I'm xerophobic - stories like this on Yahoo!'s main page keep me up at night

[mdmc]

I recently moved into an apartment in Newburgh NY overlooking the Hudson River.
I have a a great view of the river. It looks a little like this -




My girlfriend and I have a deal - I can't mention the lack of water worldwide unless I can walk across the Hudson.

I have to keep quiet about stories like this -
http://www.newsweek.com/id/110958?g=1 Running Dry Climate research says Lake Mead, in the Southwest, could be gone by 2021. How millions in southern California and neighboring states would be affected.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/110949 Losing our lakes - 11 most at risk lakes - awful pictures.


I'm not allowed to talk about this at home. So I post it here.

[glowing]

1. People will have to become more mobile.. Technology for transportable

energy.. i.e. solar, will need to be used to provide energy.. instead of damning so many river systems.. and these little imaginary lines used by white guys in stiff suits will dissolve.. or a lot of people will fall prey to the "sky is falling" doomsday, and die... so the guys in stiff suits have their controlled population of enslaved people allowing them to live in hog heaven.

[SoCalDem]

2. The downside to being "mobile"?

The place you want to GO , is usually already occupied by someone with more foresight than you, and they are often , not happy to see you, and even less happy to share with you :scared:

[glowing]

18. Well, original inhabitants of these lands knew to move if times were bad...

Its a European thing to alot "God"-given (use whatever you like here) resources and land for only certain people... That's why the Indians didn't think anything of the White people buying Manhattan.. They thought.. "crazy white people, giving us free stuff"... How could they realize that mass genocide was really in store for the native inhabitants... We lost a huge resource of knowledge about our lands and history and natural medicinal elements due to my ancestor's ignorance. Some of it I have re-learned from my husband's people.. fascinating and truly educating...

[mdmc]

20. Thank you for posting my friend

I have not been looking for your writings here on DU, but think your replies here demonstrate a wealth of wisdom.

Thanks for creating a DU blogroll. I will add it to my watch list. :toast:

[glowing]

21. Thank you.. I've always been told I'm ahead of my time.... too old to be

young... I get along with people who are 50 and older best because I love the wisdom and the history... Its been awesome getting to know my husbands family.. they are a tribe in NC and have the best recipes for natural bug repellant... no round-up on our gardens... (mixture of water, basil, lemon, and a few other herbs... and you spray them on plants...)

I've always loved old things though.. I wish sometimes I could be back in the day and trek across this land in the covered wagons or like the Native Americans.. walking... Or to live in a time where Aristotle or Plato could just sit and philosophize and think. It would be a dream to have a job to just think.

[mdmc]

30. That would be heaven

To have a job that uses your mind / to think for a living.

I actually work with mentally ill adults. I get to listen for a living. Sure I put up with some crazy shit and it can be emotionally painful, but I do enjoy it.

But besides thinking and listening, I need to do paperwork, drive, and respond to "crisis". All in all I am very happy in what I do, but a part of me would prefer to do something more political.

I've been trying to spend more time in DU's smaller forums. There is gold in them there groups!

[0007]

31. Well said!

[mdmc]

36. nice link

:kick:

[leftchick]

3. holy crap

looking at that slide show has totally depressed me. wtf?

:cry:

[mdmc]

6. I really used to hope that I was just crazy, obsessive, afraid

Then when that huge lake in Chile just disappeared, I was like I TOLD YOU SO!
I used to live in LV and in Colorado. I missed the water most of all. I had to return to the east.

:hi:

[mdmc]

24. I am very sorry

I honest to God have xerophobia, usually described as the fear of being lost in a desert. I obsess over the environment and water, and have made a deal with my girlfriend that I won't harp on it none stop.
These stories were on the Yahoo! main page. I couldn't talk about it with her, so I posted here.

As I look out my window this morning, I see white mountains, and icy river, and beautiful runoff water flowing down the sides of Broadway.
I love the rain, the ice, the snow. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Peace and low stress to you and God bless.

