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How Droughts Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry the chairs
0:17
Speaker 1: their making copies. Uh, and this is stuff you Should Know.
0:23
Speaker 1: That was a classic skit, wouldn't you say? And one
0:25
Speaker 1: of the only ones I liked by that guy by
0:28
Speaker 1: Rob Schneider. Yeah. I wasn't the biggest fan. Uh. Did
0:32
Speaker 1: you see the one We're stinging? He's like staying stingling
0:37
Speaker 1: ling ding ding making copies. Yeah, I mean I'm not
0:42
Speaker 1: anti Rob Schneider, but I just wasn't like, how could
0:45
Speaker 1: you be anti Rob Schneider honestly nobody. It's like being
0:48
Speaker 1: mad at like a friendly horse or something. Yeah, exactly,
0:52
Speaker 1: that's stupid friendly horse. Yeah. I hate his gutsy Uh
0:57
Speaker 1: what a weird intro? Yeah, well, part for their course
1:00
Speaker 1: pretty much my friend. Well, although his career has dried up.
1:04
Speaker 1: Oh that was good and vicious. Man. I hope he
1:08
Speaker 1: doesn't listen before we get into the whole drying up reference. Chuck,
1:13
Speaker 1: we are long, long, long overdue for giving a huge
1:16
Speaker 1: shout out to our Kiva team. Yeah that's right. Uh.
1:21
Speaker 1: Several years ago. It feels like many years ago. We
1:23
Speaker 1: did a podcast on micro lending and we said, hey,
1:27
Speaker 1: let's start a Kiva team. Kiva is a international lending
1:31
Speaker 1: organization micro lending where they pair you with people. Actually
1:35
Speaker 1: they it's all over the world. Now you need money
1:37
Speaker 1: on a small basis, you loan them the money. You
1:40
Speaker 1: can get paid back and pull your money back out,
1:42
Speaker 1: or you can reload it. And we have a very
1:44
Speaker 1: active team. And let's hear some numbers. Okay, so um,
1:47
Speaker 1: our team captain Glenn of Glenn and Sonya team captain
1:51
Speaker 1: Fame sent us some stats recently. We have the stuff
1:55
Speaker 1: you should know. Team has eight thousand, four hundred and
1:58
Speaker 1: fifty three members great as as of July thirty one. Yeah. Um,
2:03
Speaker 1: how much have we loaned so far? Are you ready
2:05
Speaker 1: for this? We need a drum roll, Jerry? Can we
2:07
Speaker 1: put in some sort of drum roll effect or at
2:09
Speaker 1: Wilhelm scream or something like that? All right, Okay, that's nice,
2:17
Speaker 1: that's very good. Here we go three million, two hundred
2:20
Speaker 1: and fifty one thousand, twenty five dollars. Dude, that is crazy.
2:25
Speaker 1: And that's out of a hundred and seventeen thousand, five
2:27
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty nine loans, which is a total thirteen
2:31
Speaker 1: point nine loans per member. I don't know how people
2:34
Speaker 1: are doing like nine tenths of a loan, but that's
2:36
Speaker 1: impressive in and of itself. Yeah, so what that means
2:39
Speaker 1: is people get repaid and they just kind of do
2:41
Speaker 1: what I think we do was just kind of roll
2:43
Speaker 1: that into another loan. Yeah, you relan it. They make
2:45
Speaker 1: great gifts. I think at least one person sent you
2:48
Speaker 1: a Cheva gift card to congratulate you and Emily on
2:51
Speaker 1: Ruby Rose. That's right, And that's always a nice thing.
2:53
Speaker 1: You can do at holiday times or birthdays whenever. It's
2:56
Speaker 1: not too late to join, like we're not like, oh,
2:58
Speaker 1: you're new to the team. Like it's a very supportive,
3:01
Speaker 1: great team and again, like you said, very active. You
3:04
Speaker 1: can go to kiva dot org slash teams I believe
3:07
Speaker 1: it's plural slash stuff you should know, or just search
3:10
Speaker 1: stuff you should know on kiva dot org and we'll
3:13
Speaker 1: bring up our team and you can join and be
3:15
Speaker 1: embraced by our teammates. That's right. Yeah, So thanks to
3:19
Speaker 1: Glenn Sonia as always for nudging us in the right
3:22
Speaker 1: direction and keeping up with the stats. Big help and
3:25
Speaker 1: um and congratulations to a team on getting the three
3:28
Speaker 1: point to five million dollars and change and loans. Absolutely okay,
3:33
Speaker 1: So droughts, huh, Rob Snyder Kiva droughts the natural progression
3:40
Speaker 1: of things. Don't forget sting was in there. Um, all right,
3:44
Speaker 1: let's talk droughts their serious thing. Yeah, I mean it's uh,
3:50
Speaker 1: it's it's natural disaster is what it is. It is.
3:53
Speaker 1: Although so Robert Lamb wrote this article that that forms
3:57
Speaker 1: the basis of this in part. Yeah, Robert of us
3:59
Speaker 1: to blow your mind award winning stuff, to blow your mind. Yeah, yeah,
4:02
Speaker 1: they wanted to work. Congratulations. Um. The heat points out
4:07
Speaker 1: that droughts are fairly natural. There's a lot of debate
4:10
Speaker 1: over whether climate change exacerbates droughts. Um, but for the
4:16
Speaker 1: most part, droughts are natural. They're seasonal, they're temporal. They
4:20
Speaker 1: come and go or in some cases they just stay
4:24
Speaker 1: and then you got a desert and it's it becomes
4:26
Speaker 1: a natural disaster when you apply humanity to it. Kind
4:30
Speaker 1: of like do you remember those overhead projectors and they
4:33
Speaker 1: would have transparencies, so there could be like different they
4:36
Speaker 1: could overlay stuff, so so you have drought transparency, it's
4:40
Speaker 1: just whatever. But then you overlay humanity on it and
4:44
Speaker 1: then it becomes a natural disaster. Yeah, I thought that
4:46
Speaker 1: was a pretty good point actually, when that Robert made
4:49
Speaker 1: um in and of itself. If there were no humans,
4:53
Speaker 1: that would be a drought. Um. The land would dry
4:57
Speaker 1: up in certain regions, Animals would leave because there's no water.
5:01
Speaker 1: But it's like who cares not humans, Vegetation would die
5:05
Speaker 1: or the few animals that could stay would stay, and
5:07
Speaker 1: the few plants that could still grow would grow, and
5:09
Speaker 1: then that would just be the new ecosystem, right, and
5:12
Speaker 1: then no big potentially, if it wasn't permanent, it would
5:15
Speaker 1: shift back and the the the life would come back
5:19
Speaker 1: to the area. But again, humans, like you said, wouldn't
5:23
Speaker 1: give a big whoop if it wasn't for humans living everywhere,
5:27
Speaker 1: growing crops everywhere, and using tons and tons of water
5:31
Speaker 1: mostly to grow those crops. So we've talked about this
5:34
Speaker 1: again and again, but um, if what I saw the
5:38
Speaker 1: most recent stead I came across, of the global supply
5:44
Speaker 1: of fresh water is used to irrigate crops, and of
5:49
Speaker 1: that only half is reused, is captured and reused, So
5:55
Speaker 1: that means we lose a lot of water to agriculture,
5:59
Speaker 1: and agriculture is kind of leaky, you could put it
6:02
Speaker 1: that way. Um. And the fact that we try to
6:05
Speaker 1: grow crops everywhere and use a bunch of the freshwater
6:08
Speaker 1: creates this kind of vicious cycle that exacerbates droughts or
6:14
Speaker 1: at the very least, UM makes our reliance on climate
6:18
Speaker 1: to not be droughty really really, um really important. Yes,
6:26
Speaker 1: I just put a lot of words together and their
6:28
Speaker 1: sense in there somewhere it makes total sense. Like, just
6:30
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that last sense a few
6:32
Speaker 1: times everybody. They'll finally come through. Uh. It is serious business, though,
6:36
Speaker 1: and very sad and devastating. Between fifty and a hundred
6:39
Speaker 1: thousand people uh died in two thousand eleven in East
6:43
Speaker 1: Africa with their drought, and right here in the US
6:46
Speaker 1: we have suffered through uh some pretty rough drought here
6:49
Speaker 1: in the last fifty years, um. And two thousand twelve
6:52
Speaker 1: they said it was the worst conditions in fifty years.
