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I think Hawking has gone around the bend


jaxson50

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You make my point- at the turn of the last century- 1890 to 1910 there was no reason to believe that places like Central or Southern California could possible grow produce' date=' it was as barren as the moon...but men with foresight designed and built a canal system, one of the largest in history and created a agricultural center. In 1920 property in the Imperial and Coachella Valley was worthless. Being sold for 10 to 25 cents per acre, nothing but sand dunes. But irrigation changed it into a thriving farming center. These are regional systems, transporting water over hundreds of miles were built during the 1930' during the Great Depression when this nation was broke, they are mostly forgotten and taken for granted today, but they turned worthless sand into a breadbasket.

There is no reason why we can't do these kinds of project today. [/quote']

 

The politics of water distribution is crazy! It's not as simple as men with foresight, a lot of power and greed is involved. Your number about property values in the Imperial Valley is an example. Those who bought up the cheap land were those with the political clout to get the water moved there. The story in the movie "China Town" is factual, a lot of sleazy activities are involved with water. Like they said in the Old West, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting about".

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The politics of water distribution is crazy! It's not as simple as men with foresight' date=' a lot of power and greed is involved. Your number about property values in the Imperial Valley is an example. Those who bought up the cheap land were those with the political clout to get the water moved there. The story in the movie "China Town" is factual, a lot of sleazy activities are involved with water. Like they said in the Old West, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting about".[/quote']

 

So true...... And what makes it even more "crazy" is that water is earths most abundant resource, considering our plant is 75% water[blink]

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So true...... And what makes it even more "crazy" is that water is earths most abundant resource' date=' considering our plant is 75% water[blink']

 

Yes, but I think only a small percentage of that water is drinkable. [smile]

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Grampa... you nailed it on the "whiskey is for drinkin' and water for fightin'."

 

But one should note that environmentalists as far back as the 1960s were killing irrigation projects in a big way. In fact, a very big way.

 

I live near one of the first Bureau of Reclamation irrigation projects - yeah, Teddy Roosevelt knew this particular part of the country very well and even sent his kids out her summers to learn about the "real" America. The dam and reservoir were built with horse and steam power - and the muscles of a lot of men.

 

At the time, it was the larges earth fill dam in the world. But to put it bluntly, nobody really got rich from the project, but a lot of little guys were able to survive the depression growing cucumbers for making pickles, later sugar beets and always vegetables for the regional marketplace.

 

Seriously, I don't think you could build a dam today for much of any reason.

 

And just as seriously, I think the earth has plenty of room for people to prosper and live comfortably and also take decent care of the environment - IF we had something around a third to a max of half the current population.

 

Oops - late for a bull riding competition. <grin> No, I'm not kidding.

 

m

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Mankind will end long before this planet does, whether from self implosion or ecological/astronomical disaster. No matter how bad we think we're hurting the earth, it will survive and another species will replace us eventually. Enjoy your life instead of fretting about when it will end.

 

As for Stephen Hawking, the man is undeniably a genius. Sure he is odd and has some whacked out, far flung ideas - but sometimes when you listen to genius it rubs off on you. I thoroughly enjoyed the recent miniseries he did (think it was on discovery or the history channel).

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The politics of water distribution is crazy! It's not as simple as men with foresight' date=' a lot of power and greed is involved. Your number about property values in the Imperial Valley is an example. Those who bought up the cheap land were those with the political clout to get the water moved there. The story in the movie "China Town" is factual, a lot of sleazy activities are involved with water. Like they said in the Old West, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting about".[/quote']

 

The point is......We could be investing in water reclamation projects, improve and expand water storage, not just here but around the world instead of looking for water on Mars..I could be wrong..but it seems that the more immediate problem is here-not on Mars...

But OMG! Some body may profit from it<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<NO WAY>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

On the other hand...Nobody is profiting from the missions to Mars....everyone involved is donating their time and materials...it hasn't cost anything right?

I think we may have some explaining to do....sure whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting...THAT IS THE POINT! make more water available and maybe we can stop some of the fighting..at least in Africa and other third world nations...

But if you think that the only people who prospered from the irrigation projects that were built in the US then we are on different pages...the life of every US citizen is better today because of those projects..did some people make money? You bet...Guess what? People who build guitars make money...People who build home make money, so do farmers....I thought that in a capitalist system making money was a good thing.

