August 6, 2022 • 51 mins
Droughts can be an inevitable feature of a local climate or a catastrophic result of human meddling. In this classic episode, learn the ins and outs of droughts including the American mother of them all, the Dust Bowl.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. Chuck here on a lovely Saturday morning. Cut
my cup of hot tea. I'm looking out the window
at a blue sky. The birds are chirping. It's all
gets as far as your select mind goes. And today
we're going to talk about droughts because California is in
(00:22):
the midst of a bad one. And we talked about
that and more in this episode How Droughts Work. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles
(00:44):
W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry the chairs there making copies
and this is stuff you should know. That was a
classic skit, wouldn't you say? And that one of the
only ones I liked by that guy by Rob Schneider.
That wasn't the biggest fan. Uh did you see the
one We're Stinging? He's like staying stingling ling ding ding
(01:09):
making copies. Yeah, it was funny. I mean, I'm not
anti Rob Schneider, but I just wasn't like, how could
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 guts. Yeah.
Uh what a weird intro. Yeah, well, par for the
(01:30):
course pretty much. My friend. Well, although his career has
dried up. Oh that was good and vicious. Man. I
hope he 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
(01:53):
years ago, we did a podcast on micro lending and
we said, hey, let's start a Kiva team. Kiva is
a international lending 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 reloan it. And we
(02:14):
have a very active team. And let's hear some numbers. Okay, so, um,
our team captain Glenn of Glenn and Sonya team captain
Fame sent us some stats recently. We have the stuff
you should know. Team has eight thousand, four hundred and
fifty three members as as of July thirty one. Um,
how much have we loaned so far. Are you ready
(02:36):
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,
that's very good. Here we go. Three million, two hundred
and fifty one thousand, twenty five dollars. Dude, that is crazy. Yep.
And that's out of a hundred and seventeen thousand, five
(02:58):
hundred and thirty nine loans, which is a total of
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 is people get repaid and they just kind of
do what I think we do is just kind of
roll that into another loan. Yeah, you relan it. They
make great gifts. I think at least one person sent
(03:18):
you to Kiva 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. Yep.
It's 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, 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,
(03:40):
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 and Sonia as always for nudging
us in the right direction and keeping up with the stats.
Big help and um and congratulations to our team on
getting the three point to five million dollars and change
(04:01):
and loans. Absolutely. Okay, So droughts, huh, Rob Snyder VA.
Droughts the natural progression of things. Don't forget sting was
in there. Um, all right, let's talk droughts their serious thing. Yeah,
I mean it's uh, it's it's natural disaster is what
(04:22):
it is. It is. Although so Robert Lamb wrote this
article that that forms the basis of this in part. Yeah,
Robert of stuff to blow your mind, Award winning stuff
to blow your mind. Yeah, yeah, they wanted to ward. Congratulations. Um,
the heat points out that droughts are fairly natural. There's
a lot of debate over whether climate change exacerbates droughts UM.
(04:46):
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 human
city to it, kind 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
(05:08):
have drought transparency and 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, that would be a drought um. The
land would dry up in certain regions, Animals would leave
(05:30):
because there's no water, but it's like who cares, you're
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 whoop. Potentially,
if it wasn't permanent, it would shift back and the
life would come back to the area. But again humans,
(05:52):
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,
what I saw the most recent stead I came across
of the global supply of fresh water is used to
(06:17):
irrigate crops, and that only half is reused, is captured
and reused, so that means we lose a lot of
water to agriculture, and 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
(06:37):
bunch of the fresh water creates this kind of vicious
cycle that exacerbates droughts or at the very least, UM
makes our reliance on a climate to not be droughty
really really, um, really important. I just put a lot
of words together and their scents in there somewhere makes
(07:00):
total sense. Like, just go back and listen to that
last sense a few times, everybody, They will 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 we have suffered through uh
some pretty rough drought here in the last fifty years. Um.
(07:22):
In two thousand twelve they said it was the worst
conditions in fifty years in corn production. Uh you put
a dent in corn production, that's gonna put a dent
in the world markets. Well, yeah, it's a big deal.
America runs on corn. Well in the world, condonuts, it's
even dunkndonuts have corn in them. The world to a
(07:42):
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 go up,
some of the poorer country t get priced out of
the market and they see things like food riots and
(08:03):
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 and eleven,
Texas had the driest year since eight, which happened to
be the year it started recording this kind of stuff,
(08:26):
so it's it's the driest year on record for Texas.
Two thirteen, California had the driest year on record thanks
to the ridiculously resilient ridge UM, and Australia went through
what's called the Millennium drought from two thousand nine. They
had a terrible drop. They actually, like some places like
Melbourne actually um figured out how to live in drought conditions,
(08:50):
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 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
(09:13):
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 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 called for like
nine ye did it rain? Wow? They were praying because
(09:37):
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, there's nothing wrong with
that praying for rain. Do your rain dance. There 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,
(09:57):
and we left and went to New York City where
there are no guy, we had something on the books already. Uh.
