Speaking on March 31 in Moscow, on the eve of Russia’s assuming the chairmanship of the BRICS, Vadim Lukov, Ambassador-at-large of the Russian Foreign Ministry and Deputy Representative of the Russian President on BRICS issues, spoke to the press about…
“BRICS has achieved quite a lot in the short time of its existence,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation, in an interview with Russia’s Radio Sputnik this week.
“They have led the moves for the reformation of global financial institutions like the IMF and WB [World Bank]. Even more importantly they have created a new institution — the BRICS [new] Development Bank as well as the Contingency Reserve Arrangement. This is nothing short of a spectacular achievement, given that this is the first time such arrangements are being made in the past 200 years without the participation of Western powers. Such initiative must be strengthened.”
The New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, along with the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA), have emerged as major Indian think-tanks dealing with security and foreign policy matters.
When asked about his view on the expected role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Unnikrishnan reiterated New Delhi’s view of ensuring security and stability in the neighborhood as well as in the region as a whole. India, along with Pakistan, and perhaps, Iran, are expected to become full members this year. India now has observer status in the SCO, as do Iran and Pakistan.
“India is very keen to address the issues of stability and development of its immediate and extended neighborhood, said Unnikrishnan. “SCO is a body that can help in achieving these aims.”
“BRICS has achieved quite a lot in the short time of its existence,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation, in an interview with Russia’s Radio Sputnik this week.
“They have led the moves for the reformation of global financial institutions like the IMF and WB [World Bank]. Even more importantly they have created a new institution — the BRICS [new] Development Bank as well as the Contingency Reserve Arrangement. This is nothing short of a spectacular achievement, given that this is the first time such arrangements are being made in the past 200 years without the participation of Western powers. Such initiative must be strengthened.”
The New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, along with the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA), have emerged as major Indian think-tanks dealing with security and foreign policy matters.
When asked about his view on the expected role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Unnikrishnan reiterated New Delhi’s view of ensuring security and stability in the neighborhood as well as in the region as a whole. India, along with Pakistan, and perhaps, Iran, are expected to become full members this year. India now has observer status in the SCO, as do Iran and Pakistan.
“India is very keen to address the issues of stability and development of its immediate and extended neighborhood, said Unnikrishnan. “SCO is a body that can help in achieving these aims.”
On Wednesday, April 1st, Russia officially took over the rotating chairmanship of the BRICS group from Brazil, and in a speech celebrating the occasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the priorities for the group over the next year, emphasiz…
On Wednesday, April 1st, Russia officially took over the rotating chairmanship of the BRICS group from Brazil, and in a speech celebrating the occasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the priorities for the group over the next year, emphasiz…
The BasementManaging the Global Water Supply
Video of IlGLbsAA-II
Join Benjamin Deniston, Megan Beets and Liona Fan-Chiang today at 11am for a review of Deniston’s latest paper, “New Perspectives on the Western Water Crisis.”
Transcript now available—Benjamin Deniston is joined by Megan Beets and Liona Fan-Chiang for a review of Deniston’s latest paper, “New Perspectives on the Western Water Crisis”, for a discussion which Lyndon LaRouche called “a shocker for the practical issues of how to deal with the water crisis… This program is the most important thing that is being circulated in the United States right now.”
Megan Beets: Hello, this is April 1, 2015. My name is Megan Beets. Welcome to this week’s New Paradigm for Mankind. I’m joined in the studio today by Liona Fan-Chiang and Benjamin Deniston of the LaRouchePAC Science Team.
So, before I turn it over to Ben, let me just say a few things in terms of the context of today’s discussion.
People may know that yesterday was the deadline for nations to apply as founding members of the new Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, being sponsored by China, and by yesterday’s deadline, despite the fact that the Obama Administration had issued hisses and boos and warnings to its allies not to join such an evil institution, 46 nations had applied to be founding members of this bank, including the United States’ supposed best allies, Britain, most of the European nations, including France, Germany, Italy, all the Scandinavian countries. Also the BRICS nations and their allies, such as Russia, Brazil, and Egypt.
So, this is huge. And there was a meeting taking place over the past days in Kazakhstan, of many of the founding countries, to work out the articles of association; a draft of that has been issued. The bank is expected to be operational by the end of the year, with an initial capitalization of $100 billion.
So, you add the AIIB to the New BRICS-sponsored New Development Bank, which is in the process of coming into being. That has $100 billion capitalization. You add to that the planned Shanghai Cooperation Organization Bank, China’s funds for the New Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road, which total $60 billion. And what we’re looking at is the coming-into-being of a new financial architecture in the world, which is something that Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, and this organization, have been fighting for about 40 years.
So, this is happening, and it’s unstoppable. And what Lyn said on this yesterday, in reaction to this development, he basically was saying, in paraphrase, that we’re coming into a period where there will be no more empires. And where the idea of sovereign nation states with separate interests, as popularly understood, is going out of existence.
Now, I think that only underscores the urgency of the ousting of Obama, and his crew, from a position of power in the United States. And Lyn really underscored this point yesterday: As long as Obama is in the presidency, mankind faces a very imminent danger of extinction warfare. And I think that’s only illustrated by the fact that, at this moment, the United States is preparing to put 290 troops, on the ground, in Ukraine, to train the Ukrainian National Guard—which includes the very famous Azov battalion, which is a group of neo-Nazis, which have been incorporated into the offical government-sponsored National Guard.
So, I think this really makes the point, that unless we oust Obama, mankind is really hanging by a thread of provocation against Russia and China, which would escalate very quickly.
But to make the point, and sort of turn toward our topic today, what Mr. LaRouche underscored is that the only way to actually win for humanity, the only way to pull mankind back from the brink, is not merely to reverse the current policy. He said, there is no practical solution to what mankind faces today. The only way we can save mankind, is if we can envision, and forecast, a new future for mankind, something which is qualitatively different, and beyond any past experience. And he said, what’s crucial is to have the insight to define the possible, and to define how to bring that possibility into existence.
On that light, Ben, he’s pointed toward an article which you just completed, called “A Memo to the Next President: New Perspectives on the Western Water Crisis.” And as our viewers know, this is available on the LaRouche PAC site, and it’s also in the newest issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
With that, I won’t say any more. I’ll let you tell us what it’s about.
Ben Deniston: Thank you, Megan. This obviously comes in the context of a worsening water crisis in California, which is grabbing a lot of headlines. This new year’s getting started. The last winter was very low in terms of precipitation, so it’s kind of a new stage in the crisis, and it’s starting to get to the point of, if it’s not silly bickering between regions of the state about who gets what water, it’s a point of practical crisis for certain people.
So, in discussions with Mr. LaRouche—really, over the past couple of years, a year and a half, two years, something in that range, Mr. LaRouche has stressed that the solution to the water crisis in California, and also the West more generally, and then really globally—this water issue is global, that we have to deal with as well. But in the context of all these calls for solutions, and what do we do with the California situation, he’s come back repeatedly to the activity of China.
