On Fire, Out of Food, Out of Water, Out of Power

Extreme weather conditions, and human error around the world, predict the quality of our future.  The overpopulation of planet earth, along with squandered life sustaining resources, has positioned everyone into a survivalist condition.  Unfortunately, our personal survival needs are being trumped every day by wealthy special interests, who refuse to assist mass survival.  It is being demonstrated daily that wealthy special interests are intent on preparing for their own personal survival.  Population depleting wars, natural disasters and unnatural disasters, are helping wealthy special interests insure their own survival. Is this unconscious or deliberate?  Is there anything the throw away people can do to protect themselves? Paying more attention to personal long term survival under a myriad of possible catastrophic conditions, is a first step toward survivability.  Simple, inexpensive steps anyone can take, are readily available, with minimum research and effort, on the internet. Nobody else is going look out for you, so making friends with neighbors, planning for emergency contingencies, is the most practical. Survival is a team event.  Stay aware of your surroundings, understanding your immediate food, water, shelter and hygiene resources is critical.

FIRE

This is a real time map that changes daily.  When it was posted there were fires all over the central and western states.

Climate Change together with dismissive human intervention, has created a global catastrophe.  Water is polluted.  Crops, forests and homes are burning.  Ground is cracking and sinking.  Human capability to adapt to changing conditions is hampered by short term consideration.  Industries for petroleum, pharmaceuticals, weapons and their insistence on marketing disinformation, don’t want anyone to hear nature’s train barreling down the track.  Politicians will show theatrical sympathy for our losses, yet turn around and grant immunity to their industrial donors.  Money talks and your future walks.  Expect shortages and higher prices for ordinary necessities.  The meat you rely on for protein is being sold off because the feed is scarce or too expensive.  Your vegetables will have to be transported from less drought effected areas.  US Corn and Soybean Crops are the most damaged in 2012. Beef, Pork and Fowl all use corn and soy based feed.  Corn is one of the most multi-purposed vegetables grown.  Because corn is used for so many products besides food, the drought has caused congress to consider removing an ethanol additive requirement for gasoline.  Uncertain how newer cars will react to full strength gasoline.  Because corn is used in sugars, plastics, pharmaceuticals and fuels, some triage will be necessary to accommodate food requirements, not just for America, but around the world.  Corn and Soy prices are already going crazy.

Drought-hit U.S. busts heat record from Dust Bowl days

Soaring gas prices, food shortages, earth quakes, cyclones, floods, fires, war on terror, global warming…. human toll mounting

HEAT WAVE

In 2005 Sara Goudarzi wrote a very prophetic article for Live Science about the deadly effects of heat waves.

In 2003, a summer heat wave killed between 22,000 and 35,000 people in five European countries. Temperatures soared to 104 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris, and London recorded its first triple-digit Fahrenheit temperature in history.  If a similar heat wave struck the United States, the results would be disastrous, a new study suggests.

Enduring Drought, Farmers Draw the Line at Congress

With a quarter of the country experiencing an exceptionally severe drought that is expected only to deepen, with the government projecting that much of the spring’s record corn planting will wither away, with significant damage to soybean and wheat crops and with prices for feed at record levels, farmers and ranchers are increasingly anxious about the gridlock in Washington.

While the most recently enacted farm bill will not expire until next month, disaster relief that would have helped some livestock producers cope with the high costs of feed and fodder lapsed last week. And with big disagreements in Congress over proposals to overhaul insurance and other provisions, farmers are finding it difficult to plan for any recovery in the next growing season.

Farm policy bills, which typically come up for renewal every five years, are usually built to attract bipartisan support by combining subsidies for farmers with allotments for food stamps and other nutrition programs that appeal to urban lawmakers.

Republican leaders were unable to muster enough support for even a one-year extension of the law and instead passed a short-term drought-relief measure, the first time the House has failed to bring its own farm bill to the floor. The Senate, which had passed its own version by a healthy bipartisan margin, declined to take up the short-term House bill, and Congress left town in a stalemate.

Ouch! July in US was hottest ever in history books

What really happens when the weather gets really hot?

• More electricity will be used to cool hot people and things … stress on the power grid
• If you have an attic, expect ‘Superheating’ up to 160 degrees – this really stresses your AC
• Car windows can crack
• Auto batteries start to warp and wear out faster
• Insects will invade your shelter for water, heat also makes bugs reproduce faster …
• If you have a pool or any standing water, expect extraordinary algae blooms while the water evaporates
• Trees and foliage will suffer, die and become fuel for fire … no photosynthesis, no oxygen
• Medications lose their strength, especially mail order medications
• Food producing plants and animals decline or die out

Valley’s heat wave scorches fruit, lowers milk production

Expect more consecutive days with high temperatures over 100 degrees. Ozone, which can trigger asthma attacks and other lung problems, is created when sunlight and heat cook pollution gases from cars, industry, diesel trucks and livestock.

Attempts to avoid food crisis may worsen problem

So, even if you have your own back yard garden, don’t expect it to be sufficient to support your food needs.  The water needed to grow a garden will be severely restricted.  Already rice farmers in Texas are being cut off by the LCRA, who decides where the water from the Colorado River goes. 

LCRA announced  … “Because the combined storage of lakes Buchanan and Travis is still significantly low, LCRA is not providing Highland Lakes water to most downstream farmers this year. The historic decision became official on March 1, when the combined storage of the lakes failed to reach 850,000 acre-feet. That was the level agreed on last September by LCRA, with input from stakeholders throughout the basin, including downstream farmers, when it established the emergency drought relief measures that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved in December.

Our food is grown in the Midwest. There is too much risk and we shouldn’t even be considering allowing pipelines or oil and gas exploration in national parks anyway.