6:55
Speaker 1: And corn production. Uh, you put a dent in corn production,
7:00
Speaker 1: that's gonna put a debt in the world markets. Well, yeah,
7:03
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. America runs on corn in the
7:06
Speaker 1: worldun con donuts, even dunking donuts have corn in them.
7:10
Speaker 1: The world to a certain degree runs on America's corn too, Yep,
7:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, And when um something
7:17
Speaker 1: like corn, as we'll see, agriculture gets hit by drought obviously,
7:20
Speaker 1: and when it gets hit by drought, because of the
7:23
Speaker 1: globalized marketplace that we live in today, when food prices
7:27
Speaker 1: go up, some of the poorer countries get priced out
7:30
Speaker 1: of the market and they see things like food riots
7:33
Speaker 1: and starvation and all sorts of bad stuff. So droughts
7:35
Speaker 1: have like terrible effects. It's a snowball effect. And it
7:38
Speaker 1: seems like I don't I don't know if it's getting
7:41
Speaker 1: worse and if it is getting worse worse, if it's
7:43
Speaker 1: anthropogenic or whatever, But there, okay. Texas. In two thousand
7:47
Speaker 1: and eleven, Texas had the driest year since, which happened
7:52
Speaker 1: to be the year it started recording this kind of stuff,
7:56
Speaker 1: so it has it's the driest year on record for Texas.
7:59
Speaker 1: Two third California had the driest to your own record
8:02
Speaker 1: thanks to the ridiculously resilient ridge UM, and Australia went
8:07
Speaker 1: through what's called the Millennium drought from two thousand nine,
8:11
Speaker 1: they had a terrible drought. They actually, like some places
8:15
Speaker 1: like Melbourne actually um figured out how to live in
8:19
Speaker 1: drought conditions to survive and actually keep going pretty well.
8:23
Speaker 1: And a lot of people are studying what Melbourne did
8:25
Speaker 1: because they did it so well. That's because Australians are
8:28
Speaker 1: resourceful and smart people, very resourceful, you know, but not
8:32
Speaker 1: smart and smart. Okay, I wasn't saying anything. I'm just kidding,
8:39
Speaker 1: rubbing my eye. I got distracted. So uh well, we
8:42
Speaker 1: even here in Georgia, we had a pretty wicked drought.
8:45
Speaker 1: Remember two or three years ago. Do you remember the
8:47
Speaker 1: governor like lead a prayer circle praying for rain and
8:50
Speaker 1: it rained? Did it rain? It did rain? And uh
8:54
Speaker 1: I don't remember that part now it rained, and there
8:56
Speaker 1: was a lot of hullabaloo because they were like, well
8:59
Speaker 1: he led the prayer circle on the day where they
9:01
Speaker 1: call it for like, did it ring? They were praying
9:06
Speaker 1: because that would be kind of cool, that would be
9:08
Speaker 1: kind of cool. I don't think that's what happened though, um,
9:10
Speaker 1: but I do remember that. Yeah, man, there's nothing wrong
9:13
Speaker 1: with that. Pray for rain, do your rain dance. There
9:15
Speaker 1: was talk of war between Georgia and Tennessee, and Tennessee
9:19
Speaker 1: said we have guns. Yeah, And Georgia said, we have guns.
9:23
Speaker 1: We have guns too, yeah, And there's a tense standoff,
9:27
Speaker 1: and we left and went to New York City, where
9:28
Speaker 1: there are no guns. We had something on the books already. Uh.
9:33
Speaker 1: So let's talk to the basics of drought. UM. Drought
9:37
Speaker 1: is obviously when it doesn't rain enough to sustain uh,
9:42
Speaker 1: the ecosystem like it should. It's basically you're losing water
9:46
Speaker 1: through evaporation, which is when water vaporizes or transporation, when
9:50
Speaker 1: water moves, you know, through the soil and through the
9:54
Speaker 1: plants and then leaves, and it's not so useful to us, right,
9:57
Speaker 1: So you're losing water faster faster than it's being replenished. Yeah,
10:01
Speaker 1: that is a drought. And again this is this is
10:04
Speaker 1: all viewed through the lens of humanity. Like water isn't
10:07
Speaker 1: lost when it goes through the soil. It is to
10:11
Speaker 1: us until we get it out of an awkwifer that's
10:14
Speaker 1: being replenished. Um. But it's not necessarily lost unless you
10:19
Speaker 1: really look at it through the human lens. Uh. And
10:21
Speaker 1: there are many many factors that go into whether or
10:25
Speaker 1: not a drought occurs and how long it lasts. UM.
10:28
Speaker 1: Here are a few immediate causes. One is high pressure zones. UM.
10:35
Speaker 1: Sinking air means you get a high pressure zone, which
10:37
Speaker 1: means you have clear skies and warmer temperatures. And if
10:41
Speaker 1: that stalls over a region, then UM more water is
10:46
Speaker 1: going to evaporate, so that is gonna exacerbate the problem.
10:49
Speaker 1: That's like the ridiculously resilient ridge over California. UM. From
10:54
Speaker 1: I think two, it was just this high pressure zone
10:58
Speaker 1: that just said I'm sticking around here for a while.
11:02
Speaker 1: And not only was it did it lead to like
11:05
Speaker 1: high temperatures and low humidity because it's a high pressure zone. UM,
11:09
Speaker 1: it also blocked tropical cyclones that normally are brought to
11:14
Speaker 1: California by the westerlies. It just shot him up toward
11:18
Speaker 1: the Arctic or down towards Mexico and California for two
11:21
Speaker 1: different reasons, didn't get precipitation, and it's still in a
11:25
Speaker 1: pickle as a result. Well, usually when you have a
11:28
Speaker 1: prolonged drought, you can point to a number of factors,
11:31
Speaker 1: like the ironically a perfect storm that causes no storm.
11:39
Speaker 1: Another reason is UM air pollution. UH, there's a decade
11:43
Speaker 1: long study completed I think in two thousand thirteen UM
11:47
Speaker 1: from the University of Maryland h go terps UH and
11:51
Speaker 1: they found that air air particulate, which UH is pollution
11:55
Speaker 1: dusts at sulfates UM produces more UH intense storms and
12:01
Speaker 1: wet areas, or it leads to more intense storms and
12:04
Speaker 1: wet areas and reduces rain and drier areas. So basically
12:08
Speaker 1: just again exacerbates whatever is normally going on there. It
12:14
Speaker 1: creates weather extremes, creates weather extremes. That's a great way
12:17
Speaker 1: to say it. That's weird though, because so particulate matter. Yeah,
12:24
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure this out, so the they don't know,
12:27
Speaker 1: the mechanism is uncertain, so there is no answer. If
12:31
Speaker 1: that was your question, I'm abandoning figuring it out. Then UH.