He says, that’s the reference point. Let’s just get serious, guys. Don’t come to me with trying to have this little gimmick, or that little gimmick, or now, I have the program, or this thing’s going to work. If you want to get serious about what’s going on, look at what China’s doing. China’s the reference point right now for how you address problems like this.
And he went further, which I want to get into a little bit today, but I want to try to situate it a bit, give it a little bit of context. But he went further and said, really, what China’s doing, most exemplified by what China is doing with their space program, where they’re right now in the process of moving towards the completion of their lunar exploration program, which gathered a lot of headlines when they made this excellent landing of this rover on the moon a couple of years ago. Which is the first time that had been done since the ’80s, I believe.
This is kind of the exploratory phase, setting the groundwork for a real expansion, and Mr. LaRouche has really emphasized this as the pinnacle of what mankind needs to be doing at this point. And again, the reference point for how you come back and handle problems like the water crisis.
So, just to give that a little context, to get into that: If people haven’t seen… there’s headlines now saying California has one year of water left, potentially, in the reservoirs for certain regions. That’s true to some extent. In some places, they already don’t have water—it’s not one year left, it’s nothing left, because they’ve already run out of water. There are cities where you turn on the tap, and the water doesn’t come out.
If you ask the farmers, many of them have already run out of water. You have half a million acres of farmland go unplanted last year. And this is some of the most productive farmland in the entire countries. Now, estimates are that this next season, it could be double that, it could be a million acres going unplanted. Again, you’re looking at potentially zero to maybe 20% of the normal allocation of the state’s water project—the Central Valley Project, and the California State Water Project—able to be allocated to the farmers in certain regions of the state.
So, either maybe one-fifth, at the most, of what they would normally get, in terms of water from these state projects, or maybe nothing at all.
So, this is a building crisis. And at this point, some people are raising, maybe we have to move people out of the state, and that’s the point we’re talking about. We’re talking about reaching the point at which there’s open discussion of not being able to support the population of California, and needing to lower the population.
So, this is the level of insanity we’re come to.
Now, we here, having worked with Mr. LaRouche, we have a certain, frankly, obligation to emphasize Mr. LaRouche’s history on this issue. Because if you think this is a surprise, then you’ve got your head in the sand. A crisis like this doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Mr. LaRouche has been saying, since the ’70s and ’80s, California, the West, they need more water. You’re not going to solve the situation there by just managing the existing water supply.
You may get some benefits by just increasing efficiency, increasing the use, but he’s been saying, emphatically since the ’80s — we put out a report, a pamphlet that we produced, entitled “Won’t You Let Your Grand-Children Have a Drink of Fresh Water?” And that was a question he put to people in the 1980s.
And now, those children and grand-children have been born, and now they don’t have a drink of fresh water, because people didn’t listen to what Lyn was saying back then.
And we have solutions. We were talking about desalination, nuclear-powered desalination. We had been promoting this NAWAPA project, which again, wasn’t new to us. [See: Increasing the Productivity of the North American Water Cycle: The Nuclear-Thermonuclear NAWAPA XXI, by Benjamin Deniston] In the ’50s and ’60s, people were talking about this, needing to address the growing crisis of the water in the West, the water needs in the West, and to be able to continue to grow and expand and develop, you’re going to need to bring in new water supplies. So this grand design of NAWAPA was developed, and planned, and proposed, and fought for already in the ’60s. [See: LPAC Feature Film: “NAWAPA 1964”] And then, you know, Mr. LaRouche picked that back up again in the ’80s, and promoted that.
We picked that up again, we were promoting that in the ’90s. We picked that up in a big way five years ago, and started promoting it.
So, there have been options. There have been solutions available for decades now. So it’s not like this is a big surprise out of nowhere, that we’re in a crisis.
So, to underscore this, I wanted to —so, the point being, it’s not just a lack of solutions, or objective solutions, or objective options. Mr. LaRouche was saying last night, what we have to attack at this point, is the failed culture of the United States. This is a clear expression of it. We’ve had these options available. We haven’t had a culture that’s committed to creating the future, that’s been willing to fight to make these things happen, and now people are suffering because of that cultural failure, that moral failure.
Now, compare that again, going back to Lyn’s emphasis, compare that to China.
In the last couple days, I had some fun producing this graphic, comparing some of what China’s done [Figure 1, a Century of Water Diversion]—this doesn’t cover everything, but this includes some of the keystone projects, some of what China has done on the issue of water, directly, and comparing that with what the United States has done, and hasn’t done.
So, these are water diversion projects, river diversion projects. China’s obviously on top. What you see here are the three routes of their South-Water-North Water Project. The eastern route and the central route, are basically in the process of being completed right now. The western route is still in the planning phases, and designs.
Already, the eastern route and the central route together are going to deliver, they have the capacity to deliver annually, about 27-28 cubic kilometers per year. Taken together, that’s significantly more than the flow of the Colorado River, for example, just to put that in a reference. And these were initiated in the past decade, for the most part, the past 10-15, you could probably go back a little bit further for all the planning and everything, and designs. But these things have been built in the last 10, 15 years.
So, this time in which— when you compare that to the United States and Southwest, for reference. Here you have indicated 5 of the most significant river-diversion, water-diversion, canal projects in the Southwest, with the All-American canal; the Colorado Aqueduct, serving southern California, Los Angeles, San Diego, the Imperial Valley; you have the Central Valley Project, and the California State Water Project, servicing the Central Valley and other parts of the state. You have the Central Arizona Project, branching off into Colorado, taking water out into the central Arizona.
And, as you can see here, on the comparative timeline on the bottom, these things were started in the late ’20s, ’30s, continuing up the ’60s. By the end of the ’60s, we haven’t done anything. We’ve been coasting on what was developed from the bookends from Franklin Roosevelt to Kennedy. We had this surge of development. This was some of the leading activity in the world, in terms of water management projects. It created the whole conditions for California to become one of the most productive states, the most productive state in the whole country, a huge agricultural breadbasket, population growth, development, etc.
Since the ’60s, we’ve done nothing. We’ve flatlined. Again, so this is the context in which the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, LaRouche is saying, we’ve got to expand, we’ve got to grow. You’re going to hit a crisis if you don’t grow, if you don’t expand.
If you compare that, compare this flatlined, this moral decay, this lack of development, in the United States, with just in the past 2 decades, China has surpassed our activity. And they’ve done it more quickly than we did it. And they’re vectored towards going even farther with their projects.
So again, it’s not like there aren’t solutions, there aren’t things that can be done, and it’s not like we live in a world where this is impossible to do anymore. China’s done it. They’re doing it. They’re going further.
We live in a culture where people have lost their connection to mankind being a creative force, improving the conditions of their nation, of the land, and of the biosphere, of the planets, and we’re suffering the effects of this degeneracy, really.
So, I want to just put this out here as an opening contrast, because I think it’s important to get this key point across. The objective solutions, options, are there. They have been there. It’s been this subjective failure of the United States, this shift away from the Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy tradition and orientation, that’s brought us to this crisis point.