So let's talk to the basics of drought. Um. Drought
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
(10:21):
water moves you know, through the soil and through the
plants and then leaves and it's not so useful to us, right,
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, so it is
(10:41):
to us until we get it out of an aquifer
that's being replenished. UM. But it's not necessarily lost unless
you 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.
(11:06):
Sinking error means you get a high pressure zone, which
means you have clear skies and warmer temperatures. And if
that stalls over a region, then um, more water is
going to evaporate. So that's 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
(11:29):
just said I'm sticking around here for a while. 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
(11:52):
different reasons, didn't get precipitation, and it's still in a
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
(12:14):
long study completed I think in two thousand thirteen UM
from the University of Maryland go terps UH and they
found that air air particulate, which is pollution dusts at
sulfates um produces more UH intense storms in wet areas,
or it leads to more intense storms and wet areas
(12:35):
and reduces rain and drier areas. So basically just again
exacerbates whatever is normally going on there. It creates weather extremes,
creates weather extremes. It'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
(12:57):
mechanism is uncertain at this point, So there is no answer.
If 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
(13:19):
if they shift or weekend, then they're going to bring
in less moisture and less rainfall. And I think that
is what happened. It was a wind shift. And uh,
whenever it was we had our drought, when was that
was that? It may have been something like that around then. Yeah,
I mean it was fairly severe. Um. I just remember
(13:39):
all the lakes were way down and they I don't
think we got to the point where they were had
forced rationing, but they were advising everyone and asking everyone
to be better stewards. It was a big deal. Everybody
was really nervous. I think that the lake where Atlantic
gets his fresh waters down like twelve feet or something
(13:59):
like that. It there was serious stuff. Um. Did you
you talked about like like changes in um in different
areas from did you did you mentioned lno Nino? Do
you remember that Chris Farley when he was El Nino
(14:19):
back in the nineties. It's like, I am El Nino,
which means the Nino in Spanish, so you know what
that is. I sort of remember that. There's a documentary
on about him now, which I'm eager to see. Oh yeah,
I haven't checked out. 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?
(14:42):
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 was this weird arrival of
really warm water in December in the winter months. So
they're like, oh, well, obviously it's the Christ Child. So
then aimed at El Nino. And that is when there's
(15:03):
warmer than average water temperatures in the tropics around like
basically off the coast of Mexico, right, 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
(15:24):
then there's the reverse of that, La Nina. That's right,
and that's colder than average temperatures. So those places that
normally get wetter than normal and drier than normal or
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,
(15:50):
actually they do have a decent idea. Um, in two
thousand three, something happened, which 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
(16:13):
and forth basically over time, and they cause either more
rain or less rain. And 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,
(16:35):
I don't buy that. They're like something makes those things
flip flop. Well yeah, maybe, so, 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 going to happen. And when
you combine them with with other factors, is it basically
(16:56):
gives everything a boost. Is and that's what creates al
nine or n Yeah, that's what they think. It's more
like it works in concert with Elena 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 Lenno
means it's going to be wetter and cooler. Uh p
(17:16):
d O plus Lninia equals dryer and uh Laninia is
influenced by the trade winds basically blowing on top of
the water. I think you already said that. You're right.
It just like circulates that water and the deep water
comes up to the surface. Chili, Yeah, from chili or
it's chili water chili water, so um, chuck. There's different
(17:40):
categories or people love to categorize stuff, right and um,
there's actually different categories of the categories for droughts. I
thought that was kind of interest, 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 a
(18:02):
geographical or seasonal description, it's kind of like, here's 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. That's right, right,
(18:26):
So that's just it's just always dry there. Permanent drought.
It's an arid climate 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 or the wet season in the country. Uh,
those two are pretty standard. Um, no big surprises there.
(18:49):
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'd never heard of that. I think that's fascinating. That's
when it is raining and you think, how can we
(19:10):
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 transpirations going on, so it's
invisible to the naked eye. It's like being skinny fat
to where you like you'r 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 nick down they
(19:30):
have weight. No, I hate those people. Oh chuck, you're
going to get some mail for that now. I hate
those people. I'm jealous of those people because I have
a big, fat face. Like there's no picture I can say.
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.
(19:51):
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 has 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
(20:12):
of people with thin faces. I got you, all right,
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 is this dry? It's appropriately
(20:36):
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, well, this this time
(20:57):
last year, we had about an inch and a half
more rain than we got this year so far. No
big whoop, no big whoop. Yeah. 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 that
I like weather bugs. Okay, well you would like Josh,
(21:19):
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 trought. That's right, Like
you would have to be really paying attention to even
notice this. 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 is going to be one
(21:40):
of the first industries 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. That's right. What's next, Josh, the hydrological drought.
(22:04):
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 clay
red muddy junk. Everywhere. I can see the submerged buildings.