12:34
Speaker 1: And then here in the southeast one causes wind blowing
12:38
Speaker 1: inward from the ocean is usually good thing because that
12:41
Speaker 1: brings in from the Atlantic on the eastern seaboard, brings
12:44
Speaker 1: in warm, humid temperatures and UH in the summertime. And
12:48
Speaker 1: if they shift or weaken, then they're going to bring
12:51
Speaker 1: in less moisture and less rainfall. And I think that
12:54
Speaker 1: is what happened was a wind shift, and uh, whenever
12:58
Speaker 1: it was we had our drought, wind was it was,
13:02
Speaker 1: It may have been something like that around then. Yeah,
13:04
Speaker 1: I mean it was fairly severe. Um. I just remember
13:09
Speaker 1: all the lakes were way down and they I don't
13:12
Speaker 1: think we got to the point where they were had
13:14
Speaker 1: forced rationing, but they were advising everyone and asking everyone
13:19
Speaker 1: to be better Stewart's It was a big deal. Everybody
13:22
Speaker 1: was really nervous. I think the lake where Atlantic gets
13:26
Speaker 1: his fresh art was down like twelve feet or something
13:29
Speaker 1: like that. There was serious stuff. Um did you you
13:35
Speaker 1: talked about like like changes in um in different areas
13:41
Speaker 1: from did you did you mention Lno? Do you remember
13:46
Speaker 1: that Chris Farley when he was El Nino back in
13:49
Speaker 1: the nineties. It's like, I am el Nino, which means
13:53
Speaker 1: the Nino in Spanish, so you know what that is.
13:57
Speaker 1: I sort of remember that. There's a documentary on about
13:59
Speaker 1: him now, which I'm eager to see. I haven't checked that.
14:02
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. I want to see that as well. Um,
14:05
Speaker 1: so El Nino is actually um named for little baby Jesus.
14:10
Speaker 1: Did you know that? I did not know that. Yeah,
14:12
Speaker 1: back in the sixteen hundred Spanish fishermen um off the
14:16
Speaker 1: coast of Mexico. UM named it El Nino because it
14:21
Speaker 1: was this weird arrival of really warm water in December
14:25
Speaker 1: in the winter months. They're like, oh, well, obviously it's
14:27
Speaker 1: the christ Child, so they named it El Nino. And
14:31
Speaker 1: that is when there's warmer than average water temperatures in
14:36
Speaker 1: the tropics around like basically off the coast of Mexico, right,
14:42
Speaker 1: and those warm the air and create wetter than average
14:47
Speaker 1: conditions in some parts of the US and other parts
14:49
Speaker 1: of the world, and drier than average conditions in the
14:52
Speaker 1: other parts. And then there's the reverse of that, La Nina.
14:56
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's colder than average temperatures of those
15:00
Speaker 1: places that normally get wetter than normal and drier than
15:03
Speaker 1: normal are flip flopped. But either way you get extreme
15:07
Speaker 1: weather events like floods and droughts from this. And they
15:12
Speaker 1: aren't exactly certain what creates this, just that they're pretty
15:18
Speaker 1: sure it's natural. Yeah, well, actually they do have a
15:21
Speaker 1: decent idea. UM. In two thousand three, something happened, which
15:26
Speaker 1: the same thing happened in the nineteen fifties when we
15:28
Speaker 1: suffered a pretty bad drought in the US. Uh, there
15:31
Speaker 1: were there are two ocean cycles that basically flip flopped,
15:34
Speaker 1: the Pacific Decadal oscillation and the Atlantic multi decadal oscillation.
15:41
Speaker 1: And these things flip back and forth basically over time,
15:45
Speaker 1: and they cause either more rain or less rain. And
15:48
Speaker 1: the p d O is what causes the shift in
15:50
Speaker 1: those surface ocean temperatures. So what what causes the shift
15:54
Speaker 1: the Pacific decatal oscillation? Okay, so but what caused these
15:57
Speaker 1: things to flip flop? Well, they just flip flop periodically
16:01
Speaker 1: over over time. Basically. Um, I don't buy that though,
16:05
Speaker 1: Like something makes those things flip flop. Well, yeah, maybe so,
16:09
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, that's what I want to answers.
16:11
Speaker 1: Some people probably say that's just the cycle of nature.
16:14
Speaker 1: I guess, so that's a cop out. But they say
16:16
Speaker 1: that every twenty to thirty years, Uh, this is gonna happen.
16:19
Speaker 1: And when you combine them with with other factors, is
16:25
Speaker 1: it basically gives everything a boost? Is and that's what
16:28
Speaker 1: creates an Yeah, that's what they think. It's more like
16:31
Speaker 1: it works in concert with El Nino and Lennia. So
16:35
Speaker 1: these things have happened at the same time, which is
16:39
Speaker 1: the reason California is in such a droute right now.
16:41
Speaker 1: So you have the warrn p d O plus El
16:43
Speaker 1: Nino means it's gonna be wetter and cooler. Uh p
16:46
Speaker 1: d O plus Lninia equals dryer and uh laninia is
16:51
Speaker 1: influenced by the trade winds basically blowing on top of
16:54
Speaker 1: the water. I think you already said that. It just
16:56
Speaker 1: like circulates that water and the deep water comes up
16:59
Speaker 1: to the purpose. Yes, chili, yeah, from chili or it's
17:03
Speaker 1: chili water, chili water. So um, chuck. There's different categories
17:10
Speaker 1: or people loved categorize stuff, right and um, there's actually
17:15
Speaker 1: different categories of the categories for droughts. A little bit
17:19
Speaker 1: of a brain buster, but um, you can kind of
17:22
Speaker 1: subdivide the categories for droughts into um, geographical or seasonal
17:27
Speaker 1: descriptions and then descriptions of drought severity. Right. So with
17:32
Speaker 1: the geographical or seasonal description, it's kind of like, here's
17:35
Speaker 1: an area, and this is the kind of drought conditions
17:38
Speaker 1: you can expect. So there is a permanent drout, which
17:43
Speaker 1: is basically what you think of with the desert. It's
17:45
Speaker 1: a place that gets a minimal amount of precipitation and
17:49
Speaker 1: it never catches up to the amount of evaporation or
17:54
Speaker 1: Transporation's right, So that's just it's just always dry there,
17:58
Speaker 1: permanent drought. It's an arid, climb air climate. Uh. And
18:01
Speaker 1: then next you have seasonal drought, which is like a
18:04
Speaker 1: drought comes dry conditions come on a predictable um calendar. Yeah,
18:09
Speaker 1: like the dry season of the wet season in the country. Uh.
18:13
Speaker 1: Those two are pretty standard. Um, no big surprises there.
18:19
Speaker 1: But the next couple, Um, you almost said no big
18:21
Speaker 1: whoop again? Almost did you saw that? My mouth went
18:26
Speaker 1: Unpredictable drought is when there are irregular dry spells where
18:31
Speaker 1: it's usually humid or rainy. Um. And then invisible drought.
18:34
Speaker 1: I had never heard of that. I think that's fascinating.
18:36
Speaker 1: That's when it is raining and you think, how can
18:39
Speaker 1: we be in a drought because it's raining. It just
18:42
Speaker 1: means it's it's too hot probably and it's not raining
18:45
Speaker 1: enough because too much evaporation and transporations going on. So
18:48
Speaker 1: it's invisible to the naked eye. It's like being skinny
18:51
Speaker 1: fat to where you like you're the thin on the outside,
18:54
Speaker 1: but your liver's got a ton of fat. All over it. Oh,
18:56
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna talk about the people that have
18:58
Speaker 1: like really thin faces but from the neck and they
19:00
Speaker 1: have weight. No, I hate those people. Oh, chuck, you're
19:04
Speaker 1: going to get some mail for that. No, I hate
19:07
Speaker 1: those people. I'm jealous of those people because I have
19:09
Speaker 1: a big, fat face. Like, there's no picture I can take.