Now in this context, Mr. LaRouche has said—and we’re going to get to it in a minute—China’s space program in particular, not just their water projects, but also their space program, needs to be the reference point for mankind today.
Now, to get to that, I want to discuss what you’re really dealing with in terms of water, water cycles. And I cover this in more detail in the EIR Special Report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” so if people want more information on how to think about managing water systems, water cycles, there’s much more in that report. That’s kind of background to this article that I just wrote. And that’s available now, and should also be referenced.
So, what are you dealing with when you are talking about water? Water is not something you use up. It’s not something you just use, and throw away.
Beets: It doesn’t disappear from the universe.
Deniston: It does not disappear from the universe. Photosynthesis uses a little bit of it, and that’s good. But we’re not using up water. We’re tapping into cycles of water.
California has been managing a water cycle. You get precipitation, you get snow pack in the Sierra Nevadas, and around California; you get precipitation in the Colorado River basin, which feeds the Colorado River. That water doesn’t just magically appear, new, created, never having existed before in those regions. It comes from the ocean. It comes from evaporation, and precipitation.
Obviously, there’s all kinds of details, and sub-cycles, and additional components, but in the most general sense, you’re dealing with cycles. You’re dealing with input flow, output. This is a very, very simplistic illustration of the average global cycles [Figure 2]. You can just intuitively see very quickly how much water evaporates from the oceans every year. How much of that then falls back into the oceans, without ever going over land. A huge amount.
Some of that goes over land. The water that goes over, is then put back up into the atmosphere by either evaporation, or plant activity, and then falls back on the land again. And then you get a roughly equivalent amount of run-off back into the ocean. So, you’re dealing with cycles.
So the issue that mankind has been dealing with, from the history of mankind, is how do we manage and improve these cycles. How we take, go back to the early, early man. How do we take small rivers, small streams, and build irrigation systems, improve the use of these water cycles. Ensure that this water, that— the Sun is working its butt off evaporating all this water. The amount of energy the Sun puts into evaporating water is massive. So, it’s putting all that up into the atmosphere. Only a small percentage of that, about 10% of what evaporates from the ocean even makes it over land.
So we owe to the Sun to do something good with that water, right? I mean, the figures are pretty remarkable how much energy the Sun’s putting into this system.
So it comes over land, and the history of mankind has been using it to better effect, making sure more plant life uses that water, irrigation systems, crops; ensuring that we have flood control systems, so you get nice, stable environments, where you don’t have whole cities, whole regions of a particular place wiped out by periodic floods. That’s what California’s done, California’s been managing a certain water cycle. They’ve reached the point, again, already known in the ’50s and ’60s, that the continual existence and growth of the West, California included, but more broadly, is going to require moving beyond just managing the local, regional water supplies. Again, that’s been known, that was why NAWAPA was designed. That was why you had top Senators fighting for NAWAPA and other projects. That’s why we continued to push these projects into the ’70s and ’80s, after you had this shift toward cultural degeneration.
Now we have a new factor adding into this crisis, so it’s been known that the kind of pitiful, small amount of water in the West is not enough to manage that existing supply, to sustain the population there, and to sustain some real growth.
Now we have a drought. This drought has provoked certain people to say, well, let’s take a deeper look at what the climate of California is really like. Let’s look at things like tree rings, from trees that live hundreds and hundreds, and hundreds of years; some trees live thousands of years. And the tree rings that can actually help you record how much water was available, year to year to year and get a sense of the climate, the environment going back, thousands of years. You have all kinds of other records, little microscopic, single-celled organisms, that will grow in bodies of water, and you can measure how much water there was by the activity of these little critters left in the records.
So some people have looked back and gotten some idea of the climate in California over the past couple thousand years, and they’ve seen a rather remarkable and important surprise, that the last century in California was actually an anomaly, an anomaly in two ways: One, it was wetter, there was actually more water than you’d expect on average for this past couple-thousand-year period; so all of our management of the existing water cycle from 1900 up to 2000, this past century, in California has been managing a water cycle that was luckily overabundant, compared to what it normally is. These things actually fluctuate more than we had realized.
Two, so the 20th Century averaged wetter; it also averaged more stable. You get dramatic fluctuations generally over the past couple thousand years. We have luckily not experienced any super-dramatic fluctuations, either way — so-called mega-droughts lasting years, decades potentially, where you just have 20 years of practically no water; on the flip side, mega-floods. This has happened in the 19th Century. The entire Central Valley of California has been flooded, it’s a huge territory, a massive lake, 20 feet deep, created over hundreds of miles throughout the center of California, because you had just some system, probably one of these atmospheric rivers, dumping an insane amount of water, for days, and days, and days, into California.
So you get these wild extremes, the point being, you’re dealing with cycles. We’re realizing, being blind-sided so to speak, in our realization that these things actually fluctuate more than we realize; they’re not just stable, constant, steady things. The climate changes — maybe that’s a surprise to the people in the IPCC, that the climate actually changes, with or without us!
The question for mankind, is, how do we, then, with this greater realization, for California and West as our case-study here, how do we continue to improve, and expand and grow and improve the conditions of the land, recognizing that these cycles change, these water cycles vary, they fluctuate, and we’re in this drought period?
Just briefing, I want to reference, obviously, this NAWAPA project, which is something, again, that’s been put on the table, designed and available for decades now. One step would be going to a larger system: If the local or regional system doesn’t have enough water to sustain the activity you need, if the water cycle there is just not enough to sustain a vigorous biosphere, strong activity of life, is there options on a larger scale, on say a continental scale?
And in North America, it was recognized that it looks like there is. You do get on average, significantly more precipitation up north, in Alaska, Yukon Territory, British Columbia, this whole region gets a lot of water, a lot of which unfortunately, again, to the detriment of the hard work of the Sun, a lot of this water just falls on the coasts, mountain ranges, and flows right back into the ocean without getting a chance to do much with itself.
Think of the poor water molecule, right? It’s probably sitting in the ocean for some of these things, probably for thousands of years, sitting in the ocean doing nothing, it finally gets a chance to get up into the atmosphere and do something useful, do something productive — and then a couple of weeks, it falls, and it’s right back into the ocean. It’s going to wait a long time for the next cycle to come around.
So this has been known, and this is one perspective on the situation for the West: Expand the cycle. And again, this is not just to clear out the idiocy that tends to arise in the culture today. This is not “stealing water from the North.” This is not taking some big pool of water that’s sitting up there. There’s not some giant lake that we want to drain up in Canada, and steal Canada’s water. This is water that is part of this cycle: It precipitates up there and falls back into the ocean.
What NAWAPA is, really, it’s just augmenting that cycle. It’s saying, instead of that water returning right to the ocean right up North, why not bring it down through the Southwest, and then return it to the ocean? [See Figure 3, Total Photosynthesis] If people were real proponents of Green, this is the kind of thing they would have gone for. For example, the Colorado River is tapped dry. It usually doesn’t even flow into the ocean. With this, you could make the Colorado flow into the ocean again. The Colorado could be regularly flowing, vigorously, back into the ocean at the rate it used to. Sounds like a good idea to me.