The underwater cities are visible, like in lakelan near You
know there's a town down there. Oh yeah, yeah, you
(22:25):
didn't know that. I don't think. So there is a
town down there. And when Lake Laner gets low enough
you can see it. You can see a Gulf seventies
six sign sticking up out of the lake. Wow. Yeah,
like the old like ball one that's orange with the
blue seventy. What was the town m like some part
of Buford or something. I guess yea. Interesting. You didn't
know there's a town in under lakelan Ear No, I
(22:46):
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 would be creepy. So the point is, Chuck,
that we notice the people with skills. Notice if everybody
starts to notice the hydrological drought, it's like the talk
of town um. And then the next step is where
(23:07):
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 on Monday Wednesdays,
or it can flip flop. It depends on your local government. True,
(23:31):
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. The people are are being asked to cut back,
and and the reason why it's because there you're we're
seeing a real effect like through the economy. Yeah, like
Robert points out, something I've never really thought of, a
tourism of course, is gonna dry up it with the
(23:51):
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 socio economic annoyance, but in
other parts of the world it could lead to political
unrest and armed conflict and panic and disease and like
(24:15):
really really bad stuff. Right, So that's socio economic 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, we kind of just
(24:47):
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,
(25:07):
a TV episode, UM, 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, and Vietnam. Right, that's what they say,
(25:30):
But why, I don't 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
(25:52):
if see if we can do anything about that. And
the UM person in the hot seat 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, between the last five decades, between
(26:17):
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 predicting a rise UM as much as nine
degrees by the year on UM, and that is accompanied
by the two degree to degree one point four degree
(26:39):
rise over the past one years. So what they think
is that as more and more c O two enters
the atmosphere, this rise in 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 creating high pressure areas which remember
(27:03):
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
(27:25):
are formed. 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
(27:46):
got a big chunk of the atmosphere just hanging out
around the your 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
(28:07):
the 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 ah, so I
(28:29):
mean it's definitely something to consider. Yeah, sure, try to
tiptoe around this one because 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 the debate that it's a human
cost or not, and whether we can do anything about
(28:50):
it or is 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 should at least try. It's worth trying. Sure,
(29:13):
why wouldn't you Well, a lot of people say that
you shouldn't because it will affect like it'll have her
economic 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, you
(29:34):
guys kind of got to this point by spitting a
ton of C O two into the atmosphere. It's China's time,
GHO sit over there and be as green as you want,
leave us alone. There's a lot of political land mines
to two trapes around um in in getting everybody on
board to reducing the climate footprint or the carbon footprint
(29:57):
of humanity. Yeah. What what to me is when you see,
usually on social media, when someone said, you know, in
the wintertime, like the coldest winner 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
Fred slip. Uh. But there's a great video that Neil
(30:19):
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 the grass Tyson way with his shirt mostly
on button Well he's on the beach of course. Uh.
He's got on his clam diggers, you know, his Hawaiian
(30:41):
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. Yeah, that's my recommendation. And uh, I want
(31:03):
to recommend a book called Merchants of Doubt right now
I'm reading and it's about how, um, the tobacco industry,
climate change, TONI 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? Um Robert points out to
(31:27):
in this article, Uh, predicting drought isn't really something you
can do necessarily. Um. You can predict seasonal droughts 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 going on.
(31:51):
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
(32:12):
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 like of capacity right now. Like here's what
don't forget what's gonna happen if we all run out
(32:33):
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
(32:55):
watering your lawn and be like Los Angeles, there's a
lot of dead people in our reservoir are 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
(33:15):
dent into it, 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. Just give me everything I need. This little
(33:35):
bit doesn't make a difference. Yeah, And they were this
this article, I think it was 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
(33:55):
drop even more by taking more than your fair share? Um,
don't be the jerk. That should be their campaign, right.
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,
(34:18):
as goes the US economies, I think. Uh, 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 going to talk
about dire consequences. Indeed from the nineteen thirties in the
United States, that's ka the dust Bowl. So I teased
(35:01):
the dust Bowl in the beginning, and then we didn't
get to it. But now we're getting to This is
just like TV. And I became a little uh oh,
I know, 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. And I didn't know much about it. I mean,
(35:23):
I knew generally it was a drought uh in 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 were their clips of that? Yeah? I don't remember.
(35:43):
I couldn't they play it like it's people really like Interstellar? No,
not really Oh I love that movie. Yeah, I love it.
I thought that was such a great movie. You really
didn't like it. I had a lot of problems with it.
I loved it. My My biggest problem with it was, uh,
just just do the let the viewer figure out the movie.
(36:06):
Like I felt like every ten minutes, somebody was explaining something,
same guy, same problem. I don't think so man 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 back. I guess I didn't. It didn't bother
(36:27):
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, says something to
do with Ellen Page. No, I'm just joking anyway. I know.
I just for some reason, it didn't stick out to
me in Oristellar. I just thoroughly enjoyed that movie. Well good,
I'm glad you did. I want to reign on your
(36:48):
parade anyway. That parts of the Ken Burns documentary show
up in interstellar, 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 one of the It demonstrates
(37:11):
things you can do to prevent drought from becoming the
worst case scenario, which is exactly what happened with the
dust ball. 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 what happened actually starts in the
(37:32):
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 three twenty acres, which sounds like a lot,
(37:55):
but they're actually not when you start thinking about these
massive states like Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas and all of
US UM. And so what happened was eventually these plaine states,
the semi arid grassland was carved up into a huge
patchwork of smaller farms, and um, people started farming and
(38:20):
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
these are these are native grasses that were dry resistant already.