Keystone XL pipeline may threaten aquifer that irrigates much of the central U.S.

At the heart of their battle is whether the pipeline would pose a threat to the massive Ogallala Aquifer — one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water. By one calculation, it holds enough water to cover the country’s 48 contiguous states two feet deep. The Ogallala stretches beneath most of Nebraska from the Sand Hills in the west to the outskirts of Omaha. And it runs from South Dakota well past Lubbock, Tex. Travel the path of the pipeline

The water system in the United States has been abundant since Europeans started colonization.  Plentiful rivers, lakes and underground aquifers have supported expansion and prosperity by feeding agriculture and industry. Industry has become more demanding and careless with water resources. Industry has insisted that immediate economic benefits are more important than consideration for water ecosystems.  After all, water has been plentiful in the past … 200 years.  Long term studies have never been allowed by industry, for fear that it might reveal the end of cheap water and the end of huge profits for their manufacturing.  Long term consequences are not just about industry.  People’s lives depend on access to drinkable water.  No one appears to take seriously what happens when there is no more usable water.  Africa’s drought is the most obvious demonstration.  Parts of Africa are starving because water supplies cannot support agriculture to grow food.  Africa’s water supplies cannot support human consumption.  Wars have interrupted Africa’s ability to address or adapt to changing environmental conditions.  Unless America stops squandering it’s precious water resources, it could experience the same conditions as Africa.

DROUGHT

Extreme Drought And Its Challenges To The US’s Clean Water Supply

As of late June, over 55% of the country was experiencing moderate to extreme drought. The map to the right illustrates the drought’s far-reaching impacts; and while the most extreme effects are being felt in middle of the country, regions typically associated with  “wet weather” like the Great Lakes, Southeast and Northeast regions are also feeling the heat. While a drought of this magnitude is not entirely predictable, its consequences are. Farmers across the country are losing crops, businesses are losing revenue, communities are scrambling to address dwindling drinking water sources and neighbors battle over access to scarce supplies.

Water-related Diseases, Contaminants, & Injuries

Drought, food prices fan fears of new crisis

ROME/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Global alarm over a potential repeat of the 2008 food crisis escalated after data showed food prices had jumped 6 percent last month and importers were snapping up a shriveled U.S. grain crop, helping drive corn prices to a new record.

Ahead of a critical government report on Friday on the state of the U.S. corn and soybean crops, which have been decimated by the worst drought in over five decades, the United Nation’s food agency warned against the kind of export bans, tariffs and buying binges that worsened the price surge four years ago.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Predicts Plummeting Corn Yields Due to U.S. Drought

WASHINGTON, D.C.–(ENEWSPF)–August 10, 2012.  In the first estimates to take into account the extreme heat and droughts that have ravaged the country this summer, the Department of Agriculture predicted this morning that U.S. corn production will fall to 10.8 billion bushels for the 2012/2013 growing season, the lowest since the 2006/2007 growing season which was before passage of the Renewable Fuel Standard 2. Yields are projected to decline by 22.6 bushels per acre or 15 percent from the June report to 123.4 bushels per acre.

CHANGING WEATHER PATTERNS HOT and COLD EXTREMES, FLOODS and DROUGHTS THREATEN the POWER GRID

US infrastructure, highways and power grids, failing under relentless heat wave

(NaturalNews) America is falling apart, literally, and the extreme weather events of the past few months and years surely have not helped the situation any. A recent New York Times(NYT) piece explains that various roads, bridges, and even nuclear power facilities all across the country are crumbling, or otherwise undergoing severe structural damage, as a result of the extreme heat waves that continue to sweep the nation.

Commentary: How the U.S. can avoid a blackout like India’s

Extreme weather continues to scorch Southern California, concern over power grid

What do you do with the news that food prices are about to become intolerable?  You start preparing right now.  Whether you rely on coupons or wait for sales, your opportunities for good pricing are shrinking.  Locate farmers markets in your area for fresh supplies of vegetables.  See if you have the ability to grow any of your own food.  Beans, pasta and long shelf life protein rich foods can be gathered.  Make sure you have filtration available for your water, since water quality will become less reliable if industry and government does not change their behavior.  If you are political, make sure your elected leaders are doing something helpful to reduce the pollution impact on food and water.  High gas and food prices will determine how creative you need to be to help yourself and your loved ones.

One more time,  everyone, regardless of political or religious preferences will experience shortages and higher prices for ordinary necessities.  Survival is a team effort.  Lessons from history are everywhere, but the factor that is changing the dynamic of everything is that there are too many people currently living on dwindling resources.  Enter smooth talking leaders who are determined to enact population reducing policies. The US Congress has failed to do it’s duty and pass the ritual Farm Bill.  Vacation was the preferred event. Republicans want to cut out the food stamp and nutrition allotments, Democrats will not consider that.  So, everyone suffers.

The voices of those most effected by climate events are drowned out by those who prefer to profit.  This may be why personal survival supplies, energy saving devices and gadgets are so expensive.  Can you afford an electric vehicle or a personal wind or solar system to guarantee electricity?  Can you afford for grocery prices to jump by 30% or more?  Will you be able afford gasoline to drive to work or the store?  My personal experience finds that lugging groceries on a bicycle is challenging.  Hopefully you live close enough to necessary stores to walk or push a cart.  Living in the country means you buy in bulk so you make fewer trips. Everyone will have to think ahead to accommodate their needs.  This is the practical solution for reasonably healthy people.  The changes we are experiencing right now will be the most challenging for those with medical issues and in need of frequent medical care … All of the climate, political and social policy factors in play right now are leaning toward a population reducing effort by our leaders and special interests who refuse to be accountable for their actions … unless of course, you speak up at the ballot box.