19:11
Speaker 1: I could show my legs or my arms, and people say,
19:14
Speaker 1: what a thin guy. You know, I think you look great,
19:18
Speaker 1: but everything from my nose to my waist gives me away.
19:21
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that. I canna start posting pictures of
19:22
Speaker 1: my legs in my arms like Danny DeVito, he always
19:26
Speaker 1: does the troll foot that still have a nice, small,
19:28
Speaker 1: tiny butt too. We've all noticed. I'm gonna take pictures
19:31
Speaker 1: of that. It's the talk of the office. Um, everyone's
19:36
Speaker 1: pictures of yourself. Everyone's body is fine. I'm not body shaming,
19:40
Speaker 1: all right, that's good. What I'm saying is I'm jealous
19:42
Speaker 1: of people with thin faces. All So, we got we
19:45
Speaker 1: got one category down, which describes like a region in area,
19:50
Speaker 1: although invisible drought doesn't really fit into that. But what
19:53
Speaker 1: als okay? Um the next group of categories. Um man,
20:00
Speaker 1: I sound like we're we're using an overhead projector this
20:03
Speaker 1: is this dry, it's appropriately dry for the drought episode. Well,
20:08
Speaker 1: you have to go through these, you know, it's part
20:09
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, So the other these these categories make
20:13
Speaker 1: sense to me. They described like the severity of a drought, right,
20:16
Speaker 1: and you can pretty much go from one to the
20:18
Speaker 1: other and it makes sense. So like a meteorological drought,
20:22
Speaker 1: it basically says that you know, this week, this this
20:27
Speaker 1: time last year, we had about an inch and a
20:30
Speaker 1: half more rain than we got this year so far,
20:34
Speaker 1: no big whoop. Basically, my brother in law also named Josh,
20:41
Speaker 1: would notice this kind of thing because he's a little
20:43
Speaker 1: bit of a weather bug. Yeah, I like weather bugs. Okay,
20:47
Speaker 1: well you would like Josh, and he's one of the
20:49
Speaker 1: few things, a few people besides like maybe a meteorologist
20:53
Speaker 1: who would notice this, which is why it's called the
20:55
Speaker 1: meteorological drought. That's right, Like you would have to be
20:58
Speaker 1: really paying attention to even notice that. That's right. Okay,
21:01
Speaker 1: that's stage one. Yes, Stage two is an agricultural drought,
21:05
Speaker 1: and that is when you're talking about crops and agriculture
21:09
Speaker 1: is going to be one of the first industries are
21:11
Speaker 1: parts of the world affected by drought obviously, so this
21:15
Speaker 1: is when farmers are starting to notice. You might hear
21:18
Speaker 1: a news blurb or two if there had been drought
21:21
Speaker 1: in the news, but it still hasn't. Like you're not
21:24
Speaker 1: walking around the streets talking about it yet. No, just
21:27
Speaker 1: farmers and Josh are speaking to one another about the drought.
21:30
Speaker 1: That's right, what's next, Josh, the hydrological drought. This is
21:34
Speaker 1: when like we start to notice, and that's when you're like, hey, man,
21:38
Speaker 1: I went to my lake house this weekend and it's
21:40
Speaker 1: all ugly. Yeah, like play red muddy junk everywhere. I
21:44
Speaker 1: can see the submerged buildings. The underwater cities are visible,
21:50
Speaker 1: like in Lakelander. You know there's a town down there?
21:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you didn't know that. I don't think
21:56
Speaker 1: so there's a town down there. When Lake Lanar gets
21:58
Speaker 1: low enough you can see it. You can see a
22:00
Speaker 1: Gulf seventies six sign sticking up out of the lake. Yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: like the old like ball one that's orange with the blue.
22:08
Speaker 1: What was the town like some part of Buford or something.
22:11
Speaker 1: I guess. Interesting, you didn't know there's a town and
22:14
Speaker 1: under lake Lin hear I didn't. Didn't that Creepsville about creepy?
22:19
Speaker 1: It's creepy. I think it's cool. I mean if there
22:21
Speaker 1: were people living down there with gills, that was creepy.
22:25
Speaker 1: So the point is, Chuck, that we notice the people
22:29
Speaker 1: with gills. Notice everybody starts to notice the hydrological drought.
22:33
Speaker 1: It's like the talk of town. Um. And then the
22:36
Speaker 1: next step is where it gets really really bad socioeconomic drought.
22:40
Speaker 1: This is when the government tends to step in and say,
22:44
Speaker 1: you who have odd number um addresses can water on
22:49
Speaker 1: Tuesday's Thursdays. Those of you with even addresses can water
22:53
Speaker 1: on Monday Wednesdays. Or it can flip flop. It depends
22:56
Speaker 1: on your local government. True, isn't that set in stone? Right?
23:02
Speaker 1: But the point is is, Um, there are now restrictions
23:05
Speaker 1: taking place. There are now things being enforced. Their people
23:07
Speaker 1: are are being asked to cut back, and and the
23:10
Speaker 1: reason why is because there you're we're seeing a real
23:13
Speaker 1: effect like through the economy. Yeah, like Robert points out,
23:16
Speaker 1: something I've never really thought of. A tourism of course,
23:19
Speaker 1: is gonna dry up with the water in some places.
23:22
Speaker 1: UH food shortages, UM shipping maybe affected, UH imports and exports,
23:29
Speaker 1: and in less developed parts of the world, that can
23:32
Speaker 1: be really bad. Here in the US it may just
23:35
Speaker 1: mean socioeconomic annoyance, but in other parts of the world
23:38
Speaker 1: that could lead to political unrest and armed conflict and
23:42
Speaker 1: panic and disease and like really really bad stuff. Right,
23:46
Speaker 1: So that's socioeconomic drought. And uh, let's take a break
23:50
Speaker 1: and let's talk a little bit about other effects of
23:52
Speaker 1: drought in the dust bowl right after this, So, Chuck,
24:11
Speaker 1: we kind of just gave some overview of like how
24:14
Speaker 1: drought works or how bad it can get. That's right,
24:17
Speaker 1: So what causes this? I mean, we talked about whether
24:21
Speaker 1: being a factor. Obviously there's not a lot we can
24:23
Speaker 1: do with that. You know, we have we have our
24:26
Speaker 1: how weather modification works episode that we did and a
24:29
Speaker 1: TV show based on that too, a TV episode. Um,
24:34
Speaker 1: but not everybody agrees that, say, like cloud seating works.
24:38
Speaker 1: Some people say it really really works, other people say
24:40
Speaker 1: it doesn't really work. Yeah, we talked about cloud seating
24:43
Speaker 1: a couple of times. I think it's been used, um
24:46
Speaker 1: to affect during wartime to wash out trails. Supposedly, Yeah,
24:53
Speaker 1: yea right, that's what they say. But what I don't
24:56
Speaker 1: know everyone's not convinced. So when it comes to things
24:59
Speaker 1: like El Nino or law Nina, as it stands now
25:02
Speaker 1: at our primitive technological place in human history, there's not
25:06
Speaker 1: much we can do about that. Um. The most we
25:10
Speaker 1: can hope to do is really kind of figure out
25:15
Speaker 1: what causes drought in other ways and if see if
25:18
Speaker 1: we can do anything about that. And the UM person
25:21
Speaker 1: in the hot seed or the thing in the hot seat,
25:22
Speaker 1: as far as that goes right now, is climate change.