They were acclimated to this again semi arid climate. That's right.
(38:43):
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
use these new mechanized farming techniques to try and make
more money and turn some of this grass into wheat. Yeah.
(39:04):
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 going to farm twenty of them because this
is a 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
(39:27):
turn all three twenty acres into productive crop land. And
so they overproduced wheat. Yeah, there was a there was
a bumper crop year in where so many farmers bought
so many plows and used these mechanized methods of farming
that there's a bumper crop of wheat, so much so
(39:49):
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 that's right,
and so everybody said, well, what do you do. You
just plant more wheat, plant more wheat. Yeah, basically expand
your farms so to try and turn a profit. And
(40:10):
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. In the soil became
dusty and dry, and uh you couple that with a
(40:30):
drought which hit hard over the period of like three
years and high winds and everything blew away. Yes, so
a hundred million acres of top soil ended up blowing
away like just blew away. It wasn't there any longer.
All that was left was the rocky subsoil like blue
to the east coast. Yes, Um, some of it blew
(40:51):
to California depending on where the winds blew. Some blew
all the way to Washington, d C. Which actually proved
to be fortuitous 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 coming towards these what
(41:14):
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 seven and
(41:36):
sixty percent, sixty percent of the population left. Yeah, a
lot of them moved to California. California wasn't very happy.
A lot of them left their farms and we're 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
(42:00):
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, like all these
(42:22):
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 happy
(42:43):
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 Oaky's even though about
we're from Oklahoma. They didn't 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
(43:03):
UM in 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
(43:25):
one 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 to terrace, um,
how to hold rain water, how to portion off your
farmland um. And not just grow wheat over every square
(43:47):
inch of it, right, Yeah, leave 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 arming. 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
(44:09):
grasses that were good at holding the top soil in place.
But then they actually tilled the top soil and loosened
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
(44:30):
new top soil. So once 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
soil conservation measures are helping, but I mean, is it
just grassland that's growing on subsoil still for the next
couple hundred years. I don't know. You know what, I
know that somebody out there knows that, though well, please
(44:52):
some farmer. I do know that they said by the
early nineteen forties much of that land had been rehabilitated. UM.
And not only did the from its step in and
still install install a lot of new laws and measures,
but they also bought a lot of land UM to
take it out of production. Yeah, about eleven million acres
just to you know, keep it grassy and stable. UM.
(45:16):
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, even though in the
(45:37):
nineteen fifties there was another bad drought. But I think, yeah,
the measure that, yeah, 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, I read
(45:57):
this really great article called Rethinking the US 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
(46:18):
the Great Plains 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's taking soil conservation measures, then
(46:41):
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 Bowl.
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 concert Vation District, and we're going to say,
(47:03):
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 smaller
(47:24):
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 benefit from the
money that they put into it. They're still getting government
subsidies from it. So it was like it worked really
(47:46):
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 tell really get why you suggested this dust Bowl
drought episode. Yeah, it's a good stuff. We've had a
(48:06):
lot of um asks for this one lately. So have
you got anything else? No, 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 we'll
bring all this up. Uh. And since I said search bar,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this batty
(48:28):
email from a bat bat guy. Um. Hey, guys, went
bat biologists specializing and threatened an endangered species in the
Eastern US. It's a great episode and you nailed it
especially the section on echolocation. I'll add that while most
in sect devorous, insectivorous bats do catch their prey while
on the wing um, some have specialized to flutter slowly
(48:51):
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 be in response
to stealthy moss that have learned to sense bat echolocation
and evade round and round goes through predator prey arms race.
One clarification, though, is regarding the effect of white nose syndrome.
(49:12):
You said the podcasts that the itch is what wakes
the bats from hibernation. It's more that the bat's immune
system is ramped up by the late stage fungal infection,
in their metabolic requirements are beyond what they have prepared
for the damage. Wing membranes are especially susceptible to evaporate
water loss. In most hibernation interrupted bats are thought to
die of lack of water rather than lack of food. Additionally,
(49:35):
new studies indicate that the clinical signs are in stages
of the disease and that the chemical imbalances cause internal damage.
Before the visible fungal high fade. DO one mechanism for
this is chronic respiratory acidosis caused by increased dissolved CEO
two levels in the blood. Wow, man, I told you
(49:57):
it's a bat biologist. Listen to you guys every day.
Uh And I've taken s y s k onto the
woods on bat surveys more than once. Thanks for the PA.
