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Selects: How Droughts Work · Stuff You Should Know

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