25:25
Speaker 1: And there's a big debate over um whether we can
25:31
Speaker 1: do anything about drought conditions through climate change and all
25:35
Speaker 1: that has to do with CEO two supposedly. Yeah, well,
25:40
Speaker 1: between the last five decades, between nineteen fifty and two thousand,
25:43
Speaker 1: worthy warmest in six hundred years in the United States
25:48
Speaker 1: temperature wise, and UM, I'm sorry, I think that's globally,
25:51
Speaker 1: but in the US and the Southwest they are proticting
25:54
Speaker 1: a rise um as much as nine degrees by the
25:57
Speaker 1: year UM and that as accompanied by the two degree
26:02
Speaker 1: two degree one point four degree rise over the past
26:05
Speaker 1: one years. So what they think is that as more
26:11
Speaker 1: and more c O two enters the atmosphere, this rise
26:15
Speaker 1: and temperature that it creates from this greenhouse effect, UM
26:19
Speaker 1: will actually create drought like conditions. And one of the
26:22
Speaker 1: ways that it will create drought like conditions is by
26:25
Speaker 1: creating high pressure areas which remember don't have UM a
26:29
Speaker 1: lot of humidity, they have high temperatures, they're dry conditions,
26:33
Speaker 1: and they also UM simultaneously. UM this denser air and
26:38
Speaker 1: dense air above it, right, or warmer air above it
26:41
Speaker 1: prevents the air below it from rising, right, because that's
26:45
Speaker 1: how winds and and UM currents air currents are formed.
26:51
Speaker 1: Warm air near the tropics rises and replaces the cooler
26:55
Speaker 1: air to create this cycle. Right, that's right. Well, if
26:59
Speaker 1: the air above it is equally warm, the air below
27:01
Speaker 1: can't rise. And when you have a lot of carbon
27:03
Speaker 1: dioxide in the atmosphere, that air in the middle I
27:06
Speaker 1: think in the mesosphere UM stays warm. So you've got
27:11
Speaker 1: a big chunk of the atmosphere just hanging out around
27:14
Speaker 1: the earth surface. And when the upwelling doesn't happen, you
27:18
Speaker 1: don't have the upwelling action. That also creates thunderstorms and
27:22
Speaker 1: generates large amounts of torrential rain, which really helps things
27:26
Speaker 1: when you have droughts. So they think and this is
27:29
Speaker 1: all just a conjecture at this point. But that's the
27:32
Speaker 1: big explanation for how climate change can lead to drought
27:35
Speaker 1: like conditions, and that if we can reduce the amount
27:39
Speaker 1: of C O two in the atmosphere, we can conceivably
27:42
Speaker 1: reverse those drought like conditions. Well, and don't they think
27:45
Speaker 1: that climate changes in general causes more severe everything like
27:50
Speaker 1: your storms and stream flooding and uh so, I mean
27:55
Speaker 1: it's definitely something to consider. Yeah, sure, try to tiptoe
27:59
Speaker 1: around this one. Is there is a debate? Not really No, No,
28:03
Speaker 1: it's basically fraudulent. Whether there's a debate over whether climate
28:06
Speaker 1: change is real. The climate change is real, like almost
28:10
Speaker 1: all scientific consensus is that it's a human cost or not,
28:14
Speaker 1: and whether we can do anything about it. There is
28:15
Speaker 1: there no debate about any of that. No, there's debate still,
28:18
Speaker 1: but it's not real debate, Like the scientific community is
28:20
Speaker 1: generally in in agreement that there is climate change and
28:26
Speaker 1: that it is a real problem. Um, I don't know
28:30
Speaker 1: what the consensus is on whether we could do anything
28:32
Speaker 1: about it. I think probably most people would say we
28:36
Speaker 1: should at least try. It's worth trying. Sure, why wouldn't you, Well,
28:40
Speaker 1: a lot of people say that you shouldn't because it
28:42
Speaker 1: will affect like economics progress, or say, for example, like China,
28:47
Speaker 1: UM say the US is like, oh, hey, we're laying
28:51
Speaker 1: off of greenhouse gas emitting stuff and we're getting a
28:54
Speaker 1: little greener. You guys should too, And China would say, well,
28:58
Speaker 1: you guys kind of got to this point by spitting
29:01
Speaker 1: a ton of C O two into the atmosphere. It's
29:04
Speaker 1: China's time. Yeah, ghost it over there and be as
29:07
Speaker 1: green as you want, leave us alone. Right. There's a
29:10
Speaker 1: lot of political land mines to two trapes around sure, um,
29:14
Speaker 1: and in getting everybody on board to reducing the climate
29:20
Speaker 1: footprint or the carbon footprint of humanity. Yeah. What what
29:24
Speaker 1: riles me is when you see, usually in social media,
29:28
Speaker 1: when someone said, you know, in the wintertime, like the
29:31
Speaker 1: coldest winner that's seen in years. You know, so much
29:34
Speaker 1: for global warning, warming, warning, warming, a warning? How about that?
29:39
Speaker 1: Maybe they should change the name? Is that a Freudian slip?
29:42
Speaker 1: But there's a great video that Neil de grass Tyson does, um,
29:46
Speaker 1: you can find it on YouTube, about the difference between
29:48
Speaker 1: weather and climate because those are two entirely different things.
29:52
Speaker 1: And he does this little thing on the beach with
29:54
Speaker 1: a dog. That's great. And that Neil de grass Tyson
29:58
Speaker 1: way with his shirt mostly on. Well he's on the
30:01
Speaker 1: beach of course. Uh, he's got on his clam diggers,
30:04
Speaker 1: you know, his Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned. And he is a
30:08
Speaker 1: cool cat. He is a cool cat. But he um. Yeah,
30:10
Speaker 1: he explains it very simply, the difference between weather and climate.
30:15
Speaker 1: So before you go say something dumb like it's super
30:19
Speaker 1: cold on in June so there's no global warming, just
30:23
Speaker 1: go watch that video. That's my recommendation. And I want
30:27
Speaker 1: to recommend a book called Merchants of Doubt right now
30:31
Speaker 1: I'm reading, and it's about how, um, the tobacco industry,
30:35
Speaker 1: climate change, DENI all, all this stuff, um is largely
30:39
Speaker 1: the result of pr Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it is a
30:42
Speaker 1: very interesting book actually, and I think there's a documentary
30:45
Speaker 1: based on it that just came out to If you
30:47
Speaker 1: don't like reading, who does do? Um? Robert points out
30:52
Speaker 1: to in this article, Uh, predicting drought isn't really something
30:56
Speaker 1: you can do necessarily. Um. You can predict seasonal out
31:00
Speaker 1: a month or so out, and you can, I guess
31:02
Speaker 1: you can predict certain conditions that like right now, they're
31:05
Speaker 1: saying that California is probably in trouble for the next
31:08
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty years. Like, I don't think they see
31:11
Speaker 1: an end in sight because of the various climate factors
31:14
Speaker 1: going on. It's not like, I mean, any rain would help.