We've been on a bat survey before. 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 park. Man, that
(50:20):
is nice. That is from Jason Whittle and uh, my
wife's hometown of Akron, Ohio and 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. Can't remember which one, but one
(50:44):
of the larger bat organizations shared our podcast and was
I 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 whittle Um And if you want to be cool
like Jason and send us a really interesting email full
of tons of facts, you can do that. You can
(51:05):
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.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
(51:26):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hi, everybody. Chuck here on a lovely Saturday morning. Cut
my cup of hot tea. I'm looking out the window
at a blue sky. The birds are chirping. It's all
gets as far as your select mind goes. And today
we're going to talk about droughts because California is in
(00:22):
the midst of a bad one. And we talked about
that and more in this episode How Droughts Work. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles
(00:44):
W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry the chairs there making copies
and this is stuff you should know. That was a
classic skit, wouldn't you say? And that one of the
only ones I liked by that guy by Rob Schneider.
That wasn't the biggest fan. Uh did you see the
one We're Stinging? He's like staying stingling ling ding ding
(01:09):
making copies. Yeah, it was funny. I mean, I'm not
anti Rob Schneider, but I just wasn't like, how could
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 guts. Yeah.
Uh what a weird intro. Yeah, well, par for the
(01:30):
course pretty much. My friend. Well, although his career has
dried up. Oh that was good and vicious. Man. I
hope he 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
(01:53):
years ago, we did a podcast on micro lending and
we said, hey, let's start a Kiva team. Kiva is
a international lending 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 reloan it. And we
(02:14):
have a very active team. And let's hear some numbers. Okay, so, um,
our team captain Glenn of Glenn and Sonya team captain
Fame sent us some stats recently. We have the stuff
you should know. Team has eight thousand, four hundred and
fifty three members as as of July thirty one. Um,
how much have we loaned so far. Are you ready
(02:36):
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,
that's very good. Here we go. Three million, two hundred
and fifty one thousand, twenty five dollars. Dude, that is crazy. Yep.
And that's out of a hundred and seventeen thousand, five
(02:58):
hundred and thirty nine loans, which is a total of
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 is people get repaid and they just kind of
do what I think we do is just kind of
roll that into another loan. Yeah, you relan it. They
make great gifts. I think at least one person sent
(03:18):
you to Kiva 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. Yep.
It's 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, 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,
(03:40):
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 and Sonia as always for nudging
us in the right direction and keeping up with the stats.
Big help and um and congratulations to our team on
getting the three point to five million dollars and change
(04:01):
and loans. Absolutely. Okay, So droughts, huh, Rob Snyder VA.
Droughts the natural progression of things. Don't forget sting was
in there. Um, all right, let's talk droughts their serious thing. Yeah,
I mean it's uh, it's it's natural disaster is what
(04:22):
it is. It is. Although so Robert Lamb wrote this
article that that forms the basis of this in part. Yeah,
Robert of stuff to blow your mind, Award winning stuff
to blow your mind. Yeah, yeah, they wanted to ward. Congratulations. Um,
the heat points out that droughts are fairly natural. There's
a lot of debate over whether climate change exacerbates droughts UM.
(04:46):
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 human
city to it, kind 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
(05:08):
have drought transparency and 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, that would be a drought um. The
land would dry up in certain regions, Animals would leave
(05:30):
because there's no water, but it's like who cares, you're
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 whoop. Potentially,
if it wasn't permanent, it would shift back and the
life would come back to the area. But again humans,
(05:52):
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,
what I saw the most recent stead I came across
of the global supply of fresh water is used to
(06:17):
irrigate crops, and that only half is reused, is captured
and reused, so that means we lose a lot of
water to agriculture, and 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
(06:37):
bunch of the fresh water creates this kind of vicious
cycle that exacerbates droughts or at the very least, UM
makes our reliance on a climate to not be droughty
really really, um, really important. I just put a lot
of words together and their scents in there somewhere makes
(07:00):
total sense. Like, just go back and listen to that
last sense a few times, everybody, They will 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 we have suffered through uh
some pretty rough drought here in the last fifty years. Um.
(07:22):
In two thousand twelve they said it was the worst
conditions in fifty years in corn production. Uh you put
a dent in corn production, that's gonna put a dent
in the world markets. Well, yeah, it's a big deal.
America runs on corn. Well in the world, condonuts, it's
even dunkndonuts have corn in them. The world to a
(07:42):
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 go up,
some of the poorer country t get priced out of
the market and they see things like food riots and
(08:03):
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 and eleven,
Texas had the driest year since eight, which happened to
be the year it started recording this kind of stuff,
(08:26):
so it's it's the driest year on record for Texas.
Two thirteen, California had the driest year on record thanks
to the ridiculously resilient ridge UM, and Australia went through
what's called the Millennium drought from two thousand nine. They
had a terrible drop. They actually, like some places like
Melbourne actually um figured out how to live in drought conditions,
(08:50):
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 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
(09:13):
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 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 called for like
nine ye did it rain? Wow? They were praying because
(09:37):
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, there's nothing wrong with
that praying for rain. Do your rain dance. There 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,
(09:57):
and we left and went to New York City where
there are no guy, we had something on the books already. Uh.
