How Droughts Work

Droughts can be an inevitable feature of a local climate or a catastrophic result of human meddling. Learn the ins and outs of droughts including the American mother of them all, the Dust Bowl.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry the chairs
their making copies. Uh, and this is stuff you Should Know.

(00:23):
That was a classic skit, wouldn't you say? And one
of the only ones I liked by that guy by
Rob Schneider. Yeah. I wasn't the biggest fan. Uh. Did
you see the one We're stinging? He's like staying stingling
ling ding ding making copies. Yeah, I mean I'm not
anti Rob Schneider, but I just wasn't like, how could

(00:45):
you be anti Rob Schneider honestly nobody. It's like being
mad at like a friendly horse or something. Yeah, exactly,
that's stupid friendly horse. Yeah. I hate his gutsy Uh
what a weird intro? Yeah, well, part for their course
pretty much my friend. Well, although his career has dried up.
Oh that was good and vicious. Man. I hope he

(01:08):
doesn't listen before we get into the whole drying up reference. Chuck,
we are long, long, long overdue for giving a huge
shout out to our Kiva team. Yeah that's right. Uh.
Several years ago. It feels like many years ago. We
did a podcast on micro lending and we said, hey,
let's start a Kiva team. Kiva is a international lending

(01:31):
organization micro lending where they pair you with people. Actually
they it's all over the world. Now you need money
on a small basis, you loan them the money. You
can get paid back and pull your money back out,
or you can reload it. And we have a very
active team. And let's hear some numbers. Okay, so um,
our team captain Glenn of Glenn and Sonya team captain

(01:51):
Fame sent us some stats recently. We have the stuff
you should know. Team has eight thousand, four hundred and
fifty three members great as as of July thirty one. Yeah. Um,
how much have we loaned so far? Are you ready
for this? We need a drum roll, Jerry? Can we
put in some sort of drum roll effect or at
Wilhelm scream or something like that? All right, Okay, that's nice,

(02:17):
that's very good. Here we go three million, two hundred
and fifty one thousand, twenty five dollars. Dude, that is crazy.
And that's out of a hundred and seventeen thousand, five
hundred and thirty nine loans, which is a total thirteen
point nine loans per member. I don't know how people
are doing like nine tenths of a loan, but that's
impressive in and of itself. Yeah, so what that means

(02:39):
is people get repaid and they just kind of do
what I think we do was just kind of roll
that into another loan. Yeah, you relan it. They make
great gifts. I think at least one person sent you
a Cheva gift card to congratulate you and Emily on
Ruby Rose. That's right, And that's always a nice thing.
You can do at holiday times or birthdays whenever. It's
not too late to join, like we're not like, oh,
you're new to the team. Like it's a very supportive,

(03:01):
great team and again, like you said, very active. You
can go to kiva dot org slash teams I believe
it's plural slash stuff you should know, or just search
stuff you should know on kiva dot org and we'll
bring up our team and you can join and be
embraced by our teammates. That's right. Yeah, So thanks to
Glenn Sonia as always for nudging us in the right

(03:22):
direction and keeping up with the stats. Big help and
um and congratulations to a team on getting the three
point to five million dollars and change and loans. Absolutely okay,
So droughts, huh, Rob Snyder Kiva droughts the natural progression
of things. Don't forget sting was in there. Um, all right,

(03:44):
let's talk droughts their serious thing. Yeah, I mean it's uh,
it's it's natural disaster is what it is. It is.
Although so Robert Lamb wrote this article that that forms
the basis of this in part. Yeah, Robert of us
to blow your mind award winning stuff, to blow your mind. Yeah, yeah,
they wanted to work. Congratulations. Um. The heat points out

(04:07):
that droughts are fairly natural. There's a lot of debate
over whether climate change exacerbates droughts. Um, but for the
most part, droughts are natural. They're seasonal, they're temporal. They
come and go or in some cases they just stay
and then you got a desert and it's it becomes
a natural disaster when you apply humanity to it. Kind

(04:30):
of like do you remember those overhead projectors and they
would have transparencies, so there could be like different they
could overlay stuff, so so you have drought transparency, it's
just whatever. But then you overlay humanity on it and
then it becomes a natural disaster. Yeah, I thought that
was a pretty good point actually, when that Robert made
um in and of itself. If there were no humans,

(04:53):
that would be a drought. Um. The land would dry
up in certain regions, Animals would leave because there's no water.
But it's like who cares not humans, Vegetation would die
or the few animals that could stay would stay, and
the few plants that could still grow would grow, and
then that would just be the new ecosystem, right, and
then no big potentially, if it wasn't permanent, it would

(05:15):
shift back and the the the life would come back
to the area. But again, humans, like you said, wouldn't
give a big whoop if it wasn't for humans living everywhere,
growing crops everywhere, and using tons and tons of water
mostly to grow those crops. So we've talked about this
again and again, but um, if what I saw the

(05:38):
most recent stead I came across, of the global supply
of fresh water is used to irrigate crops, and of
that only half is reused, is captured and reused, So
that means we lose a lot of water to agriculture,