So this augmenting, managing these cycles on a bigger scale is an option that’s been known for a long time. And what you’d really be doing, is increasing the productivity of the existing cycle.
That stated, we’re in a deeper crisis now. One, this would take decades to construct. This is not a small project. We’re in an immediate crisis. Two, we’ve got to really take into account, and have a better study of and consideration of how these water cycles fluctuate and change. Again, this study that California’s past century has been an anomaly, is a little bit of a blind-side to what people had thought; it wasn’t something expected.
So I think it forces in principle, a need to go to a higher level in our conception. Instead of just assuming that precipitation patterns as they exist, rivers, snow-pack, etc., are just going to be there, and always going to be there, and we can just tap into what’s there, we need to go to a higher level. Not just a larger scale, but a higher level, a different conception of what we’re dealing with. Which means we need a better conception of what the water cycle is as a whole.
Again, here’s our very simple, generalized graphic of the Global Water Cycle [Figure 2], but this is not really what it is. This is the annual flows of water, estimated. And usefully depicted as a single system, because you’re dealing with a single, global system. But it’s not really a global system. The whole thing is driven by cosmic processes. I don’t think anyone’s going to deny that the Sun plays a role in driving the world’s climate and precipitation system, its hydrological cycle: That’s what makes the whole thing go, is solar activity. It doesn’t come from the Earth, this is a cosmic process.
The Sun powers the whole water cycle: All the water that’s pumped up into the atmosphere that forms the basis for precipitation everywhere, is driven by solar activity. That opened another whole avenue of discussion, which I’m not going to get into here, but, when the Sun changes, what does that mean? And that’s a really important question; that needs to be studied a lot more.
Whereas, again, our naïve assumption that stability is a principle of the universe has been putting us in very bad positions, because it’s giving us a false idea. The Sun is going through changes right now, that were not expected. It’s weakening, to a degree that it’s a large surprise; only a handful of people had been watching this and warning, the Sun is changing. And what that type of change will do, to the climate and the weather and the precipitation, the hydrological cycle, is not really known. There’s abundant correlations indicating that there’s certainly going to be some effects. What exactly those effects are, how big they are, that’s really something that needs to be studied much more seriously.
Liona Fan-Chiang: The last minimum was really not that long ago. The last time the Sun went into hibernation, I guess you could say, was really not that long ago.
Deniston: Yeah, it was about — you had kind of a small minimum in the 1800s; you had a large grand minimum about 400 years ago; and we’ve hit these grand minimums every 400 years for the past couple thousand years. So even just by the cycle, we’re right at the point where you’d expect another grand minimum, just from records of the cycles of solar activity.
Fan-Chiang: And those reports from that time, that agriculture had a big crisis, and there was starvation and so on.
Deniston: Yeah, absolutely: Major cooling in the North, a lot of records in Europe, the so-called “little Ice Age” in Europe hit.
So these things really need to be studied, and this is another reason to throw this IPCC and British genocide climate-change gang out of the picture, because they’re trying to suppress studies of this. Because their whole thing is: The climate doesn’t change, only man changes the climate. We don’t study and we’re not going to allow other people to seriously study, the types of natural factors that cause the climate to change, because that would distract from and create other explanations, which wouldn’t allow us to pin everything on mankind, which is what they’re trying to do. That’s the intention of the whole thing.
So anyway, the Sun changes, that’s going to have an effect. But what I want to talk about here, this is kind of a set-up context; the point I really want to get to is, that we have to go to a higher level and look at this galactic input, the effect of galactic activity.
And one reference to this, is a study that just came out by an Israeli-American scientist, Dr. Nir Shaviv, who had already done studies looking at the motion of our Solar System through the galaxy and showing that as our Solar System moves through the spiral arm regions of the galaxy. And people have seen pictures of galaxies, they have these nice spiral arms where you have a greater density of activity in the galactic system.
Already, over a decade ago, he had worked with others, and they’d shown that to the best of our understanding, it looks like as our Solar System moves through these galactic spiral arms, that’s when you get major glaciation and cooling, and not just these glacial periods, but what are sometimes called “global icehouse events” where much of the whole planet is covered in ice, glaciers moving all the way down towards the mid-latitudes.
You tend to get these major, major icing glaciation events associated with the passage of our Solar System through these spiral arms. That totally changes what we’re thinking of when we think about weather and climate. It’s not a terrestrial process; it’s not even a terrestrial/solar system process. It’s a terrestrial/solar system/galactic process.
And again, just to throw it in there, it’s been known that galactic cosmic rays, very high-energy cosmic radiation, radiation from the galaxy more generally, from interstellar space, is constantly flooding our atmosphere, and it’s constantly having a direct impact on the electrical properties, the ionization properties of the atmosphere. So we’ve known that we’re not an isolated body in empty space, unaffected by the cosmos around us. And we’ve known that it’s not just activity from the Sun, which in bulk energy terms is the major component of cosmic radiation into our Earth system, but it’s also this galactic factor, this high-energy galactic cosmic radiation.
If you haven’t seen Frank Capra’s “The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays,” I highly recommend for our viewers that they watch that, for a very entertaining pedagogical through the process of discovery of this cosmic ray effect.
This is an aspect that now really needs to be further investigated, in terms of its potential role as a factor in climate, in cloud formation, in condensation of water vapor; all that water vapor in the atmosphere, what causes it to decide when to change into liquid, form into clouds and fall? There’s a lot of indications that we need to start looking more closely at these factors, such as ionization and related electrical effects — tapping into the global electric circuit is another component of this whole process.
So we need to introduce a recognition of this galactic factor, as an active factor in play, in what we experience as our “climate,” our hydrological system, our water cycle. This particular graphic [Figure 4] illustrates a more recent study, just released this past winter by Dr. Shaviv and some of his associates, looking at the motion of our Solar System, not just around the galaxy, but also above and below the disk, something we’ve discussed on the show before, that our current understanding of how our Solar System interacts with and moves through the galactic system, is that it’s travelling around it, but it’s also kind of bobbing up and down. You know, the galaxy is this disk-like structure, and our Solar System seems to move above and below that disk, passing through the mid-region within our plane as it does.
And this is something that on the one side, has been associated with periods of extinction, of life, and change and development of new life forms, and changes of biodiversity on the evolutionary scale. That Dr. Shaviv just showed is that it also seems to be associated with changes in climate: So you have here indicated, it’s roughly, generally a 32-million-year cycle, as indicated there, from the peak, the highest point we reach on say, the northern side, down to the lowest point we reach on the southern side; so like peak to trough, that’s about 32 million years. And people think these cycles vary a little bit in length, so it’s not like clockwork, exactly 32 every single time. There’s other factors that will play into modulation to these periods, but roughly about 32 million years.
So, 32 million years, peak to trough, also about roughly 32 million years from mid-plane crossing to mid-plane crossing. They’re both indicated here. What Shaviv showed, working with some other people who had a nice, thorough data set of various indications of climate, over the past 400 or 500 million years, indications that there was a cycle, roughly around 32 million years, of warming and cooling of the climate over this past 400 million year period. And the cycle of warming and cooling corresponds to what we understand about the motion of our Solar System through the galaxy.