So let's talk to the basics of drought. Um. Drought
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
(10:21):
water moves you know, through the soil and through the
plants and then leaves and it's not so useful to us, right,
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, so it is
(10:41):
to us until we get it out of an aquifer
that's being replenished. UM. But it's not necessarily lost unless
you 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.
(11:06):
Sinking error means you get a high pressure zone, which
means you have clear skies and warmer temperatures. And if
that stalls over a region, then um, more water is
going to evaporate. So that's 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
(11:29):
just said I'm sticking around here for a while. 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
(11:52):
different reasons, didn't get precipitation, and it's still in a
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
(12:14):
long study completed I think in two thousand thirteen UM
from the University of Maryland go terps UH and they
found that air air particulate, which is pollution dusts at
sulfates um produces more UH intense storms in wet areas,
or it leads to more intense storms and wet areas
(12:35):
and reduces rain and drier areas. So basically just again
exacerbates whatever is normally going on there. It creates weather extremes,
creates weather extremes. It'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
(12:57):
mechanism is uncertain at this point, So there is no answer.
If 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
(13:19):
if they shift or weekend, then they're going to bring
in less moisture and less rainfall. And I think that
is what happened. It was a wind shift. And uh,
whenever it was we had our drought, when was that
was that? It may have been something like that around then. Yeah,
I mean it was fairly severe. Um. I just remember
(13:39):
all the lakes were way down and they I don't
think we got to the point where they were had
forced rationing, but they were advising everyone and asking everyone
to be better stewards. It was a big deal. Everybody
was really nervous. I think that the lake where Atlantic
gets his fresh waters down like twelve feet or something
(13:59):
like that. It there was serious stuff. Um. Did you
you talked about like like changes in um in different
areas from did you did you mentioned lno Nino? Do
you remember that Chris Farley when he was El Nino
(14:19):
back in the nineties. It's like, I am El Nino,
which means the Nino in Spanish, so you know what
that is. I sort of remember that. There's a documentary
on about him now, which I'm eager to see. Oh yeah,
I haven't checked out. 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?
(14:42):
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 was this weird arrival of
really warm water in December in the winter months. So
they're like, oh, well, obviously it's the Christ Child. So
then aimed at El Nino. And that is when there's
(15:03):
warmer than average water temperatures in the tropics around like
basically off the coast of Mexico, right, 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
(15:24):
then there's the reverse of that, La Nina. That's right,
and that's colder than average temperatures. So those places that
normally get wetter than normal and drier than normal or
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,
(15:50):
actually they do have a decent idea. Um, in two
thousand three, something happened, which 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
(16:13):
and forth basically over time, and they cause either more
rain or less rain. And 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,
(16:35):
I don't buy that. They're like something makes those things
flip flop. Well yeah, maybe, so, 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 going to happen. And when
you combine them with with other factors, is it basically
(16:56):
gives everything a boost. Is and that's what creates al
nine or n Yeah, that's what they think. It's more
like it works in concert with Elena 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 Lenno
means it's going to be wetter and cooler. Uh p
(17:16):
d O plus Lninia equals dryer and uh Laninia is
influenced by the trade winds basically blowing on top of
the water. I think you already said that. You're right.
It just like circulates that water and the deep water
comes up to the surface. Chili, Yeah, from chili or
it's chili water chili water, so um, chuck. There's different
(17:40):
categories or people love to categorize stuff, right and um,
there's actually different categories of the categories for droughts. I
thought that was kind of interest, 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 a
(18:02):
geographical or seasonal description, it's kind of like, here's 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. That's right, right,
(18:26):
So that's just it's just always dry there. Permanent drought.
It's an arid climate 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 or the wet season in the country. Uh,
those two are pretty standard. Um, no big surprises there.
(18:49):
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'd never heard of that. I think that's fascinating. That's
when it is raining and you think, how can we
(19:10):
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 transpirations going on, so it's
invisible to the naked eye. It's like being skinny fat
to where you like you'r 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 nick down they
(19:30):
have weight. No, I hate those people. Oh chuck, you're
going to get some mail for that now. I hate
those people. I'm jealous of those people because I have
a big, fat face. Like there's no picture I can say.
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.
(19:51):
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 has 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
(20:12):
of people with thin faces. I got you, all right,
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 is this dry? It's appropriately
(20:36):
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, well, this this time
(20:57):
last year, we had about an inch and a half
more rain than we got this year so far. No
big whoop, no big whoop. Yeah. 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 that
I like weather bugs. Okay, well you would like Josh,
(21:19):
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 trought. That's right, Like
you would have to be really paying attention to even
notice this. 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 is going to be one
(21:40):
of the first industries 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. That's right. What's next, Josh, the hydrological drought.
(22:04):
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 clay
red muddy junk. Everywhere. I can see the submerged buildings.