(05:59):
and agriculture is kind of leaky, you could put it
that way. Um. And the fact that we try to
grow crops everywhere and use a bunch of the freshwater
creates this kind of vicious cycle that exacerbates droughts or
at the very least, UM makes our reliance on climate
to not be droughty really really, um really important. Yes,

(06:26):
I just put a lot of words together and their
sense in there somewhere it makes total sense. Like, just
go back and listen to that last sense a few
times everybody. They'll finally come through. Uh. It is serious business, though,
and very sad and devastating. Between fifty and a hundred
thousand people uh died in two thousand eleven in East
Africa with their drought, and right here in the US

(06:46):
we have suffered through uh some pretty rough drought here
in the last fifty years, um. And two thousand twelve
they said it was the worst conditions in fifty years.
And corn production. Uh, you put a dent in corn production,
that's gonna put a debt in the world markets. Well, yeah,
it's a big deal. America runs on corn in the

(07:06):
worldun con donuts, even dunking donuts have corn in them.
The world to a certain degree runs on America's corn too, Yep,
you know what I mean. Yeah, And when um something
like corn, as we'll see, agriculture gets hit by drought obviously,
and when it gets hit by drought, because of the
globalized marketplace that we live in today, when food prices

(07:27):
go up, some of the poorer countries get priced out
of the market and they see things like food riots
and starvation and all sorts of bad stuff. So droughts
have like terrible effects. It's a snowball effect. And it
seems like I don't I don't know if it's getting
worse and if it is getting worse worse, if it's
anthropogenic or whatever, But there, okay. Texas. In two thousand

(07:47):
and eleven, Texas had the driest year since, which happened
to be the year it started recording this kind of stuff,
so it has it's the driest year on record for Texas.
Two third California had the driest to your own record
thanks to the ridiculously resilient ridge UM, and Australia went
through what's called the Millennium drought from two thousand nine,

(08:11):
they had a terrible drought. They actually, like some places
like Melbourne actually um figured out how to live in
drought conditions to survive and actually keep going pretty well.
And a lot of people are studying what Melbourne did
because they did it so well. That's because Australians are
resourceful and smart people, very resourceful, you know, but not

(08:32):
smart and smart. Okay, I wasn't saying anything. I'm just kidding,
rubbing my eye. I got distracted. So uh well, we
even here in Georgia, we had a pretty wicked drought.
Remember two or three years ago. Do you remember the
governor like lead a prayer circle praying for rain and
it rained? Did it rain? It did rain? And uh

(08:54):
I don't remember that part now it rained, and there
was a lot of hullabaloo because they were like, well
he led the prayer circle on the day where they
call it for like, did it ring? They were praying
because that would be kind of cool, that would be
kind of cool. I don't think that's what happened though, um,
but I do remember that. Yeah, man, there's nothing wrong
with that. Pray for rain, do your rain dance. There

(09:15):
was talk of war between Georgia and Tennessee, and Tennessee
said we have guns. Yeah, And Georgia said, we have guns.
We have guns too, yeah, And there's a tense standoff,
and we left and went to New York City, where
there are no guns. We had something on the books already. Uh.
So let's talk to the basics of drought. UM. Drought

(09:37):
is obviously when it doesn't rain enough to sustain uh,
the ecosystem like it should. It's basically you're losing water
through evaporation, which is when water vaporizes or transporation, when
water moves, you know, through the soil and through the
plants and then leaves, and it's not so useful to us, right,

(09:57):
So you're losing water faster faster than it's being replenished. Yeah,
that is a drought. And again this is this is
all viewed through the lens of humanity. Like water isn't
lost when it goes through the soil. It is to
us until we get it out of an awkwifer that's
being replenished. Um. But it's not necessarily lost unless you

(10:19):
really look at it through the human lens. Uh. And
there are many many factors that go into whether or
not a drought occurs and how long it lasts. UM.
Here are a few immediate causes. One is high pressure zones. UM.
Sinking air means you get a high pressure zone, which
means you have clear skies and warmer temperatures. And if

(10:41):
that stalls over a region, then UM more water is
going to evaporate, so that is gonna exacerbate the problem.
That's like the ridiculously resilient ridge over California. UM. From
I think two, it was just this high pressure zone
that just said I'm sticking around here for a while.

(11:02):
And not only was it did it lead to like
high temperatures and low humidity because it's a high pressure zone. UM,
it also blocked tropical cyclones that normally are brought to
California by the westerlies. It just shot him up toward
the Arctic or down towards Mexico and California for two
different reasons, didn't get precipitation, and it's still in a

(11:25):
pickle as a result. Well, usually when you have a
prolonged drought, you can point to a number of factors,
like the ironically a perfect storm that causes no storm.
Another reason is UM air pollution. UH, there's a decade
long study completed I think in two thousand thirteen UM

(11:47):
from the University of Maryland h go terps UH and
they found that air air particulate, which UH is pollution
dusts at sulfates UM produces more UH intense storms and
wet areas, or it leads to more intense storms and
wet areas and reduces rain and drier areas. So basically