Again, another line of evidence — and there’s more too, but just to keep things within the bounds of the timeframe here — this is just another indication that these galactic activities, the galactic processes are an active factor at play. We might not fully understand everything about why or how that occurs yet, but these lines of evidence indicate that if we’re going to understand what the hydrological cycle is, what the climate is that we experience and we depend upon, that we need to better improve and manage and control, we have to start thinking from the standpoint of this galactic system as an active factor at play.
And Dr. Shaviv hypothesizes that as we move through the mid-plane, these mid-plane crossings are the period where it seems to get cooler, so it’s believed that there’s a higher amount of cosmic radiation activity, galactic cosmic radiation in this mid-plane region, he believes that the increase of that activity facilitates greater cloud formation and stimulates certain cooling effects. That might be a lot of it; it might be just one part of the story, or there might be other factors that we don’t quite fully understand yet, but that’s a hypothesis that he’s put forward, that’s actually being tested and investigated by different scientists.
Fan-Chiang: At CERN [the European Center for Nuclear Research].
Deniston: Yeah, at CERN you have some activity going on there, which is already breaking new ground and opening up new insights that we had no idea were at play in these cloud formation/condensation processes. So the science is just, to put it bluntly, just not really understood. And if you take the standard textbook theories, you’re going to fail anyway, because the textbook theories have already failed. That’s another whole subject.
So this is our new perspective. What is the climate? The climate is an interaction of galactic, solar and terrestrial processes, and mankind, I guarantee you is the only species on this planet that is going to think about that. Those deer in California that might like it when there’s more water, because there’s more fresh grass for them to live, they might enjoy these beneficial and not enjoy the catastrophic changes in the climate; they’re not going to intervene to change it. That’s what mankind does: to improve and change the conditions and make them better. They’re certainly not going to conceptualize “Oh, I’m part of a galactic system. I need to start thinking about a galactic system, and then change my activity to correspond to my imagination thinking about this galactic process as a whole and situating our Solar System and our planet in the context of this galactic process.” That is mankind. That is what mankind has to do. That’s uniquely our capability and that makes it our responsibility and our obligation, to be thinking and acting on that level.
Now, somebody might look at this and say: “OK, what does a 32-million-year cycle matter for us right now — 32 million years? I just read the headlines, and California’s out of water in one year, what’re you talking about 32 million years for? Mankind’s only been around for a couple of million years.”
The point is that going to this perspective gives us a completely new, higher insight into what this hydrological cycle is, again, understanding that it’s not just the cycle of water, it’s a cycle of water that’s driven and modulated by the effects of cosmic, including galactic activity. So one thing on the table now, immediately, is, can we use this understanding to give us again, a better control over this global water cycle? And not just necessarily larger in scale, although we probably want to do things like this, but not just larger in scale, going to a higher conceptual level.
We’ve talked about a few times on this show before, there are some initial demonstrations that seem to indicate that if we simulate our own ionization and electrical effects on the atmosphere, we can actually stimulate rainfall; we can also potentially inhibit rainfall. We can tap into, at least initially, these more electrical ionization-type effects, which play a role in this whole hydrological cycle process.
This is something that’s been, as we’ve discussed, this has been demonstrated in Mexico; it’s been demonstrated in Israel; it’s been demonstrated in Australia; it’s been demonstrated in the United Arab Emirates. There’s currently a new demonstration program going on in Oman. And to varying degrees of effect: Some of these rigorous studies show they increase the rainfall by 20%, 10%. If we were going to use this type of thing to address California’s crisis, we’d probably need more than that. But it’s an indication there’s something there that we’re potentially tapping into, that we could better understand, better discover what exactly are the principles at play, and use that greater understanding potentially, to really use these things on a larger scale.
Some of the other operations, like were going on in Mexico, appear to have significantly greater effects, and were operating on a larger scale. This Australian Rain Technologies, they ran a whole series of demonstrations in Australia. There’s thorough documentation and reports on their activity there, the successes they had. They just initiated a new series of tests, a new five-year program in Oman; the first couple of years results are available on their site here. They have independent reviews from independent university professors studying their work.
So again, indication that there’s definitely something going on there, that could be tapped into, could be expanded. And I would posit, the key is going to be approaching it from this broader galactic perspective, to actually discover, what is the science of this cosmic, atmospheric, hydrological interaction, such that we can actually use that understanding, use that galactic perspective to make things like this work, and work better.
Another outfit is called “Rain On Request” and they have similar technologies, similar approach; some differences in their technologies. But again, pursuing the same avenue of electrical ionization effects, and beginning to stimulate and modulate cloud formation rainfall, these types of things.
And ideally, what some of the scientists working in this area have played with and investigated, and are pursuing, is using these types of systems to create drafts of new, moist water from the ocean, and drawing it inland. And now we’re opening up a whole new domain of activity like this. Moving in this direction, we’re not going to be just dependent upon managing what falls on the ground. We need to think about beginning to control what’s in the atmosphere, and where it falls and where it goes. And that’s going to be, really, the only way you can absolutely secure these cycles as they exist, and also allow us to expand the cycles and develop new cycles: bring moisture overland, which wouldn’t go overland normally, and actually have a new, man-made, man-created cycle, to ensure that we have the vigorous flow of water onto land and back into the ocean again, needed to sustain strong economic activity and growing economy, and the biosphere generally, life: what mankind does, improving the biosphere, improving life.
This is an aspect. I think to put it in there in this context, another obvious thing that needs to be pursued is nuclear desalination. That’s another way we can ensure an adequate, stable supply of water, at least for the coastal regions. And again, that’s a way where we’re not just dependent upon managing existing natural cycles, which, to the surprise of the IPCC, the eminent scientists there, the climate actually changes.
Fan-Chiang: The cycles change.
Deniston: The cycles change. That would allow us to have our own control, our own input on our own cycles, that we can guarantee to continue and provide the fresh water needed.
These are some programs, you know, NAWAPA, long-term, probably we need something on that scale, to address some of the conditions of the West. In the shorter-term, we absolutely need desalination. We probably could get that going in a couple of years, if you had a real, top-down effort. guided by international cooperation with the BRICS, for example. Weather modification, these ionization systems. For a couple tens of millions of dollars, maybe $100 million, you could do a critical series of experiments, and start testing the hell out of these things: How do they work, why do they work, when do they work? Whose technology’s the best? You got this guy out here with his proposal, this guy with his proposal, why not start figuring this stuff out?
Let’s figure this out, let’s figure it out, and figure it out from the standpoint of the galactic perspective: You’re dealing with a climate that’s not an Earth-based climate. It’s a cosmic climate. We’re living in a cosmic, galactic climate. And people need to start thinking about that standpoint. And again, mankind, by our nature, we don’t just make realizations like this. We make realizations like this in discoveries, and then use that knowledge to change how we act on the system.