The underwater cities are visible, like in lakelan near You
know there's a town down there. Oh yeah, yeah, you
(22:25):
didn't know that. I don't think. So there is a
town down there. And when Lake Laner gets low enough
you can see it. You can see a Gulf seventies
six sign sticking up out of the lake. Wow. Yeah,
like the old like ball one that's orange with the
blue seventy. What was the town m like some part
of Buford or something. I guess yea. Interesting. You didn't
know there's a town in under lakelan Ear No, I
(22:46):
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 would be creepy. So the point is, Chuck,
that we notice the people with skills. Notice if everybody
starts to notice the hydrological drought, it's like the talk
of town um. And then the next step is where
(23:07):
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 on Monday Wednesdays,
or it can flip flop. It depends on your local government. True,
(23:31):
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. The people are are being asked to cut back,
and and the reason why it's because there you're we're
seeing a real effect like through the economy. Yeah, like
Robert points out, something I've never really thought of, a
tourism of course, is gonna dry up it with the
(23:51):
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 socio economic annoyance, but in
other parts of the world it could lead to political
unrest and armed conflict and panic and disease and like
(24:15):
really really bad stuff. Right, So that's socio economic 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, we kind of just
(24:47):
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,
(25:07):
a TV episode, UM, 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, and Vietnam. Right, that's what they say,
(25:30):
But why, I don't 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
(25:52):
if see if we can do anything about that. And
the UM person in the hot seat 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, between the last five decades, between
(26:17):
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 predicting a rise UM as much as nine
degrees by the year on UM, and that is accompanied
by the two degree to degree one point four degree
(26:39):
rise over the past one years. So what they think
is that as more and more c O two enters
the atmosphere, this rise in 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 creating high pressure areas which remember
(27:03):
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
(27:25):
are formed. 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
(27:46):
got a big chunk of the atmosphere just hanging out
around the your 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
(28:07):
the 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 ah, so I
(28:29):
mean it's definitely something to consider. Yeah, sure, try to
tiptoe around this one because 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 the debate that it's a human
cost or not, and whether we can do anything about
(28:50):
it or is 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 should at least try. It's worth trying. Sure,
(29:13):
why wouldn't you Well, a lot of people say that
you shouldn't because it will affect like it'll have her
economic 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, you
(29:34):
guys kind of got to this point by spitting a
ton of C O two into the atmosphere. It's China's time,
GHO sit over there and be as green as you want,
leave us alone. There's a lot of political land mines
to two trapes around um in in getting everybody on
board to reducing the climate footprint or the carbon footprint
(29:57):
of humanity. Yeah. What what to me is when you see,
usually on social media, when someone said, you know, in
the wintertime, like the coldest winner 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
Fred slip. Uh. But there's a great video that Neil
(30:19):
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 the grass Tyson way with his shirt mostly
on button Well he's on the beach of course. Uh.
He's got on his clam diggers, you know, his Hawaiian
(30:41):
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. Yeah, that's my recommendation. And uh, I want
(31:03):
to recommend a book called Merchants of Doubt right now
I'm reading and it's about how, um, the tobacco industry,
climate change, TONI 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? Um Robert points out to
(31:27):
in this article, Uh, predicting drought isn't really something you
can do necessarily. Um. You can predict seasonal droughts 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 going on.
(31:51):
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
(32:12):
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 like of capacity right now. Like here's what
don't forget what's gonna happen if we all run out
(32:33):
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
(32:55):
watering your lawn and be like Los Angeles, there's a
lot of dead people in our reservoir are 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
(33:15):
dent into it, 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. Just give me everything I need. This little
(33:35):
bit doesn't make a difference. Yeah, And they were this
this article, I think it was 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
(33:55):
drop even more by taking more than your fair share? Um,
don't be the jerk. That should be their campaign, right.
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,
(34:18):
as goes the US economies, I think. Uh, 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 going to talk
about dire consequences. Indeed from the nineteen thirties in the
United States, that's ka the dust Bowl. So I teased
(35:01):
the dust Bowl in the beginning, and then we didn't
get to it. But now we're getting to This is
just like TV. And I became a little uh oh,
I know, 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. And I didn't know much about it. I mean,
(35:23):
I knew generally it was a drought uh in 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 were their clips of that? Yeah? I don't remember.
(35:43):
I couldn't they play it like it's people really like Interstellar? No,
not really Oh I love that movie. Yeah, I love it.
I thought that was such a great movie. You really
didn't like it. I had a lot of problems with it.
I loved it. My My biggest problem with it was, uh,
just just do the let the viewer figure out the movie.
(36:06):
Like I felt like every ten minutes, somebody was explaining something,
same guy, same problem. I don't think so man 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 back. I guess I didn't. It didn't bother
(36:27):
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, says something to
do with Ellen Page. No, I'm just joking anyway. I know.
I just for some reason, it didn't stick out to
me in Oristellar. I just thoroughly enjoyed that movie. Well good,
I'm glad you did. I want to reign on your
(36:48):
parade anyway. That parts of the Ken Burns documentary show
up in interstellar, 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 one of the It demonstrates
(37:11):
things you can do to prevent drought from becoming the
worst case scenario, which is exactly what happened with the
dust ball. 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 what happened actually starts in the
(37:32):
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 three twenty acres, which sounds like a lot,
(37:55):
but they're actually not when you start thinking about these
massive states like Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas and all of
US UM. And so what happened was eventually these plaine states,
the semi arid grassland was carved up into a huge
patchwork of smaller farms, and um, people started farming and
(38:20):
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
these are these are native grasses that were dry resistant already.