(12:08):
just again exacerbates whatever is normally going on there. It
creates weather extremes, creates weather extremes. That's a great way
to say it. That's weird though, because so particulate matter. Yeah,
I'm trying to figure this out, so the they don't know,
the mechanism is uncertain, so there is no answer. If

(12:31):
that was your question, I'm abandoning figuring it out. Then UH.
And then here in the southeast one causes wind blowing
inward from the ocean is usually good thing because that
brings in from the Atlantic on the eastern seaboard, brings
in warm, humid temperatures and UH in the summertime. And
if they shift or weaken, then they're going to bring

(12:51):
in less moisture and less rainfall. And I think that
is what happened was a wind shift, and uh, whenever
it was we had our drought, wind was it was,
It may have been something like that around then. Yeah,
I mean it was fairly severe. Um. I just remember
all the lakes were way down and they I don't

(13:12):
think we got to the point where they were had
forced rationing, but they were advising everyone and asking everyone
to be better Stewart's It was a big deal. Everybody
was really nervous. I think the lake where Atlantic gets
his fresh art was down like twelve feet or something
like that. There was serious stuff. Um did you you

(13:35):
talked about like like changes in um in different areas
from did you did you mention Lno? Do you remember
that Chris Farley when he was El Nino back in
the nineties. It's like, I am el Nino, which means
the Nino in Spanish, so you know what that is.

(13:57):
I sort of remember that. There's a documentary on about
him now, which I'm eager to see. I haven't checked that.
I forgot about that. I want to see that as well. Um,
so El Nino is actually um named for little baby Jesus.
Did you know that? I did not know that. Yeah,
back in the sixteen hundred Spanish fishermen um off the
coast of Mexico. UM named it El Nino because it

(14:21):
was this weird arrival of really warm water in December
in the winter months. They're like, oh, well, obviously it's
the christ Child, so they named it El Nino. And
that is when there's warmer than average water temperatures in
the tropics around like basically off the coast of Mexico, right,

(14:42):
and those warm the air and create wetter than average
conditions in some parts of the US and other parts
of the world, and drier than average conditions in the
other parts. And then there's the reverse of that, La Nina.
That's right, and that's colder than average temperatures of those
places that normally get wetter than normal and drier than

(15:03):
normal are flip flopped. But either way you get extreme
weather events like floods and droughts from this. And they
aren't exactly certain what creates this, just that they're pretty
sure it's natural. Yeah, well, actually they do have a
decent idea. UM. In two thousand three, something happened, which

(15:26):
the same thing happened in the nineteen fifties when we
suffered a pretty bad drought in the US. Uh, there
were there are two ocean cycles that basically flip flopped,
the Pacific Decadal oscillation and the Atlantic multi decadal oscillation.
And these things flip back and forth basically over time,
and they cause either more rain or less rain. And

(15:48):
the p d O is what causes the shift in
those surface ocean temperatures. So what what causes the shift
the Pacific decatal oscillation? Okay, so but what caused these
things to flip flop? Well, they just flip flop periodically
over over time. Basically. Um, I don't buy that though,
Like something makes those things flip flop. Well, yeah, maybe so,

(16:09):
I don't know. I mean, that's what I want to answers.
Some people probably say that's just the cycle of nature.
I guess, so that's a cop out. But they say
that every twenty to thirty years, Uh, this is gonna happen.
And when you combine them with with other factors, is
it basically gives everything a boost? Is and that's what
creates an Yeah, that's what they think. It's more like

(16:31):
it works in concert with El Nino and Lennia. So
these things have happened at the same time, which is
the reason California is in such a droute right now.
So you have the warrn p d O plus El
Nino means it's gonna be wetter and cooler. Uh p
d O plus Lninia equals dryer and uh laninia is
influenced by the trade winds basically blowing on top of

(16:54):
the water. I think you already said that. It just
like circulates that water and the deep water comes up
to the purpose. Yes, chili, yeah, from chili or it's
chili water, chili water. So um, chuck. There's different categories
or people loved categorize stuff, right and um, there's actually

(17:15):
different categories of the categories for droughts. A little bit
of a brain buster, but um, you can kind of
subdivide the categories for droughts into um, geographical or seasonal
descriptions and then descriptions of drought severity. Right. So with
the geographical or seasonal description, it's kind of like, here's

(17:35):
an area, and this is the kind of drought conditions
you can expect. So there is a permanent drout, which
is basically what you think of with the desert. It's
a place that gets a minimal amount of precipitation and
it never catches up to the amount of evaporation or
Transporation's right, So that's just it's just always dry there,

(17:58):
permanent drought. It's an arid, climb air climate. Uh. And
then next you have seasonal drought, which is like a
drought comes dry conditions come on a predictable um calendar. Yeah,
like the dry season of the wet season in the country. Uh.
Those two are pretty standard. Um, no big surprises there.