:hug:

[Subdivisions]

4. mdmc, I know how that is because it's the same thing in

my house. My long-time gf will not hear anyting I have to talk about. She knows nothing about what's going on outside her own children and herself and doesn't want to know or hear it. She's always complaining that we don't talk enough or spend enough time together. But all she talks about is her grown children's lives and their business or herself or she's recycling the same old stories to me or to her cellphone. The minute I start to talk about what's fucked up about the world and trying to warn her of the possible consequences or my feelings about a particular thing, she don't want to hear it. It's a very lonely feeling.

So, I turn to my DU family for comfort and conversation about the things that interest me.

Edited to add: I probably said too much above so let me qualify what I said by saying that she says she doesn't want to hear this stuff because it's depressing and she would rather not know about it and that she trusts me to know what needs to be done if and when. In her defense, I do tend to concentrate on the bad stuff because so much of it is so outrageous or unprecedented or potentially dangerous and the fact that there really isn't much good news these days. But don't get the idea that I'm depressed and that's why I focus on the doom and gloom. No. Indeed, I focus on that stuff because it validates my view that humanity is one fucked up species that has proven itself, collectively, as being unworthy of its position in the biosphere.

[mdmc]

7. solidarity

My girl actually digs on my rants... super-delegates, corporations, the dlc... but the water thing gives her anxiety.

Before she met me she was Walmart loving fundie.
Now she grocery shops only at the unionized supermarkets (in my area stop and shop and shoprite). She has gotten on board politically with me, but cant take my xerophobia.

:pals:

[Subdivisions]

8. "Walmart loving fundie"...

Mine to a T.

[mdmc]

43. sometimes I feel like we are all walmart loving fundies

I spend half of my time ranting about corporations and the other half using their products.

peace and low stress.

[Sal Minella]

12. You're right -- you're in good company here.

My sister was apolitical for years and I finally got her interested in politics and government policies, and she began watching the national news regularly. Now she rants and raves on a regular basis. It saves time on the phone calls if we both just talk at the same time, since we're pretty much saying the same things about the same people anyway.

I wish "awareness" didn't lead to feeling so helpless so much of the time. But here we are. <hugs>

[mdmc]

45. ideals uber all

:hug:

[Robbien]

5. Supplies of clean drinkable water is

truly stuff of nightmares.

Beautiful view you have there. Cherish it. Many people around the world will live their whole lives never seeing so much water in one place. And many of them are too busy trying to find enough to drink on a daily basis.

[aquart]

9. Meanwhile parts of this country will flood out

With a deluge both destructive and wasted. WHY is it impossible to capture excess water in one area and transport it to another? Wasn't that the basis of Roman success?

[MADem]

10. Desalinization plants and solar pumps to transport the water inland.

If we start working on it now, we could probably have a SWEET infrastructure in place before things get too dreadful.

Takes commitment, though.

Hey, we transport other things, like natural gas, by pipeline without blinking an eye. Why not de-salted, cleaned, purified seawater? Sure, it'll be expensive to start, but economies of scale will eventually kick in. It's an exportable technology, too, if we invest in it and do it right==everyone will want to buy it because we do it so well.

[Xithras]

39. Wouldn't work.

The problem is that inland always also means UPHILL. A single gallon of water weighs over 8 lbs, so transporting billions of gallons of water inland for hundreds of miles, elevating it hundreds or even thousands of feet, would require enormous amounts of power. Since you're not going to get more than 4 watts per square meter, the number of panels required for that kind of power would be spectacular. The cost of building a system like that would easily eclipse the cost of every other public works project in American history, and would result in the most expensive water in the world.

[Warpy]

11. The droughts out west and in the southeast have been brutal

and they're calling them once in 500 year droughts. That's the reason for the 30 foot deep "bathtub ring" around Lake Meade in your photo. Pictures from Georgia are even worse.

NM got lucky, 5 weeks of torrential rains during the 2006 monsoon season followed by a record 18 inch snowfall the next winter. Our drought is over for the time being and the reservoir replenished.