They were acclimated to this again semi arid climate. That's right.
(38:43):
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
use these new mechanized farming techniques to try and make
more money and turn some of this grass into wheat. Yeah.
(39:04):
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 going to farm twenty of them because this
is a 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
(39:27):
turn all three twenty acres into productive crop land. And
so they overproduced wheat. Yeah, there was a there was
a bumper crop year in where so many farmers bought
so many plows and used these mechanized methods of farming
that there's a bumper crop of wheat, so much so
(39:49):
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 that's right,
and so everybody said, well, what do you do. You
just plant more wheat, plant more wheat. Yeah, basically expand
your farms so to try and turn a profit. And
(40:10):
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. In the soil became
dusty and dry, and uh you couple that with a
(40:30):
drought which hit hard over the period of like three
years and high winds and everything blew away. Yes, so
a hundred million acres of top soil ended up blowing
away like just blew away. It wasn't there any longer.
All that was left was the rocky subsoil like blue
to the east coast. Yes, Um, some of it blew
(40:51):
to California depending on where the winds blew. Some blew
all the way to Washington, d C. Which actually proved
to be fortuitous 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 coming towards these what
(41:14):
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 seven and
(41:36):
sixty percent, sixty percent of the population left. Yeah, a
lot of them moved to California. California wasn't very happy.
A lot of them left their farms and we're 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
(42:00):
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, like all these
(42:22):
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 happy
(42:43):
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 Oaky's even though about
we're from Oklahoma. They didn't 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
(43:03):
UM in 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
(43:25):
one 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 to terrace, um,
how to hold rain water, how to portion off your
farmland um. And not just grow wheat over every square
(43:47):
inch of it, right, Yeah, leave 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 arming. 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
(44:09):
grasses that were good at holding the top soil in place.
But then they actually tilled the top soil and loosened
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
(44:30):
new top soil. So once 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
soil conservation measures are helping, but I mean, is it
just grassland that's growing on subsoil still for the next
couple hundred years. I don't know. You know what, I
know that somebody out there knows that, though well, please
(44:52):
some farmer. I do know that they said by the
early nineteen forties much of that land had been rehabilitated. UM.
And not only did the from its step in and
still install install a lot of new laws and measures,
but they also bought a lot of land UM to
take it out of production. Yeah, about eleven million acres
just to you know, keep it grassy and stable. UM.
(45:16):
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, even though in the
(45:37):
nineteen fifties there was another bad drought. But I think, yeah,
the measure that, yeah, 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, I read
(45:57):
this really great article called Rethinking the US 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
(46:18):
the Great Plains 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's taking soil conservation measures, then
(46:41):
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 Bowl.
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 concert Vation District, and we're going to say,
(47:03):
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 smaller
(47:24):
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 benefit from the
money that they put into it. They're still getting government
subsidies from it. So it was like it worked really
(47:46):
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 tell really get why you suggested this dust Bowl
drought episode. Yeah, it's a good stuff. We've had a
(48:06):
lot of um asks for this one lately. So have
you got anything else? No, 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 we'll
bring all this up. Uh. And since I said search bar,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this batty
(48:28):
email from a bat bat guy. Um. Hey, guys, went
bat biologists specializing and threatened an endangered species in the
Eastern US. It's a great episode and you nailed it
especially the section on echolocation. I'll add that while most
in sect devorous, insectivorous bats do catch their prey while
on the wing um, some have specialized to flutter slowly
(48:51):
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 be in response
to stealthy moss that have learned to sense bat echolocation
and evade round and round goes through predator prey arms race.
One clarification, though, is regarding the effect of white nose syndrome.
(49:12):
You said the podcasts that the itch is what wakes
the bats from hibernation. It's more that the bat's immune
system is ramped up by the late stage fungal infection,
in their metabolic requirements are beyond what they have prepared
for the damage. Wing membranes are especially susceptible to evaporate
water loss. In most hibernation interrupted bats are thought to
die of lack of water rather than lack of food. Additionally,
(49:35):
new studies indicate that the clinical signs are in stages
of the disease and that the chemical imbalances cause internal damage.
Before the visible fungal high fade. DO one mechanism for
this is chronic respiratory acidosis caused by increased dissolved CEO
two levels in the blood. Wow, man, I told you
(49:57):
it's a bat biologist. Listen to you guys every day.
Uh And I've taken s y s k onto the
woods on bat surveys more than once. Thanks for the PA.
We've been on a bat survey before. 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 park. Man, that
(50:20):
is nice. That is from Jason Whittle and uh, my
wife's hometown of Akron, Ohio and 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. Can't remember which one, but one
(50:44):
of the larger bat organizations shared our podcast and was
I 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 whittle Um And if you want to be cool
like Jason and send us a really interesting email full
of tons of facts, you can do that. You can
(51:05):
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.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
(51:26):
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