(18:19):
But the next couple, Um, you almost said no big
whoop again? Almost did you saw that? My mouth went
Unpredictable drought is when there are irregular dry spells where
it's usually humid or rainy. Um. And then invisible drought.
I had never heard of that. I think that's fascinating.
That's when it is raining and you think, how can

(18:39):
we be in a drought because it's raining. It just
means it's it's too hot probably and it's not raining
enough because too much evaporation and transporations going on. So
it's invisible to the naked eye. It's like being skinny
fat to where you like you're the thin on the outside,
but your liver's got a ton of fat. All over it. Oh,
I thought you're gonna talk about the people that have
like really thin faces but from the neck and they

(19:00):
have weight. No, I hate those people. Oh, chuck, you're
going to get some mail for that. No, I hate
those people. I'm jealous of those people because I have
a big, fat face. Like, there's no picture I can take.
I could show my legs or my arms, and people say,
what a thin guy. You know, I think you look great,
but everything from my nose to my waist gives me away.

(19:21):
I'm gonna do that. I canna start posting pictures of
my legs in my arms like Danny DeVito, he always
does the troll foot that still have a nice, small,
tiny butt too. We've all noticed. I'm gonna take pictures
of that. It's the talk of the office. Um, everyone's
pictures of yourself. Everyone's body is fine. I'm not body shaming,
all right, that's good. What I'm saying is I'm jealous

(19:42):
of people with thin faces. All So, we got we
got one category down, which describes like a region in area,
although invisible drought doesn't really fit into that. But what
als okay? Um the next group of categories. Um man,
I sound like we're we're using an overhead projector this

(20:03):
is this dry, it's appropriately dry for the drought episode. Well,
you have to go through these, you know, it's part
of it. Okay, So the other these these categories make
sense to me. They described like the severity of a drought, right,
and you can pretty much go from one to the
other and it makes sense. So like a meteorological drought,
it basically says that you know, this week, this this

(20:27):
time last year, we had about an inch and a
half more rain than we got this year so far,
no big whoop. Basically, my brother in law also named Josh,
would notice this kind of thing because he's a little
bit of a weather bug. Yeah, I like weather bugs. Okay,

(20:47):
well you would like Josh, and he's one of the
few things, a few people besides like maybe a meteorologist
who would notice this, which is why it's called the
meteorological drought. That's right, Like you would have to be
really paying attention to even notice that. That's right. Okay,
that's stage one. Yes, Stage two is an agricultural drought,
and that is when you're talking about crops and agriculture

(21:09):
is going to be one of the first industries are
parts of the world affected by drought obviously, so this
is when farmers are starting to notice. You might hear
a news blurb or two if there had been drought
in the news, but it still hasn't. Like you're not
walking around the streets talking about it yet. No, just
farmers and Josh are speaking to one another about the drought.

(21:30):
That's right, what's next, Josh, the hydrological drought. This is
when like we start to notice, and that's when you're like, hey, man,
I went to my lake house this weekend and it's
all ugly. Yeah, like play red muddy junk everywhere. I
can see the submerged buildings. The underwater cities are visible,

(21:50):
like in Lakelander. You know there's a town down there?
Oh yeah, yeah, you didn't know that. I don't think
so there's a town down there. When Lake Lanar gets
low enough you can see it. You can see a
Gulf seventies six sign sticking up out of the lake. Yeah,
like the old like ball one that's orange with the blue.
What was the town like some part of Buford or something.

(22:11):
I guess. Interesting, you didn't know there's a town and
under lake Lin hear I didn't. Didn't that Creepsville about creepy?
It's creepy. I think it's cool. I mean if there
were people living down there with gills, that was creepy.
So the point is, Chuck, that we notice the people
with gills. Notice everybody starts to notice the hydrological drought.

(22:33):
It's like the talk of town. Um. And then the
next step is where it gets really really bad socioeconomic drought.
This is when the government tends to step in and say,
you who have odd number um addresses can water on
Tuesday's Thursdays. Those of you with even addresses can water

(22:53):
on Monday Wednesdays. Or it can flip flop. It depends
on your local government. True, isn't that set in stone? Right?
But the point is is, Um, there are now restrictions
taking place. There are now things being enforced. Their people
are are being asked to cut back, and and the
reason why is because there you're we're seeing a real
effect like through the economy. Yeah, like Robert points out,

(23:16):
something I've never really thought of. A tourism of course,
is gonna dry up with the water in some places.
UH food shortages, UM shipping maybe affected, UH imports and exports,
and in less developed parts of the world, that can
be really bad. Here in the US it may just
mean socioeconomic annoyance, but in other parts of the world

(23:38):
that could lead to political unrest and armed conflict and
panic and disease and like really really bad stuff. Right,
So that's socioeconomic drought. And uh, let's take a break
and let's talk a little bit about other effects of
drought in the dust bowl right after this, So, Chuck,

(24:11):
we kind of just gave some overview of like how
drought works or how bad it can get. That's right,
So what causes this? I mean, we talked about whether
being a factor. Obviously there's not a lot we can
do with that. You know, we have we have our
how weather modification works episode that we did and a
TV show based on that too, a TV episode. Um,

(24:34):
but not everybody agrees that, say, like cloud seating works.
Some people say it really really works, other people say
it doesn't really work. Yeah, we talked about cloud seating
a couple of times. I think it's been used, um
to affect during wartime to wash out trails. Supposedly, Yeah,
yea right, that's what they say. But what I don't