Check out the Aral Sea for some really scary stuff, badly planned dams and drainage, pictures of ships stuck in dry sand that used to be navigable water.

[gateley]

13. Things are getting pretty dicey in Raleigh. They're talking severe restrictions. nt

[Warpy]

25. Restrictions are a way of life out here

and one thing I've grown to despise is the ultra low flow desert toilet. I keep a gallon bucket next to it for extra flushing water because I know the damned thing's limit. Plus, there is a saying out here, "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." It's gross, but it saves water.

Watering lawns (and there are damned few left) or gardens can only be done just around sunrise or sunset. Most people out here don't have swimming pools, the outdoor Jacuzzi with the solar cover is about it. A swimming pool can drop 2 inches a day from evaporation alone in the summer. People are encouraged by carrots of rebates to get water miser appliances and by the stick of escalating water prices to dump old water gulpers.

Car washing is often verboten when it's dry. Going to a commercial car wash that recycles grey water back through the system is the only way to do it. When people do wash their cars, they drive them up on the lawn so that no precious water goes down the driveway and into the sewers.

I got used to water restrictions when I lived on Cape Cod and the town water supply was being slowly poisoned by the military. I have a feeling they'll be a way of life over much of the country before too much longer.

[gateley]

28. "I have a feeling they'll be a way of life over much of the country before too much longer."

Yes. I agree.

I lived in Seattle until 5 years ago, and we even had a season THERE where there were water restrictions due to lack of snow melt.

The restrictions I read about that are being proposed for Raleigh include NO lawn watering, car washing only at APPROVED car washes, no hosing off decks, sidewalks, etc., and some other things I don't recall now. But reading of the restrictions made me realize how much water we DO use, and how dependent we are on it for just every day living.

Like when you lose power and you think, damn, I can't cook that roast in the oven now -- I'll just pop something in the microwave(!) -- I find myself thinking "wow, I may have to drink Coke to get my water" not considering where Coke is going to get the water to put in the product.

It's scary.

[ben_meyers]

16. Arizona is in great shape too

Water officials are feeling upbeat about the abundant water supply the Phoenix area will have this spring thanks to a spate of winter storms.
"It's an incredible turnaround from even as early ago as November," said Charlie Ester, manager of water resource operations at Salt River Project. "Our water supply this summer is going to be very good and very replenished from a year ago."
SRP provides water to at least two-thirds of the greater metropolitan Phoenix population, as well as farms in the region, and it manages reservoirs fed by the Verde and Salt rivers.
Ester said reservoirs fed by the Verde River are already 100 percent full. In fact, he added, they have had to open the Verde Dam to spill out extra runoff. Reservoirs in the Salt River are more than 80 percent full.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0212water-supply0212-ON.html

We have had 200% of "normal" rain since last November and 140% of "normal" snow pack, and that was before the last storm that left a couple of feet up in the rim country yesterday.

Keep in mind that Lake Mead was lower in the mid 50's and again in the mid 60's also and it recovered. Colorado has had a very good snow pack this year and that bodes well for Mead.

http://www.arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/

[girl gone mad]

14. I decided..

anywhere I move to has to have a large water source.

Atlanta, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and SoCal are out. Don't count on desalination or pipelines because these solutions are both very problematic. Water prices could go through the roof (I know they are already high in Atlanta) and people may need to make drastic lifestyle changes.

[kineneb]

17. I'm staying put

near the large lake, on property where the watertable is around 25' down... and it is in California. Our village water/sewer costs are already fairly pricey, so no one bothers with lawns...is fine with me.

[Ravy]

15. Walk across the Tappan Zee or Bear Mountain bridge. Problem solved. nt

[OneBlueSky]

19. just an observation . . . the Hudson is one of the most beautiful rivers in the world . . .

I've had the pleasure of sailing every inch of the river from Albany to New York Harbor, and there isn't a river anywhere (including the Danube) that can rival it . . . and in some areas (e.g. the Hudson Highlands) it's absolutely spectacular . . .