So I think just to round this out, the critical point we’re facing right now is, to go to this galactic perspective. Mentally, put ourselves to that point, where we’re thinking about the galaxy as a whole, the Solar System as a whole, the Solar System interacting with the galaxy, and in our minds recognize that that is the process we’re dealing with, and then really make our activity correspond to that recognition, and figure out how to make our activity correspond to that recognition, from the standpoint of allowing us to improve those systems and improve them for mankind and improve them for life on Earth.
So I think that that’s what I see as the broader challenge implied by the current situation. And that brings us back to, I think, Lyn’s emphasis on China’s space program, because that’s the direction they’re going. They’re saying, let’s get out into the Solar System, let’s make mankind an active presence, an active force on the level of the Solar System, on a Solar System scale; let’s start thinking and acting from that standpoint.
And so this perspective provided by China, by the BRICS, by their space program, by this cosmic orientation, is the future perspective from which we can begin to look for and try and find and identify the solutions needed for the water crisis. And this will apply in the West, but it’ll apply more generally. Water’s a major issue.
Fan-Chiang: I think this is also why Mr. LaRouche continually says that Kepler’s space program is the space program that China is pursuing right now. And in that sense, Kepler really already defined mankind as this, at least Solar System-wide species, the species that could act based on the principles which conduct the Solar System. And now, over the past hundreds of years, we’ve just been trying to fill those shoes. So our career’s already been defined, and now you’ve been training to fill those shoes.
And that would really completely — if you think about it, it completely redefines how we would address this crisis, as you’ve been saying; not only that you would view, for example, these ionization systems from the galactic scale, as sort of tapping into another cycle, a much larger cycle, as we did with the other cycles; but also if you really want to look at a water cycle in a galactic environment, the past several years have really allowed us to do that, from the standpoint that now we know there are water cycles on many, many planets in the Solar System; there’s a water cycle on the Moon, on three of the planets at least, or the moons of Jupiter, of Saturn — at least! We know now that there at least used to be one on Mars. And those are very good indicators then, very good measures for a way to hone in on the invariant that would be the galactic process, that it’s not unique, for example, to Earth.
Because Earth has a lot of other unique aspects — life, a very big factor.
Deniston: Yeah, absolutely.
Beets: Kepler would be totally thrilled with this idea! I mean, he, already in the Harmony of the World, he dedicates a good number of pages to exploring, reconceptualizing the weather and other effects on Earth, like earthquakes and volcanic activity; he’s making a certain attempt to locate those as effects of the activity of the Solar System. Just as you’re referencing, he’s sort of subsumed what, for centuries, man had thought was just an Earth-based system, he totally subsumed that in a solar system. And put man out in the Solar System. And he attempts to do the same thing with weather conditions and locating these as an effect of the organization of the entire system.
And I think he would be totally thrilled with the idea that, OK, this isn’t just a Solar System climate system, this is a galactic cosmo-climate system.
And then, just to go back to something you referenced, quickly, Ben about what does a 32-million-year cycle matter if we’re going to run out of water in a year? We can’t afford to wait 32 million years for some other century. But it really does speak to the unique powers of the human creative process over all other processes that we’re aware of: Mankind, in understanding something which we see in a 32-million-year cycle, but then being able to have an insight into that principle and apply it now, in a new way, which has never been applied before — one example being this ionization technology — we’re literally bending and condensing something on the scale of millions of years into five years, a decade. And it really does speak to this complete superiority of the human creative process, in and over the universe, to create new principles and new forms of action that never existed before. And it’s completely contrary to the degenerate idea in the culture: That nature was good until man appeared and it’s all been degeneration since. But it’s the completely opposite idea.
Fan-Chiang: But also that human beings have to do what existed before, that anything that you created that is new to the universe is bad, is evil.
Beets: Well, as you said, it’s not that we can’t do what was done before, it’s actually against our nature, and it’ll lead to our destruction. It’s actually evil, to think that we should do what was done before. The point is, we have to do what was never done before, and that’s how we open up things which were totally unexpected. I think that’s what you’re brining up in the China program.
Deniston: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the degeneration with the current society in the United States. It’s most importantly, that’s a principle for mankind. But that’s not just a principle for mankind, it’s a principle for the universe generally. Life, our understanding of life, our best understanding of life, everything we know about it indicates, it doesn’t just do what it did before. It does what it never did before. The entire evolutionary process has been leaping to stages where you have completely new qualities of action, qualities of activity, that were never done before. And always driven by a certain vector, a certain directionality of increasing the effect of life on the planet, increasing the energy-flux density of life.
So, sustainability is not a principle of life, it’s not a principle of the universe the way it’s discussed now. Sustainability in the universe is creation of new states. From what we know about the universe, that is what’s sustainable, is the creation of new states, and when mankind is not doing that, we are degenerating and we’re failing, and we’re — you know, decaying. That’s what California is experiencing right now, this rejection of the universal principle of sustainability in creation only, and mankind’s unique capability, and therefore obligation, to pursue that in a way that only mankind can.
You know, I think, again, that’s what Mr. LaRouche sees in what China is doing, is they have some recognition, some grasp on that. That they need to grow, they need to grow by creating new states, and they are going to create an international system that allows nations to cooperate and participate in that process. As the President of China has said, “win-win” cooperation: that when mankind sustains itself by creation of new states, you create more wealth for everybody involved. And that’s what’s inherently human, and that’s the only sustainable form of existence that we have today, that mankind has, especially at this point.
Beets: Okay, I think that’s an excellent point to leave off on. I will just point our viewers to the LaRouche PAC website and also the Executive Intelligence Review, the newest issue, for your article. And thank everybody for watching, and we’ll see you all soon.
Transcript now available—Benjamin Deniston is joined by Megan Beets and Liona Fan-Chiang for a review of Deniston’s latest paper, “New Perspectives on the Western Water Crisis”, for a discussion which Lyndon LaRouche called “a shocker for the practical issues of how to deal with the water crisis… This program is the most important thing that is being circulated in the United States right now.”
By Benjamin Deniston · benjamin.deniston@gmail.com
“Right now [california] has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.”
This was the assessment given by Jay Famiglietti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a March 12 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.
As has been covered by Lyndon LaRouche and his EIR magazine for decades,1as well as by his LaRouche Political Action Committee since its formation. the water situation in California (and the entire Southwest) has been heading towards a crisis, and new initiatives are needed to secure the future of the region. Despite coverage, warnings, and repeated campaigns by LaRouche and his associates, this issue has not been addressed, and we are looking into the beginning of the depths of a new stage in the crisis.
Here we will again address this challenge, but from a new vantage point.
While many in California (and the nation) are suffering the consequences of inaction, we will start by looking to the region in the world which has acted to begin to address their water crisis, China. Lyndon LaRouche has recently pointed to China’s activity as the critical point of reference for addressing the water challenges of California, Texas, and the Southwest. The United States needs more than a water program, it needs a shift in thinking – the fullest expressions of which are clearest in the implications of China’s orientation to the development of space, through their lunar program, and the new perspective provided by such an orientation. In the view of this author, this takes mankind to the highest currently accessible viewpoint for addressing the crisis, a galactic perspective.