(24:56):
know everyone's not convinced. So when it comes to things
like El Nino or law Nina, as it stands now
at our primitive technological place in human history, there's not
much we can do about that. Um. The most we
can hope to do is really kind of figure out
what causes drought in other ways and if see if

(25:18):
we can do anything about that. And the UM person
in the hot seed or the thing in the hot seat,
as far as that goes right now, is climate change.
And there's a big debate over um whether we can
do anything about drought conditions through climate change and all
that has to do with CEO two supposedly. Yeah, well,

(25:40):
between the last five decades, between nineteen fifty and two thousand,
worthy warmest in six hundred years in the United States
temperature wise, and UM, I'm sorry, I think that's globally,
but in the US and the Southwest they are proticting
a rise um as much as nine degrees by the
year UM and that as accompanied by the two degree

(26:02):
two degree one point four degree rise over the past
one years. So what they think is that as more
and more c O two enters the atmosphere, this rise
and temperature that it creates from this greenhouse effect, UM
will actually create drought like conditions. And one of the
ways that it will create drought like conditions is by

(26:25):
creating high pressure areas which remember don't have UM a
lot of humidity, they have high temperatures, they're dry conditions,
and they also UM simultaneously. UM this denser air and
dense air above it, right, or warmer air above it
prevents the air below it from rising, right, because that's
how winds and and UM currents air currents are formed.

(26:51):
Warm air near the tropics rises and replaces the cooler
air to create this cycle. Right, that's right. Well, if
the air above it is equally warm, the air below
can't rise. And when you have a lot of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, that air in the middle I
think in the mesosphere UM stays warm. So you've got

(27:11):
a big chunk of the atmosphere just hanging out around
the earth surface. And when the upwelling doesn't happen, you
don't have the upwelling action. That also creates thunderstorms and
generates large amounts of torrential rain, which really helps things
when you have droughts. So they think and this is
all just a conjecture at this point. But that's the

(27:32):
big explanation for how climate change can lead to drought
like conditions, and that if we can reduce the amount
of C O two in the atmosphere, we can conceivably
reverse those drought like conditions. Well, and don't they think
that climate changes in general causes more severe everything like
your storms and stream flooding and uh so, I mean

(27:55):
it's definitely something to consider. Yeah, sure, try to tiptoe
around this one. Is there is a debate? Not really No, No,
it's basically fraudulent. Whether there's a debate over whether climate
change is real. The climate change is real, like almost
all scientific consensus is that it's a human cost or not,
and whether we can do anything about it. There is

(28:15):
there no debate about any of that. No, there's debate still,
but it's not real debate, Like the scientific community is
generally in in agreement that there is climate change and
that it is a real problem. Um, I don't know
what the consensus is on whether we could do anything
about it. I think probably most people would say we

(28:36):
should at least try. It's worth trying. Sure, why wouldn't you, Well,
a lot of people say that you shouldn't because it
will affect like economics progress, or say, for example, like China,
UM say the US is like, oh, hey, we're laying
off of greenhouse gas emitting stuff and we're getting a
little greener. You guys should too, And China would say, well,

(28:58):
you guys kind of got to this point by spitting
a ton of C O two into the atmosphere. It's
China's time. Yeah, ghost it over there and be as
green as you want, leave us alone. Right. There's a
lot of political land mines to two trapes around sure, um,
and in getting everybody on board to reducing the climate

(29:20):
footprint or the carbon footprint of humanity. Yeah. What what
riles me is when you see, usually in social media,
when someone said, you know, in the wintertime, like the
coldest winner that's seen in years. You know, so much
for global warning, warming, warning, warming, a warning? How about that?
Maybe they should change the name? Is that a Freudian slip?

(29:42):
But there's a great video that Neil de grass Tyson does, um,
you can find it on YouTube, about the difference between
weather and climate because those are two entirely different things.
And he does this little thing on the beach with
a dog. That's great. And that Neil de grass Tyson
way with his shirt mostly on. Well he's on the
beach of course. Uh, he's got on his clam diggers,

(30:04):
you know, his Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned. And he is a
cool cat. He is a cool cat. But he um. Yeah,
he explains it very simply, the difference between weather and climate.
So before you go say something dumb like it's super
cold on in June so there's no global warming, just
go watch that video. That's my recommendation. And I want

(30:27):
to recommend a book called Merchants of Doubt right now
I'm reading, and it's about how, um, the tobacco industry,
climate change, DENI all, all this stuff, um is largely
the result of pr Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it is a
very interesting book actually, and I think there's a documentary
based on it that just came out to If you
don't like reading, who does do? Um? Robert points out

(30:52):
to in this article, Uh, predicting drought isn't really something
you can do necessarily. Um. You can predict seasonal out
a month or so out, and you can, I guess
you can predict certain conditions that like right now, they're
saying that California is probably in trouble for the next
twenty to thirty years. Like, I don't think they see
an end in sight because of the various climate factors

(31:14):
going on. It's not like, I mean, any rain would help.
But it's not like a rainy few weeks here and
there is going to do make much of an impact, right,
It's pretty scary out there. Well, that's one reason why
they're studying, for example, Melbourne, Australia or Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
I'm not quite sure how you say it properly. Um,
but under this drought, this millennium drought, Melbourne dropped their