31:19
Speaker 1: But it's not like a rainy few weeks here and
31:21
Speaker 1: there is going to do make much of an impact, right,
31:24
Speaker 1: It's pretty scary out there. Well, that's one reason why
31:26
Speaker 1: they're studying, for example, Melbourne, Australia or Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
31:30
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure how you say it properly. Um,
31:33
Speaker 1: but under this drought, this millennium drought, Melbourne dropped their
31:37
Speaker 1: water usage by like under drought conditions, and they did
31:42
Speaker 1: it through like local recycling programs. Apparently one really effective
31:47
Speaker 1: program was electronic billboards that said, like the shared reservoir
31:52
Speaker 1: is at likeent of capacity right now, Like here's what
31:56
Speaker 1: don't forget what's gonna happen if we all run out
31:58
Speaker 1: of water, So like recycle your water, use gray water
32:02
Speaker 1: to water your plants, that kind of stuff, um, And
32:06
Speaker 1: it worked really really well. They should just do dumb
32:09
Speaker 1: in photographics for Americans as like the water getting lower
32:13
Speaker 1: and then like dead people at the bottom. Here's where
32:17
Speaker 1: we're headed. Does it make sense to you now, person
32:20
Speaker 1: watering your lawn and be like Los Angeles, there's a
32:22
Speaker 1: lot of dead people in our reservoir, buried at the bottom.
32:28
Speaker 1: I think I two read a little bit about the
32:30
Speaker 1: l a drought or Southern California in general, that they're
32:33
Speaker 1: they're not making enough headway with their conservation measures right now,
32:38
Speaker 1: Like it's not putty much of a dent into it,
32:41
Speaker 1: like their public campaigns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, selfish people still
32:47
Speaker 1: watering their stuff. Well, it's the law of the comments,
32:49
Speaker 1: Like supposedly any shared resource people are just like, let
32:55
Speaker 1: everybody else can serve. I'll be I'll be fine, give
32:59
Speaker 1: me everything I need. This little bit doesn't make a difference. Yeah,
33:01
Speaker 1: And they were this this article, I think it was
33:03
Speaker 1: a Scientific American article. I was reading about Melbourne being
33:07
Speaker 1: so successful. One of the ways they were being so
33:09
Speaker 1: successful was taking this shared resource, this reservoir and saying,
33:14
Speaker 1: like all of us share this, and it's down to
33:17
Speaker 1: this level. So are you going to be the jerk
33:19
Speaker 1: who like makes a drop even more by taking more
33:22
Speaker 1: than your fair share? Um, the one of the jerk
33:25
Speaker 1: that should be their campaign. One of the problems is
33:28
Speaker 1: this California isn't just have a just a single shared reservoir.
33:31
Speaker 1: They get their water from a number of different sources. Yeah. Um,
33:36
Speaker 1: so that's kind of that that would be tough to
33:38
Speaker 1: like hit that same note with California. Yeah, but as
33:42
Speaker 1: goes California, as goes the US economies, I think, uh
33:45
Speaker 1: some estimates say California is the eighth largest economy in
33:48
Speaker 1: the world, the state of California. Oh yeah, so I've
33:51
Speaker 1: heard that before. Dire consequences potentially, So let's take one
33:56
Speaker 1: more break, Chuck, and then when we come back, we're
33:58
Speaker 1: gonna talk about dire consequence is indeed from the nineteen
34:01
Speaker 1: thirties in the United States, that's ka the dust Bowl.
34:20
Speaker 1: So I teased the dust Bowl in the beginning, and
34:23
Speaker 1: then we didn't get to it. But now we're getting
34:25
Speaker 1: to this is just and I became a little uh no,
34:29
Speaker 1: just keeping people on the hook. I became super interested.
34:32
Speaker 1: When I was in Oklahoma recently went to the Woody
34:35
Speaker 1: Guthrie Museum in Tulsa, which is great, by the way,
34:39
Speaker 1: and they had a whole section on the dust Bowl.
34:41
Speaker 1: And I didn't know much about it. I mean I
34:43
Speaker 1: knew generally it was a drought and dusty, but I
34:47
Speaker 1: hadn't looked into it too much. And since then I've
34:50
Speaker 1: studied on it some and watched the great Ken Burns
34:53
Speaker 1: documentary on the dust Bowl. It was very good. You
34:55
Speaker 1: know those parts of that um appear in uh Interstellar?
35:00
Speaker 1: Oh really with their clips of that, Yeah, I don't remember.
35:03
Speaker 1: I couldn't. They'd play it like it's people really like Interstellar. No,
35:09
Speaker 1: not really. I loved that movie. Yeah, I love it.
35:12
Speaker 1: I thought that was such a great movie. Yeah, I
35:14
Speaker 1: really didn't like it. I had a lot of problems
35:16
Speaker 1: with it. I loved it. My My biggest problem with
35:19
Speaker 1: it was just just do the let the viewer figure
35:25
Speaker 1: out the movie. Like I felt like every ten minutes
35:28
Speaker 1: somebody was explaining something, same guy, same problem. I don't
35:33
Speaker 1: think so, man, I didn't run into that. You know
35:35
Speaker 1: how much I hated that part in an inception. When
35:38
Speaker 1: you watch Interstellar again, just make a little note anytime
35:41
Speaker 1: someone explains what's going on, and you'll have like twenty
35:43
Speaker 1: times written down on your little note pad. I guess
35:46
Speaker 1: I didn't. It didn't bother me in this one bother me.
35:49
Speaker 1: And it's not like I have anything against Ellen Page
35:51
Speaker 1: in particular. Oh, sure you do. You you're a juno hater.
35:56
Speaker 1: Has nothing to do with Ellen Page. Now, I'm just
35:58
Speaker 1: joking anyway, I no, I just for some reason it
36:01
Speaker 1: didn't stick out to me in Diristellar. I just thoroughly
36:04
Speaker 1: enjoyed that movie. Well good, I'm glad you did. I
36:07
Speaker 1: want to rain under Parade anyway, that parts of the
36:10
Speaker 1: ken Burns documentary show up in Aristellar, But it's great
36:14
Speaker 1: just on its own. Um. And the reason we bring
36:18
Speaker 1: up the dust Bowl is because it's actually it's larger
36:23
Speaker 1: than just a drought. People tend to think of it
36:25
Speaker 1: as a drought, but it's actually, um one of the
36:29
Speaker 1: one of the it demonstrates things you can do to
36:33
Speaker 1: prevent drought from becoming the worst case scenario, which is
36:38
Speaker 1: exactly what happened with the dust Bowl. Yeah, it was.
36:40
Speaker 1: It was one of the worst natural disasters in the
36:42
Speaker 1: United States history, for sure. Yeah. And it was just
36:45
Speaker 1: one natural disaster compounding another and another and another. And
36:50
Speaker 1: what happened actually starts in the nineteenth century when America
36:54
Speaker 1: was undergoing its westward expansion, and um, the US government
36:59
Speaker 1: passed the Homestead acts, and these UM gave land grants
37:05
Speaker 1: to Western settlers, UM, who wanted to set up farms
37:09
Speaker 1: of between a hundred and sixty and then later on
37:12
Speaker 1: three twenty acres, which sounds like a lot, but they're
37:15
Speaker 1: actually not when you start thinking about these massive states
37:19
Speaker 1: like Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas and all of US. UM.
37:24
Speaker 1: And so what happened was eventually these plain states, the
37:30
Speaker 1: semi arid grassland was carved up into a huge patchwork
37:35
Speaker 1: of smaller farms, and UM people started farming and things
37:41
Speaker 1: started going really well. The land became productive very quickly. Yeah.
37:46
Speaker 1: And and at first things, UM, they were farming somewhat sustainably.
37:50
Speaker 1: You know, they still had grasses and still had cattle
37:52
Speaker 1: grazing on these grasses, which is all good stuff. And
37:56
Speaker 1: these are these are native grasses that were driver resistant already.
37:59
Speaker 1: They were acclama in to this again semiar climate. That's right.