From this vantage point, we will then examine the options for solving the western water crisis.2This is based on the longer analysis this author developed in 2014. See “Solve the World Water Crisis,” EIR January 30, 2015, Volume 42, Number 5; or this author’s contribution to the EIR special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” Dec. 1, 2014.
Over the past two years, Lyndon LaRouche has increasingly emphasized that the activity of China is the reference point for understanding how to handle the current water crisis in the western United States. In the recent years China has started to complete some of the largest and most important water management projects ever developed.
As the Hoover Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam were leading expressions of the great United States economic leap lead by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930’s, today China’s Three Gorges Dam (on the Yangtze River) stands as an emblem of China’s economic surge. The Three Gorges is the largest power production facility in the world3Not only the largest hydropower station, but the largest power station of any kind., with a capacity of 22.5 GW, well above the Hoover Dam’s 2.1 GW and the Grand Coulee’s 6.8 GW. In terms of storage capacity, the Three Gorges’ 40 km³ surpasses the 35 km³ of Hoover and 12 km³ of Grand Coulee.
And the Three Gorges is just one part of the largest water development program ever undertaken by mankind, currently in process in China. Their South Water North river diversion program is in the process of completing two of its three parts, the Eastern and Central routes (with the third, the Western route, still in planning).
Compare these programs to develop and utilize China’s Yangtze and Yellow river basins with the earlier projects in the United States to develop the Colorado, Sacramento, and San Joaquin rivers. Five projects (All American Canal, Colorado River Aqueduct, Central Valley Project, California State Water Project, and Central Arizona Project) enabled the diversion of 20 km³ of water, to the direct benefit of 65 to 80 million people.
Just the Eastern and Central routes of China’s project are expected to divert a greater amount, 27 km³, directly benefiting somewhere in the range of 400 million people. The planned Western route would bring the total of China’s South Water North program to 45 km³, over double the five cited projects of the southwestern United States.
The southwestern United States hasn’t initiated any new projects of this scale since the 1960’s, while China has developed their projects in the recent decades, with much of the work being done in the past ten years.
But these projects, themselves, are shadows, expressions of something deeper.
While California, Texas, and other western states are traveling deeper into water crisis, it is not because they have run out of viable options or programs, which could address the western water crisis. In the administration of President John F. Kennedy plans for the nuclear desalination of seawater where developed, and more advanced nuclear desalination plans have been created since. In the 1960’s the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) was designed and proposed as a plan to divert a fraction of the abundant freshwater of the northwestern regions (Alaska and Canada) down throughout the Southwest – a project which would have ensured the water needs for the entire western region.
So while California is suffering from the national turn away from the future orientation which existed from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, China is surpassing those achievements of our past. Clearly, the issue is not merely the designs and projects, as such, but the spirit – the commitment to the creation of the future.
Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, this – a grasp on the creation of the future – is expressed even more clearly in China’s space program. Heading towards the completion of their lunar exploration program, China is poised to initiate a development of the Moon, bringing mankind into a new relationship with the Solar System. The potential leading driver is the expressed interest in developing the helium-3 resources as a fuel for advanced fusion power systems.
While to many this may seem unrelated, this provides the needed vantage point to develop a broader conceptual perspective to better understand deeper and more fundamental aspects of the global water system – insights which may transform how we address the water crisis facing California and the western United States.
Here we will add some new considerations, allowing us to re-think what we are actually dealing with when we speak of California’s water crisis.
It is mankind’s mission and obligation on this planet to improve the conditions for life – to develop and improve the planet, by understanding, managing, and improving the systems and processes at play. That is what mankind naturally does, what he must continue to do, and the global water system is a critical case in point.
Ultimately the hydrological cycle is a single global system. For mankind, the most fundamental characteristic of this is the evaporation of ocean water, the transport of atmospheric water vapor, the precipitation of atmospheric water over land, and the eventual flow of surface and ground water back into the oceans.4Obviously there are many other aspects to the global water system, and various sub-cycles as well, but this serves to provide the basic conceptual framework needed here. Again, for more information see this author’s contribution to the EIR special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” Dec. 1, 2014. This is what provides the vast majority of water resources utilized all over the world. The general challenge mankind has been dealing with for millennia is to manage and improve these cycles.
Starting with the earliest irrigation systems, man better utilized small streams and rivers. This expanded to larger scale systems. Reservoirs and flood control systems were developed. By the early 20th century the United States set new standards with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the management and diversion of the Colorado River (along with other impressive projects).
Today, China has responded to the needs created by the past fifty years of economic and technological growth by raising the bar further with their Three Gorges Dam and their South Water North project. Tomorrow, to continue this process of natural development, we’ll need to go to larger (international, continental) systems, like NAWAPA, but, also, we’ll need to make a new leap, towards understanding how to better control these cycles (and not just on a larger scale, but from a qualitatively higher level).
This takes us to the cosmic (solar and galactic) perspective, implicitly provided by China’s space program.
The Earth, and all its systems (water included), was never an isolated body.
In terms of bulk energy input, the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun drives the entire global water cycle, by pumping the atmosphere full of water vapor via evaporation. Another solar system process contributes to the circulation of the atmospheric water vapor, the rotation of the Earth.
While these are well-recognized cosmic drivers of climate and the water cycle, growing evidence indicates that another cosmic factor plays a significant role: the activity of the galaxy. For example, one of the most recent pieces of evidence comes from a new study indicating that cyclical variations in the Earth’s climate correspond to the travels of our Solar System through the galaxy. As our Solar System travels around the Milky Way it oscillates above and below the plane of the galactic disk, experiencing varying galactic environments as it does so. In this recent study the authors indicate that the Earth’s climate appears to fluctuate in correspondence with these galactic travels, in a roughly 32 million year cycle.5“Is the Solar System’s Galactic Motion Imprinted in the Phanerozoic Climate?” Nir J. Shaviv, Andreas Prokoph, and Ján Veizer, Nature Scientific Reports, August 2014, article number: 6150.
Many will ask what such a slow and long-term variation (32 million years) has to do with our immediate water crisis, where California has only one year of water left?
In the most basic sense understanding this factor means better understanding the fundamental nature of the Earth’s climate system, but, even more specifically, this galactic vantage point could be what’s needed to enable us to see new solutions for California, Texas, and other water starved regions.
A leading theory for explaining the interaction between our Solar System’s galactic environment and the climate on Earth points to the role high energy galactic cosmic rays play in controlling the ionization and electrical properties of the lower atmosphere, factors which appear to affect cloud formation and the condensation of atmospheric water vapor, though the details of these interactions are still being investigated.
If we can learn to better understand the microphysics of these processes, perhaps we could begin to manage and control the atmospheric ionization and electrical conditions affecting cloud formations and precipitation. If adequate control could be developed, this would mean that we would no longer be limited to accessing the water which has already fallen to the ground (on average, about 113,000 cubic kilometer of water precipitates over land each year), because we could being to tap the much larger amount of atmospheric moisture, including the stores over the oceans (on average, about 413,000 cubic kilometer of water evaporates from the ocean each year, 90% of which simply precipitates back into the ocean without making it on land).