(31:37):
water usage by like under drought conditions, and they did
it through like local recycling programs. Apparently one really effective
program was electronic billboards that said, like the shared reservoir
is at likeent of capacity right now, Like here's what
don't forget what's gonna happen if we all run out

(31:58):
of water, So like recycle your water, use gray water
to water your plants, that kind of stuff, um, And
it worked really really well. They should just do dumb
in photographics for Americans as like the water getting lower
and then like dead people at the bottom. Here's where
we're headed. Does it make sense to you now, person

(32:20):
watering your lawn and be like Los Angeles, there's a
lot of dead people in our reservoir, buried at the bottom.
I think I two read a little bit about the
l a drought or Southern California in general, that they're
they're not making enough headway with their conservation measures right now,
Like it's not putty much of a dent into it,

(32:41):
like their public campaigns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, selfish people still
watering their stuff. Well, it's the law of the comments,
Like supposedly any shared resource people are just like, let
everybody else can serve. I'll be I'll be fine, give
me everything I need. This little bit doesn't make a difference. Yeah,
And they were this this article, I think it was

(33:03):
a Scientific American article. I was reading about Melbourne being
so successful. One of the ways they were being so
successful was taking this shared resource, this reservoir and saying,
like all of us share this, and it's down to
this level. So are you going to be the jerk
who like makes a drop even more by taking more
than your fair share? Um, the one of the jerk

(33:25):
that should be their campaign. One of the problems is
this California isn't just have a just a single shared reservoir.
They get their water from a number of different sources. Yeah. Um,
so that's kind of that that would be tough to
like hit that same note with California. Yeah, but as
goes California, as goes the US economies, I think, uh

(33:45):
some estimates say California is the eighth largest economy in
the world, the state of California. Oh yeah, so I've
heard that before. Dire consequences potentially, So let's take one
more break, Chuck, and then when we come back, we're
gonna talk about dire consequence is indeed from the nineteen
thirties in the United States, that's ka the dust Bowl.

(34:20):
So I teased the dust Bowl in the beginning, and
then we didn't get to it. But now we're getting
to this is just and I became a little uh no,
just keeping people on the hook. I became super interested.
When I was in Oklahoma recently went to the Woody
Guthrie Museum in Tulsa, which is great, by the way,
and they had a whole section on the dust Bowl.

(34:41):
And I didn't know much about it. I mean I
knew generally it was a drought and dusty, but I
hadn't looked into it too much. And since then I've
studied on it some and watched the great Ken Burns
documentary on the dust Bowl. It was very good. You
know those parts of that um appear in uh Interstellar?
Oh really with their clips of that, Yeah, I don't remember.

(35:03):
I couldn't. They'd play it like it's people really like Interstellar. No,
not really. I loved that movie. Yeah, I love it.
I thought that was such a great movie. Yeah, I
really didn't like it. I had a lot of problems
with it. I loved it. My My biggest problem with
it was just just do the let the viewer figure

(35:25):
out the movie. Like I felt like every ten minutes
somebody was explaining something, same guy, same problem. I don't
think so, man, I didn't run into that. You know
how much I hated that part in an inception. When
you watch Interstellar again, just make a little note anytime
someone explains what's going on, and you'll have like twenty
times written down on your little note pad. I guess

(35:46):
I didn't. It didn't bother me in this one bother me.
And it's not like I have anything against Ellen Page
in particular. Oh, sure you do. You you're a juno hater.
Has nothing to do with Ellen Page. Now, I'm just
joking anyway, I no, I just for some reason it
didn't stick out to me in Diristellar. I just thoroughly
enjoyed that movie. Well good, I'm glad you did. I

(36:07):
want to rain under Parade anyway, that parts of the
ken Burns documentary show up in Aristellar, But it's great
just on its own. Um. And the reason we bring
up the dust Bowl is because it's actually it's larger
than just a drought. People tend to think of it
as a drought, but it's actually, um one of the

(36:29):
one of the it demonstrates things you can do to
prevent drought from becoming the worst case scenario, which is
exactly what happened with the dust Bowl. Yeah, it was.
It was one of the worst natural disasters in the
United States history, for sure. Yeah. And it was just
one natural disaster compounding another and another and another. And

(36:50):
what happened actually starts in the nineteenth century when America
was undergoing its westward expansion, and um, the US government
passed the Homestead acts, and these UM gave land grants
to Western settlers, UM, who wanted to set up farms
of between a hundred and sixty and then later on

(37:12):
three twenty acres, which sounds like a lot, but they're
actually not when you start thinking about these massive states
like Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas and all of US. UM.
And so what happened was eventually these plain states, the
semi arid grassland was carved up into a huge patchwork

(37:35):
of smaller farms, and UM people started farming and things
started going really well. The land became productive very quickly. Yeah.
And and at first things, UM, they were farming somewhat sustainably.
You know, they still had grasses and still had cattle
grazing on these grasses, which is all good stuff. And

(37:56):
these are these are native grasses that were driver resistant already.
They were acclama in to this again semiar climate. That's right.
So let's flash forward or fast forward a bit, um
to post World War One in the nineteen twenties. UM,
there was a recession and farmers all of a sudden said,
you know what, we can get these new machines and

