a high value based in part on their highly
> sought eggs, which are used for caviar. The fish are valued at more
> than $110 a pound.
> -------------------------------------
>
> What's going on is a damn piscatorial cataclysm, is what it is.
>
> ------------------------------
> In Illinois, heat and lack of rain has dried up a large swath of Aux
> Sable Creek, the state's largest habitat for the endangered greater
> redhorse, a large bottom-feeding fish, said Dan Stephenson, a
> biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
> ------------------------------
>
> Also, too...
>
> ---------------------------------
> In Nebraska, a stretch of the Platte River from Kearney in the central
> part of the state to Columbus in the east has gone dry and killed a
> "significant number" of sturgeon, catfish and minnows, said fisheries
> program manager Daryl Bauer. Bauer said the warm, shallow water has
> also killed an unknown number of endangered pallid sturgeon. "It's a
> lot of miles of river, and a lot of fish," Bauer said. "Most of those
> fish are barely identifiable. In this heat, they decay really fast."
>  --------------------------------
>
> Also, too, as well...
>
> --------------------------------
> Kansas also has seen declining water levels that pulled younger,
> smaller game fish away from the vegetation-rich shore lines and forced
> them to cluster, making them easier targets for predators, said
> fisheries chief Doug Nygren of the Department of Wildlife, Parks and
> Tourism. Nygren said he expects a drop in adult walleye populations in
> the state's shallower, wind-swept lakes in southern Kansas.
> --------------------------------
>
> Kansas, it should be noted, is governed by Sam Brownback (R), who once
> was concerned about the effect of dumping all that CO2 into the
> atmosphere, but who then realized he'd been bamboozled by evil
> scientists. Just sayin'.
>
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