38:03
Speaker 1: So let's flash forward or fast forward a bit, um
38:07
Speaker 1: to post World War One in the nineteen twenties. UM,
38:11
Speaker 1: there was a recession and farmers all of a sudden said,
38:14
Speaker 1: you know what, we can get these new machines and
38:18
Speaker 1: use these new mechanized farming techniques to try and make
38:21
Speaker 1: more money and turn some of this grass into wheat. Yeah,
38:25
Speaker 1: Because I mean if you if you have like a
38:27
Speaker 1: ho right and you're just hacking away at this semi
38:31
Speaker 1: ara ground, you're gonna be like, I've got acres, but
38:35
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna farm twenty of them because this is
38:38
Speaker 1: a ton of work, you know. Um, But if you
38:41
Speaker 1: can go buy a plow and some oxen and the
38:43
Speaker 1: later on a tractor to drag those plows, um, you
38:47
Speaker 1: can turn all three d and twenty acres into productive
38:50
Speaker 1: crop land. Yeah. And so they overproduce wheat. Yeah, there
38:53
Speaker 1: was a there was a bumper crop year in nineteen
39:00
Speaker 1: are so many farmers bought so many plows and used
39:04
Speaker 1: these mechanized methods of farming that there was a bumper
39:08
Speaker 1: crop of wheat, so much so that the price of
39:10
Speaker 1: wheat plummeted. And it just so happened that there was
39:12
Speaker 1: a recession, like you said, at the same time, So
39:15
Speaker 1: there was an oversupply of wheat and an under demand
39:19
Speaker 1: for it because everybody's broke, that's right, And so everybody said,
39:22
Speaker 1: well what do you do. You just slant more wheat,
39:25
Speaker 1: plant more wheat. Yeah. Basically expand your farms so to
39:29
Speaker 1: try and turn a profit. And so all of a sudden,
39:31
Speaker 1: all these drought resistant grasses were no more. Uh, there
39:35
Speaker 1: was wheat everywhere. And apparently wheat does not jibe. Um,
39:41
Speaker 1: that quantity of wheat doesn't jibe with the natural landscape. Uh.
39:45
Speaker 1: And the soil became dusty and dry, and uh you
39:50
Speaker 1: couple that with a drought which hit hard over the
39:52
Speaker 1: period of like three years and high winds and everything
39:57
Speaker 1: blew away. Yes, so a hundred billion acres of topsoil
40:01
Speaker 1: ended up blowing away, like just blew away. It wasn't
40:05
Speaker 1: there any longer. All that was left was the rocky
40:07
Speaker 1: subsoil like blue to the east coast. Yes. Um, some
40:11
Speaker 1: of it blew to California, depending on where the winds Blue.
40:14
Speaker 1: Some blew all the way to Washington, d C. Which
40:16
Speaker 1: actually proved to be for two it is because that
40:19
Speaker 1: got Congress's attention. And um, these things were called black blizzards.
40:23
Speaker 1: And there's man, you've seen the footage. It's just amazing
40:27
Speaker 1: when these huge, towering clouds of black dust were just
40:32
Speaker 1: coming towards these what looked like these tiny little miniature houses. Um,
40:38
Speaker 1: it doesn't look real no, it doesn't. But this really
40:40
Speaker 1: happened on the Great Plains in the thirties. Yeah, we're
40:43
Speaker 1: talking a hundred and fifty thousand square miles over Oklahoma
40:47
Speaker 1: are parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
40:52
Speaker 1: And the drought itself was from thirty four to thirty
40:55
Speaker 1: seven and sixty sixty of the population. Yeah, a lot
41:01
Speaker 1: of them moved to California. California wasn't very happy. A
41:04
Speaker 1: lot of them left. Their farms were just broke. Basically,
41:07
Speaker 1: they were um like the first generation to find themselves
41:10
Speaker 1: underwater because a lot of them again remember like there
41:13
Speaker 1: was this this drive UM to make more money by
41:20
Speaker 1: producing more wheat even though there was an over abundance
41:23
Speaker 1: of wheat UM. So they really over leveraged themselves by
41:28
Speaker 1: borrowing more for farm equipment and farm hands and farm
41:31
Speaker 1: supplies and UM. When the bottom fell out on the
41:34
Speaker 1: wheat market, they were over extended and their homes and
41:39
Speaker 1: farms got four closed on. So they are like all
41:42
Speaker 1: these people who were just at one Like just a
41:46
Speaker 1: little while back, we're farming middle class people were now
41:50
Speaker 1: like UM homeless and on um root sixty six and
41:55
Speaker 1: basically doing the grapes of wrath thing. Yeah. I mean,
41:58
Speaker 1: like you said, a lot of them moved west. Uh
42:00
Speaker 1: and I think you said that California was not so
42:03
Speaker 1: happy with that. About ten percent of them ended up
42:05
Speaker 1: in California, And um, it was not a great time
42:08
Speaker 1: for the country as a whole. So they they didn't
42:11
Speaker 1: want all these new people they call them Oakey's even
42:13
Speaker 1: though about we're from Oklahoma. Uh, they want them coming
42:17
Speaker 1: in there trying to get their jobs. Uh. And it
42:20
Speaker 1: was it was bad news all the way around in California. So. Um.
42:25
Speaker 1: And actually, what's a pretty good, pretty good example of
42:30
Speaker 1: the federal government doing something really really right. Um, they
42:34
Speaker 1: stepped in, Actually FDR stepped in with the New Deal,
42:38
Speaker 1: um and created a lot of measures that tried to
42:42
Speaker 1: alleviate the worst effects of the dust Bowl. And one
42:45
Speaker 1: of the things that they did really really well was
42:48
Speaker 1: create the Soil Conservation Service. Yeah. That was a nineteen
42:51
Speaker 1: thirty five and basically strict instructions to farmers to uh
42:57
Speaker 1: plant grass, plant trees, how to plow, how terrace, um,
43:01
Speaker 1: how to hold rain water, how to portion off your farmland, um,
43:05
Speaker 1: and not just grow wheat over every square inch of it, right, yeah,
43:09
Speaker 1: leaves some land to be fallow and regenerate after UM
43:12
Speaker 1: one year of production or a couple of years of production.
43:15
Speaker 1: UM And one of the other big pushes that's still
43:18
Speaker 1: going on these days is no till farming. One of
43:21
Speaker 1: the big problems that they that they did with with
43:25
Speaker 1: by knocking out these these grasslands was first they got
43:29
Speaker 1: rid of the native grasses that were good at holding
43:31
Speaker 1: the top soil in place, but then they actually killed
43:34
Speaker 1: the top soil and loosen the whole structure of everything,
43:38
Speaker 1: so it was easy to blow away when these strong
43:41
Speaker 1: winds came in. UM. And apparently top soil takes something
43:45
Speaker 1: like I've seen in a few places five hundred years
43:49
Speaker 1: to produce one inch of new top soil, So once
43:52
Speaker 1: it blew away, it wasn't coming back UM And I'm
43:55
Speaker 1: not quite sure how they've replenished it since then. I mean,
43:58
Speaker 1: I know that these oil conservation measures are helping, but
44:02
Speaker 1: I mean, is it just grassland that's growing on subsoils
44:05
Speaker 1: still for the next couple of hundred years. I don't know,
44:08
Speaker 1: you know what, I know that somebody out there knows that,
44:11
Speaker 1: though some farmer I do know that they said by
44:14
Speaker 1: the early nineteen forties, much of that land had been rehabilitated. UM.
44:19
Speaker 1: And not only did the government step in and still
44:22
Speaker 1: install install a lot of new laws and measures, but
44:27
Speaker 1: they also bought a lot of land. Um. Yeah, about
44:30
Speaker 1: eleven million acres just to you know, keep it grassy
44:34
Speaker 1: and stable. Um. And the new deal brought it wasn't
44:38
Speaker 1: just the Soil Conservation Service UM. The we won't get
44:42
Speaker 1: into all these, but the Works Progress Administration was created. Uh.