(38:18):
use these new mechanized farming techniques to try and make
more money and turn some of this grass into wheat. Yeah,
Because I mean if you if you have like a
ho right and you're just hacking away at this semi
ara ground, you're gonna be like, I've got acres, but
I'm just gonna farm twenty of them because this is

(38:38):
a ton of work, you know. Um, But if you
can go buy a plow and some oxen and the
later on a tractor to drag those plows, um, you
can turn all three d and twenty acres into productive
crop land. Yeah. And so they overproduce wheat. Yeah, there
was a there was a bumper crop year in nineteen

(39:00):
are so many farmers bought so many plows and used
these mechanized methods of farming that there was a bumper
crop of wheat, so much so that the price of
wheat plummeted. And it just so happened that there was
a recession, like you said, at the same time, So
there was an oversupply of wheat and an under demand
for it because everybody's broke, that's right, And so everybody said,

(39:22):
well what do you do. You just slant more wheat,
plant more wheat. Yeah. Basically expand your farms so to
try and turn a profit. And so all of a sudden,
all these drought resistant grasses were no more. Uh, there
was wheat everywhere. And apparently wheat does not jibe. Um,
that quantity of wheat doesn't jibe with the natural landscape. Uh.

(39:45):
And the soil became dusty and dry, and uh you
couple that with a drought which hit hard over the
period of like three years and high winds and everything
blew away. Yes, so a hundred billion acres of topsoil
ended up blowing away, like just blew away. It wasn't
there any longer. All that was left was the rocky

(40:07):
subsoil like blue to the east coast. Yes. Um, some
of it blew to California, depending on where the winds Blue.
Some blew all the way to Washington, d C. Which
actually proved to be for two it is because that
got Congress's attention. And um, these things were called black blizzards.
And there's man, you've seen the footage. It's just amazing
when these huge, towering clouds of black dust were just

(40:32):
coming towards these what looked like these tiny little miniature houses. Um,
it doesn't look real no, it doesn't. But this really
happened on the Great Plains in the thirties. Yeah, we're
talking a hundred and fifty thousand square miles over Oklahoma
are parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
And the drought itself was from thirty four to thirty

(40:55):
seven and sixty sixty of the population. Yeah, a lot
of them moved to California. California wasn't very happy. A
lot of them left. Their farms were just broke. Basically,
they were um like the first generation to find themselves
underwater because a lot of them again remember like there
was this this drive UM to make more money by

(41:20):
producing more wheat even though there was an over abundance
of wheat UM. So they really over leveraged themselves by
borrowing more for farm equipment and farm hands and farm
supplies and UM. When the bottom fell out on the
wheat market, they were over extended and their homes and
farms got four closed on. So they are like all

(41:42):
these people who were just at one Like just a
little while back, we're farming middle class people were now
like UM homeless and on um root sixty six and
basically doing the grapes of wrath thing. Yeah. I mean,
like you said, a lot of them moved west. Uh
and I think you said that California was not so

(42:03):
happy with that. About ten percent of them ended up
in California, And um, it was not a great time
for the country as a whole. So they they didn't
want all these new people they call them Oakey's even
though about we're from Oklahoma. Uh, they want them coming
in there trying to get their jobs. Uh. And it
was it was bad news all the way around in California. So. Um.

(42:25):
And actually, what's a pretty good, pretty good example of
the federal government doing something really really right. Um, they
stepped in, Actually FDR stepped in with the New Deal,
um and created a lot of measures that tried to
alleviate the worst effects of the dust Bowl. And one

(42:45):
of the things that they did really really well was
create the Soil Conservation Service. Yeah. That was a nineteen
thirty five and basically strict instructions to farmers to uh
plant grass, plant trees, how to plow, how terrace, um,
how to hold rain water, how to portion off your farmland, um,
and not just grow wheat over every square inch of it, right, yeah,

(43:09):
leaves some land to be fallow and regenerate after UM
one year of production or a couple of years of production.
UM And one of the other big pushes that's still
going on these days is no till farming. One of
the big problems that they that they did with with
by knocking out these these grasslands was first they got
rid of the native grasses that were good at holding

(43:31):
the top soil in place, but then they actually killed
the top soil and loosen the whole structure of everything,
so it was easy to blow away when these strong
winds came in. UM. And apparently top soil takes something
like I've seen in a few places five hundred years
to produce one inch of new top soil, So once

(43:52):
it blew away, it wasn't coming back UM And I'm
not quite sure how they've replenished it since then. I mean,
I know that these oil conservation measures are helping, but
I mean, is it just grassland that's growing on subsoils
still for the next couple of hundred years. I don't know,
you know what, I know that somebody out there knows that,
though some farmer I do know that they said by

(44:14):
the early nineteen forties, much of that land had been rehabilitated. UM.
And not only did the government step in and still
install install a lot of new laws and measures, but
they also bought a lot of land. Um. Yeah, about
eleven million acres just to you know, keep it grassy

(44:34):
and stable. Um. And the new deal brought it wasn't
just the Soil Conservation Service UM. The we won't get
into all these, but the Works Progress Administration was created. Uh.
The I think the SCS is now the Natural Resources
Conservation Service. Uh. And they just you know, they really
stepped in and said, we can't let this happen again,

(44:57):
even though the nineteen fifties there was another bad draft.
But I think, yeah, the measure that I remember in
the seventies, that's why we have skateboarding. Oh yeah, that's right.
I mean not completely, but it's when they went to
the swimming pools because they were empty in California. But
thanks to those measures, things in the fifties and seventies
didn't reach the levels that they did in and UM.