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Grampa... you nailed it on the "whiskey is for drinkin' and water for fightin'."

 

But one should note that environmentalists as far back as the 1960s were killing irrigation projects in a big way. In fact' date=' a very big way.

 

I live near one of the first Bureau of Reclamation irrigation projects - yeah, Teddy Roosevelt knew this particular part of the country very well and even sent his kids out her summers to learn about the "real" America. The dam and reservoir were built with horse and steam power - and the muscles of a lot of men.

 

At the time, it was the larges earth fill dam in the world. But to put it bluntly, nobody really got rich from the project, but a lot of little guys were able to survive the depression growing cucumbers for making pickles, later sugar beets and always vegetables for the regional marketplace.

 

Seriously, I don't think you could build a dam today for much of any reason.

 

And just as seriously, I think the earth has plenty of room for people to prosper and live comfortably and also take decent care of the environment - IF we had something around a third to a max of half the current population.

 

Oops - late for a bull riding competition. <grin> No, I'm not kidding.

 

m

[/quote']

 

I wasn't suggesting dam projects here in the US so much as in third world countries. What I would like to see here is a effort to reclaim more water in the US...LA has floods every year or so, and yet somehow is always in a state of panic over the shortage of water...now if we put as much effort into saving that water and reclaiming water from other sources, we would be better off...It is one of those things everyone complains about it, but nobody does anything about it.

We have the technology to do it...

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Doesn't L.A. flood mainly because of the lay of the land and poor drainage? Setting up a collection system for the few occurrences where it happens would be a rather large waste wouldn't it? Desalination would be a great option if the cost and energy consumption to produce it were greatly reduced.

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Doesn't L.A. flood mainly because of the lay of the land and poor drainage? Setting up a collection system for the few occurrences where it happens would be a rather large waste wouldn't it? Desalination would be a great option if the cost and energy consumption to produce it were greatly reduced.

 

The LA River is a concrete canal that sweeps run off water into the ocean....Having lived in So. Cal for 25 years before escaping..it seemed a bit odd that in the same state that built a concrete canal that brings water to LA from 250 miles away, they then turned around and built a storm drain system that dumps every drop into the ocean...doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that at least some if the water could be pumped into tanks. (like a rain barrel).

You are aware that there has been a plan to place a huge pipe under the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon to collect water that would be pumped via under ocean pipelines to the central Calif. canal system then to So. Calif....this plan has been batted around for decades....here is a suggestion, if we can seriously consider building that...couldn't we consider building an under ocean water neoprene bladder that could store runoff to be used later?

Before you answer, consider that the Bull Run Water shed system in Oregon which was built from 1895 to 1910 was designed with a pipe line that carries water under from the mountain east of Portland, down to the Willamette River, then through a pipeline that lies under the river, then up a small ridge and into two reservoirs..all without any pumps- designed by a Civil War veteran, still works today..did I mention. all without any pumps?

http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?c=29461

Isaac Smith was one of America's great engineers..and few even know his name;

http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?a=105796&c=41924

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Definitely a good possibility, always amazed at the genius involved in some of our early engineering challenges. It would probably be easier to pump the water you mentioned to reservoir tanks instead of a big neoprene bladder. It's going to have to make a trip to treatment either way (unless you would use that water to irrigate crops) so it might as well be pumped beforehand to a storage facility. I wonder how long that floodwater would last were it treated and used for drinking water.

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This is technology we must master in order to deal with mans impact on the earth:

 

25 miles east of San Diego you'll find the Santee lakes, which may not sound odd, a city lake with recreation available, picnicking, camping and fishing, what makes it different is all of the water comes from reclaimed sewage. Check out the link for the whole story;

http://www.santeelakes.com/history.html

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What it comes down to is food and water.

 

As a school boy, I remember collecting money for the 'poor starving pagan babies.' I was an adult before I knew what a pagan baby was. Shucks, I didn't even know why they were poor and starving. All I knew is that they were poor and starving and, somehow, the pennies I donated helped.

 

My uncle once mused that he too had, as a child, collected money for the 'poor starving pagan babies'. When he grew up and went to war, who was shooting at him? The same "poor starving pagan babies' he'd collected money for. :-

 

A great uncle of mine once predicted that the Third World War would be fought over food.