44:47
Speaker 1: The I think the SCS is now the Natural Resources
44:50
Speaker 1: Conservation Service. Uh. And they just you know, they really
44:53
Speaker 1: stepped in and said, we can't let this happen again,
44:57
Speaker 1: even though the nineteen fifties there was another bad draft.
45:00
Speaker 1: But I think, yeah, the measure that I remember in
45:02
Speaker 1: the seventies, that's why we have skateboarding. Oh yeah, that's right.
45:06
Speaker 1: I mean not completely, but it's when they went to
45:08
Speaker 1: the swimming pools because they were empty in California. But
45:11
Speaker 1: thanks to those measures, things in the fifties and seventies
45:14
Speaker 1: didn't reach the levels that they did in and UM.
45:17
Speaker 1: I read this really great article called Rethinking the dust Bowl,
45:20
Speaker 1: and I can't remember where it's from, but it's posted
45:22
Speaker 1: on the podcast page for this episode on our site, UM,
45:26
Speaker 1: and it was basically saying like this was a really
45:28
Speaker 1: good example of the government stepping in taking really good measures, UM,
45:33
Speaker 1: because ultimately what created the dust bowl was parceling out
45:38
Speaker 1: the great planes into these small farms. If you're a
45:42
Speaker 1: small farmer, taking soil conservation measures is not economically beneficial
45:47
Speaker 1: to you, You're not gonna see a lot of the benefits,
45:51
Speaker 1: and it's going to be very expensive, right, And if
45:53
Speaker 1: you're just a small farmer, it doesn't matter. Your farm
45:55
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. But if you put a bunch of small
45:58
Speaker 1: farms together and no one taking soil conservation measures, then
46:02
Speaker 1: what you have, as far as from an ecological standpoint,
46:05
Speaker 1: is one gigantic farm with no soil conservation measures. And
46:09
Speaker 1: that's what set up the Great Planes for the desk.
46:11
Speaker 1: Bol federal government came in and said, you guys are
46:14
Speaker 1: small farmers. You don't have to be big farmers, but
46:17
Speaker 1: we're gonna put a bunch of you together to form
46:19
Speaker 1: what's called the soil Conservation District. And we're going to
46:23
Speaker 1: say if you plant these trees for wind breaks and
46:26
Speaker 1: you do these other soil conservation techniques, we're going to
46:29
Speaker 1: subsidize your farms, and it worked really well, and a
46:32
Speaker 1: lot of small farmers got these subsidies and the great
46:35
Speaker 1: planes was saved. Hooray. Right, But then the same article
46:38
Speaker 1: is like, this is also a really good example of
46:41
Speaker 1: how the federal government doesn't work because as smaller and
46:44
Speaker 1: smaller farms were bought by bigger and bigger farms and
46:47
Speaker 1: consolidated into like big Agra, these subsidies are still available
46:52
Speaker 1: for these farms and farming companies that would have carried
46:56
Speaker 1: out these measures anyway, because they would directly bend of
47:00
Speaker 1: fit from the money that they put into it. They're
47:02
Speaker 1: still getting government subsidies from it. So it was like
47:05
Speaker 1: it worked really well at first. Now it's not working anymore.
47:08
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a waste of money. They should
47:10
Speaker 1: have had a stipulation in there though, that like farms
47:13
Speaker 1: of certain size or something. I don't know, should have,
47:16
Speaker 1: should have, could have, would have. I found that really interesting.
47:19
Speaker 1: I can totally get why you suggested this dust Bowl
47:23
Speaker 1: Drought episode. Yeah, it's a good stuff. We've had a
47:26
Speaker 1: lot of um asks for this one lately. So have
47:30
Speaker 1: you got anything else, sir, Well, if you want to
47:32
Speaker 1: know anything else about the dust Bowl and droughts and
47:35
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Go to how stuff works. Type
47:38
Speaker 1: those words into the search bar and it will bring
47:40
Speaker 1: all this up. Uh. And since I said search bar,
47:42
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this batty
47:48
Speaker 1: email from a bat bat guy. Um. Hey, guys, my
47:53
Speaker 1: bat biologist specializing and threatened an endangered species in the
47:56
Speaker 1: Eastern US. It's a great episode and you nailed it,
47:58
Speaker 1: especially the section on at a location. I'll add that
48:01
Speaker 1: while most insect divorous, insectivorous bats do catch their prey
48:06
Speaker 1: while on the wing, um some have specialized to flutter
48:11
Speaker 1: slowly and their echo locations are so sensitive and high pitched,
48:14
Speaker 1: and they're hearing so sensitive that the bats can glean
48:17
Speaker 1: insects from vegetation in the darkness. This could be in
48:20
Speaker 1: response to stealthy moss that have learned to sense at
48:23
Speaker 1: echolocation in evade round and round goes the predator prey
48:26
Speaker 1: arms race. One clarification, though, is regarding the effect of
48:31
Speaker 1: white nose syndrome. You said in the podcasts that the
48:34
Speaker 1: itch is what wakes the bats from hibernation. It's more
48:37
Speaker 1: that the bats immune system is ramped up by the
48:39
Speaker 1: late stage fungal infection in their metabolic requirements are beyond
48:44
Speaker 1: what they have prepared for. The damaged wing membranes are
48:47
Speaker 1: especially susceptible to evaporate water loss, and most hibernation interrupted
48:51
Speaker 1: bats are thought to die of lack of water rather
48:54
Speaker 1: than lack of food. Additionally, new studies indicate that the
48:58
Speaker 1: clinical signs are in stages of the disease and that
49:01
Speaker 1: the chemical imbalances caused internal damage before the visible fungal
49:06
Speaker 1: high fai DO. One mechanism for this is chronic respiratory
49:10
Speaker 1: acidosis caused by increased dissolved CEO two levels in the blood. Wow, man,
49:17
Speaker 1: I told you it's a bat biologist. Listen to you
49:19
Speaker 1: guys every day. Uh and have taken s y s
49:22
Speaker 1: k onto the woods on bat surveys more than once.
49:25
Speaker 1: Thanks for the pot that we've been on a bat survey.
49:29
Speaker 1: It's a great balancing act of fact and b s
49:33
Speaker 1: of to each their own and holding humanity to a
49:36
Speaker 1: higher standard. You guys consistently hit it out of the
49:38
Speaker 1: park man. That is nice. That is from Jason Whittle
49:42
Speaker 1: and uh my wife's hometown of Akron, Ohio where Lebron
49:47
Speaker 1: lives to That's right. And you know what, we actually
49:50
Speaker 1: got our episode shared by um oh boy, now I
49:54
Speaker 1: can't think of it. The Bat Society. It's the best
49:58
Speaker 1: society of America, the World Bat Society. There. I can't
50:02
Speaker 1: remember get along which one, but one of the larger
50:05
Speaker 1: BAT organizations shared our podcast and was said, we did
50:09
Speaker 1: a great job. So I thought that was oh man,
50:10
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Well, thank you, thanks to the Bat Society,
50:15
Speaker 1: thanks to Jason. It was right Jason witt Um. And
50:19
Speaker 1: if you want to be cool like Jason and send
50:21
Speaker 1: us a really interesting email full of tons of facts,
50:24
Speaker 1: you can do that. You can tweet to us too
50:26
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can join us
50:29
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
50:31
Speaker 1: can send us that email to stuff podcast at how
50:34
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. And in the meantime, you can
50:37
Speaker 1: hang out at our super cool home on the web,
50:39
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
50:47
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
50:49
Speaker 1: dot com.