(45:17):
I read this really great article called Rethinking the dust Bowl,
and I can't remember where it's from, but it's posted
on the podcast page for this episode on our site, UM,
and it was basically saying like this was a really
good example of the government stepping in taking really good measures, UM,
because ultimately what created the dust bowl was parceling out

(45:38):
the great planes into these small farms. If you're a
small farmer, taking soil conservation measures is not economically beneficial
to you, You're not gonna see a lot of the benefits,
and it's going to be very expensive, right, And if
you're just a small farmer, it doesn't matter. Your farm
doesn't matter. But if you put a bunch of small
farms together and no one taking soil conservation measures, then

(46:02):
what you have, as far as from an ecological standpoint,
is one gigantic farm with no soil conservation measures. And
that's what set up the Great Planes for the desk.
Bol federal government came in and said, you guys are
small farmers. You don't have to be big farmers, but
we're gonna put a bunch of you together to form
what's called the soil Conservation District. And we're going to

(46:23):
say if you plant these trees for wind breaks and
you do these other soil conservation techniques, we're going to
subsidize your farms, and it worked really well, and a
lot of small farmers got these subsidies and the great
planes was saved. Hooray. Right, But then the same article
is like, this is also a really good example of
how the federal government doesn't work because as smaller and

(46:44):
smaller farms were bought by bigger and bigger farms and
consolidated into like big Agra, these subsidies are still available
for these farms and farming companies that would have carried
out these measures anyway, because they would directly bend of
fit from the money that they put into it. They're
still getting government subsidies from it. So it was like

(47:05):
it worked really well at first. Now it's not working anymore.
It's just kind of a waste of money. They should
have had a stipulation in there though, that like farms
of certain size or something. I don't know, should have,
should have, could have, would have. I found that really interesting.
I can totally get why you suggested this dust Bowl
Drought episode. Yeah, it's a good stuff. We've had a

(47:26):
lot of um asks for this one lately. So have
you got anything else, sir, Well, if you want to
know anything else about the dust Bowl and droughts and
that kind of stuff. Go to how stuff works. Type
those words into the search bar and it will bring
all this up. Uh. And since I said search bar,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this batty

(47:48):
email from a bat bat guy. Um. Hey, guys, my
bat biologist specializing and threatened an endangered species in the
Eastern US. It's a great episode and you nailed it,
especially the section on at a location. I'll add that
while most insect divorous, insectivorous bats do catch their prey
while on the wing, um some have specialized to flutter

(48:11):
slowly and their echo locations are so sensitive and high pitched,
and they're hearing so sensitive that the bats can glean
insects from vegetation in the darkness. This could be in
response to stealthy moss that have learned to sense at
echolocation in evade round and round goes the predator prey
arms race. One clarification, though, is regarding the effect of

(48:31):
white nose syndrome. You said in the podcasts that the
itch is what wakes the bats from hibernation. It's more
that the bats immune system is ramped up by the
late stage fungal infection in their metabolic requirements are beyond
what they have prepared for. The damaged wing membranes are
especially susceptible to evaporate water loss, and most hibernation interrupted

(48:51):
bats are thought to die of lack of water rather
than lack of food. Additionally, new studies indicate that the
clinical signs are in stages of the disease and that
the chemical imbalances caused internal damage before the visible fungal
high fai DO. One mechanism for this is chronic respiratory
acidosis caused by increased dissolved CEO two levels in the blood. Wow, man,

(49:17):
I told you it's a bat biologist. Listen to you
guys every day. Uh and have taken s y s
k onto the woods on bat surveys more than once.
Thanks for the pot that we've been on a bat survey.
It's a great balancing act of fact and b s
of to each their own and holding humanity to a
higher standard. You guys consistently hit it out of the

(49:38):
park man. That is nice. That is from Jason Whittle
and uh my wife's hometown of Akron, Ohio where Lebron
lives to That's right. And you know what, we actually
got our episode shared by um oh boy, now I
can't think of it. The Bat Society. It's the best
society of America, the World Bat Society. There. I can't

(50:02):
remember get along which one, but one of the larger
BAT organizations shared our podcast and was said, we did
a great job. So I thought that was oh man,
that's awesome. Well, thank you, thanks to the Bat Society,
thanks to Jason. It was right Jason witt Um. And
if you want to be cool like Jason and send
us a really interesting email full of tons of facts,

(50:24):
you can do that. You can tweet to us too
at s y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us that email to stuff podcast at how
stuff Works dot com. And in the meantime, you can
hang out at our super cool home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this

(50:47):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com.