 

People were starving in many corners of the world because, a. They couldn't grown enough food to support their society. b. transportation costs were prohibitive to move food from surplus areas. (therefore collecting money for the poor, starving pagan babies)

 

In the 1940s Norman Borlaug, an unassuming agriculture researcher, was working on improving strains of wheat to help increase the insufficient yields of Mexican crops and assuage the concomitant near starvation in that area. The enemy to the wheat plant was a fungus called rust. This fungus causes pustules of its spores to cover the wheat leaves. These pustules are a rust color... there fore the name. This rust causes as much as 40 percent loss of yield. His solution? Nope, not a chemical solution, but a natural one. In test plots he selected individual plants which resisted the infestation of the fungus. This is a time consuming process as a bushel of wheat seeds needs to be planted and grown to find individual plants which are even the remotest bit resistant to the rust, then collecting and planting it's seeds and repeating the process. He developed techniques for speeding up this process by being able to growing 2 to 3 crops per year, as opposed to a single crop. Once he'd developed a usable strains they were re-planted until sufficient seeds could be disseminated to farmers to grow production crops. This takes years. But Borlaug has cut these years down from decades.

 

Once a strain was developed, the job is not over. Rust, being a living organism, changes and adapts. Lack of persistence in planting and replanting, developing and redeveloping strains will undo all those years of work once the fungus adapts to the new strains and begins to infect and destroy them. Strain development must be an ongoing, relentless process.

 

This process was repeated for rice in order to end starvation in southern Asia. This is known as the Green Revolution.

 

Because of his work, necessary starvation has essentially been eradicated from our planet. Those who starve now are in that predicament due to local political unrest which prevents the locals from raising crops. This is also an effective military tactic to eradicate unwanted factions. Prevent them from raising crops and starve them out. This tactic is being played out as we speak in areas of Africa and Asia.

 

Norman Borlaug, the Green Revolution's greatest cheerleader, passed last fall. While Borlaug had long since passed the research baton to a younger generation, I don't know if anyone has picked up his pompoms and megaphone. If world leaders ignore this mundane, to them, chore of constant crop research and dry up the funds for it. We could be a scant few years from a world food crisis.

 

Nope, a bowl of rice is not as glamorous as wonder drugs, or peace treaties. But without a consistent supply of food, all the other stuff is superfluous.

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Tommy...

 

Yeah.... I do fear we're on the edge of the cliff of politics at this point.

 

I do find it very interesting - and nonpolitical - that such food-politics-overpopulation-warfare questions have been treated quite a bit in science fiction of various sorts. That's about everything from Soilent Green onward and upward.

 

England has quite a bit of interesting history along lines of food and labor long before there was a USA. One might look at periods of European history too when food was a real problem - and that's as late as 1945 and 1946. In fact, even language problems added to that. The Germans, at least, asked for "corn." Well, they used the Brit English term for "grain" including wheat, etc. The U.S. sent them huge supplies of "maize" that's known in the U.S. as "Corn."

 

Another population factor that starts to enter the realm of politics, if not religion, though, is also whether the pennies and dollars spent to keep starving people alive is a wise political move if not accompanied by other information such as "family planning" so we don't end up with a political and human disaster of huge populations of the borderline starving.

 

Meanwhile in another thread here we have another perspective on "green" with guitar implications, tonewoods.

 

I dunno. When I was a kid more than a half century ago we had the same appeals for the starving children in Africa from UN and various religious institutions. The latter, of course, were also involved in "missionary" work. It seems odd that the same institutions are still seeking cash for the same areas of the world for the same reasons. That tells me something ain't working.

 

Discussion of "solutions" is political, I hope that a cold discussion defining "problems" that affect the guitar world is not.

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I don't believe we can equate water treatment systems with "the green movement".... It is common sense..if we can clean solid waste from our sewage and re-use that water for other purposes other the consumption is that really a bad thing?

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Hawkings needs to take up keyboards of a different sort. Yes, our planet is in trouble and hopefully we'll get it together but he still needs to take up keyboards and chill. Don't think we're going to um get Mars move in ready in time myself.

 

There are still things to do here . . .

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Definitely a good possibility, always amazed at the genius involved in some of our early engineering challenges. It would probably be easier to pump the water you mentioned to reservoir tanks instead of a big neoprene bladder. It's going to have to make a trip to treatment either way (unless you would use that water to irrigate crops) so it might as well be pumped beforehand to a storage facility. I wonder how long that floodwater would last were it treated and used for drinking water.

++1....

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