[mdmc]

26. You would love my new apartment

The east windows overlook a 180 degree view of the Hudson, complete with an unobstructed view of the Ham Fish (Newburgh Beacon) Bridge, the city of Beacon, Mount Beacon, Bannermans Island, and the bend in the river where chains were stretched from West Point to Constitution Island. In the distance you can see Poughkeepsie (New Hamburg, actually) and Cold Spring. You can also see Storm King Mountain and even glimpse the field house at West Point.

To the north the windows overlook lower Broadway and the Washington Place buildings (where Orange County Community College's Newburgh campus is housed).

The west windows overlook the police station and lower broadway.

It is a seen Man. I am diggin on it. :)

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

27. Your views sound incredible! When I first moved up to Westchester, I owned an apartment in North

Yonkers. I had 13 windows in that apartment and half of them faced the river. I had views from the then standing World Trade Center to the Tappan Zee Bridge. Across the river was the Palisades. It was spectacular.

I now have forest and sunset mountain views. Every now and then I need a fix and head down to the Hudson, usually by Peekskill Station. I Adore the Hudson.

And BTW!!!!!!! :hi:

[mdmc]

33. thanks for checking in my dear friend

We will be having a party on July 4th. We will be able to watch the fireworks up and down the Hudson River (Cold Spring, Cornwall, Beacon, Newburgh, and Poughkeepsie).
Perhaps you can make the trip up?
:hi:

[alfredo]

22. Why do you think bush bought land over the largest aquifer in the world?

Why do you think he refused to do anything about global warming?

[EstimatedProphet]

23. Lake Mead is in the middle of a desert

That's why there's drought. If we want to do something about water issues there, we should do something about Las Vegas's growth problem.

[mdmc]

35. I used to live in vegas, and visited lake mead many times

The other lakes are natural. Check out the link my friend.

[LWolf]

29. I live 2 miles from this river:

I can hike there across the public land that lies between.

Lake Mead is a man-made lake. Increased population = increased water use; that would impact the lake all on its own. Between a constantly increasing human population that uses water, and global climate change, I expect water wars to increase during this century.

While the river is not far, my well is almost 500 feet deep. I get plenty of good, clean water, for now. When they build a second golf resort a few miles away (there is already one to the north, and now they are building one to the west,) the water table may drop drastically. Again. It already did when the first resort went in, running local residential wells dry and forcing homeowners to pony up $$$ for deeper wells.

[duhneece]

32. Bless your heart-

Here in south central New Mexico, we are experiencing what it means when cities (small towns) 'take' water from the rural community...creeks and streams dry up, wells go dry as the water table drops...and they want to privatize the water so that larger and larger markets can buy the water from the minority rurual dwellers? I don't think so.
I'm so glad you're paying attention when it would be so easy for you to ignore it. Thank you.

[mdmc]

34. thanks for the reply

:kick:
peace and low stress:patriot:

[slackmaster]

37. I don't believe you should be allowed to discuss it here either

:spank:

[mdmc]

41. naughty, naughty

:)

[KoKo]

38. I know Hudson River Valley...Highlands and Yonkers pretty well...Thanks for your post

and the posts of others who live elsewhere who are providing insight into "water problems" in their own areas of the US.

Beautiful Pictures....!

[mdmc]

40. thank you my friend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY&NR=1
peace and low stress and thanks for the reply.:toast:

[Habibi]

42. They are lovely pics

My husband and I honeymooned in the Hudson Valley a few years ago. We were too broke for anything fancier, and it suited us just fine.

[mdmc]

44. I go 90 miles north east when I go on vacation

I go to the berkshires in MA.
Not paris, but it is always nice.
Thanks for checking in.

[Greyhound]

46. Ha, I used to live in Beacon. Beautiful. n/t

:kick:

[and-justice-for-all]

47. well when value is placed more on paper currency...

then on global/environmental responsibility, this is what ya get. and I do not think the human animal is going to learn, mother nature will set things right. Even is that means dehumanizing the planet, but we also have the knife at our own throats, so we are helping mother nature move things along a whole helluva lot faster.