For California, for example, the moist atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean would become the largest reservoir the state has ever seen. This is not mere speculation. As will be discussed and cited below, various systems have already been successful in generating rainfall by tapping into these processes, though more work needs to be done.
Recent analysis of the long-term history of California’s hydrological system further points to the importance of this galactic perspective. The existing hydrological systems and precipitation patters found in California (and other regions) are not static, but vary and change (over years, decades, and centuries), underscoring the need to look beyond the management of local and regional water supplies, and seek a qualitatively higher level of control over the system.
Based on developing and studying various records of the climate and hydrology of California over the past few thousand years, recent research has shown the the 20th century did not represent average conditions, but was more of an anomaly.6“The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow,” by Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam, University of California Press, February 12, 2015. Compared to the past few thousand years, the 20th century for California was generally wetter and more stable, with earlier centuries regularly experiencing more extreme variations. This included periodic mega-droughts, lasting decades or more, and mega-floods (which have been known to fill the entire Central Valley with water!).
Presently there is a serious concern that California could be heading into a period of prolonged drought, averaging significantly less precipitation and river flow than the state had become accustomed to in the 20th century. Cosmic factors (for example, variations in solar activity and galactic cosmic rays) as well as terrestrial factors (for example, cycles in regional ocean temperatures and volcanic activity) all play a role in such climate variations. While ongoing efforts are still trying to determine the varying relative strength of these different effects, the bottom line is clear: California, and the West generally, can’t simply rely on local, or even regional water cycles. With expanding populations and variations in precipitation and water availability, the future of the West depends upon two categories of approach. First, the expansion of regional water management and diversion systems to a continental scale. Second, to transcend the management of of surface and ground water (that which has already precipitated), by going to the oceans and to the atmosphere to bring new flows and cycles of freshwater onto the land.
This publication has extensively presented efforts to revive the NAWAPA project (from the 1980s through today), a grand design to improve the water cycle of the North American continent by directing northwestern water throughout the Southwest. This would ensure stable and adequate water to not only California and Texas, but to the entire elevated regions of the Great Basin as well. The scale of this project is truly impressive, potentially diverting between 130 and 200 km³ per year (compared with the 45 km³ per year of the full South Water North program of China7Although there is a potential to add an major extension to the Western route of China’s project, which could add another 200 km³ per year to the system. ).
The North American continental water cycle can be estimated to be about 3,150 km³ per year (as measured by freshwater river runoff). Of that, 1,466 km³ flows out of the northwest, and only 113 km³ from the southwest. Using measurements and analysis from NASA earth monitoring satellites, the total amount of photosynthetic production can be estimated for these same regions. Comparing these two values allows for a simple, but insightful measure of the productivity of the continental water cycle, and of its respective basins. The figures below are measuring “billions of tonnes of photosynthesis per year” divided by “cubic kilometers of freshwater runoff per year,” to measure the productivity as “tonnes of photosynthesis per cubic kilometer of freshwater flow.”
These figures show, in terms of photosynthetic production, the water of the southwest is five and a half times more productive than the water of the northwest. This is a confirmation of what is intuitively clear, there is an excess of freshwater in the northwest, where the cold climate and lack of sunlight limit a more productive use of that water. By these values, a first order estimation of the effect of NAWAPA can be made, by estimating the potential increase in photosynthesis, and the increase in the productivity of the continental water cycle.
A way to ensure the availability of freshwater for the coastal regions is by purifying ocean water through desalination. This is effectively the creation of new, man-made water cycles. The ocean water brought onto land by man-made desalination will participate in various biological and economic processes, before ultimately returning to the ocean (as will all terrestrial water, for the most part). So it is not fundamentally different than what already occurs naturally, but, rather than being subject to the limitations (or variations) of natural cycles, desalination allows mankind to generate and control his own cycles, when and where needed (at least in coastal regions).
Currently the most efficient (in terms of required energy per unit of freshwater produced) is to pump ocean water through membranes in a reverse osmosis process, though this is considered to be an energy intensive process.8While energy intensive relative to our current economic stage, it is worth noting that man-made desalination is actually much more efficient than what what occurs naturally. All (or the vast majority) of the freshwater used by life on land has also gone through a desalination process, as the Sun evaporates water from the oceans, creating a flux of fresh (desalinated) water into the atmosphere. Taking the total solar power reaching the Earth’s oceans (~60,000 terawatts), and comparing that to the amount of ocean water desalinated by solar power (~413,000 cubic kilometers per year), results in an average efficiency of about 4,700 megajoules per cubic meter. If we only include solar desalinated water which makes it on the land, the average efficiency of the entire system is an order of magnitude less, about 48,000 megajoules per cubic meter. Modern man-made desalination plants are 100 to 1,000 times more efficient, operating at around 10 to 15 megajoules per cubic meter.
The key to vastly expanding the use of this capability is to increase the energy flux density of the national economy, as measured as power per capita and power per square kilometer. This can be translated into a lowering of the cost of power, enabling large scale desalination as a mode of resource development to enter the realm of economically affordable options. To do this today will require the rapid expansion of advanced nuclear power systems, and the greatest potential would come from a crash program for the development of fusion power, as Mr. LaRouche has called for in his economic policy memorandum for the United States.9“The Four New Laws to Save The U.S.A. Now! Not an Option: An Immediate Necessity,” by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., June 10, 2014.
Another avenue exists, one that is less explored, but holds greater potential if successfully developed: tapping into atmospheric moisture directly. As stated above, 90% of all the ocean water evaporated by the Sun precipitates back into the oceans, without participating in any productivity activity on land. This precipitation over the ocean is well over three times the amount of total precipitation which occurs over the land.
Since the Sun has already expended a tremendous amount of energy evaporating (desalinating and transporting) this water, the potential exists for this to be a much more efficient resource, if we can figure out how to tap into it.
This brings us back to our galactic perspective of the global water system. If high energy galactic cosmic radiation has an important influence on processes of condensation of atmospheric water vapor and cloud formation, through the process of ionization, why can’t we generate similar and related actions?
One method has been developed and demonstrated in a number of locations (Mexico, Australia, Israel, Oman, Abu Dhabi, etc.) utilizing ground-based atmospheric ionization systems.10See, “Expanding NAWAPA XXI: Weather Modification To Stop Starvation,” EIR, August 9, 2013, as well as this author’s contribution to the EIR special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” Dec. 1, 2014. These systems require running only a relatively small amount of power through a system of wires connecting a small array of towers, altering the ionization of the local atmosphere. The challenge is tuning the system to provide the correct ionization and electrical effects required to tap into these atmospheric reservoirs.
From what has been demonstrated already, some of these systems can induce condensation and rainfall over a 100 kilometer radius, and, perhaps most important, can utilize a small array of such stations to create pressure gradients which draw more atmospheric moisture inland (from over the ocean).
Perhaps additional methods and technologies (other than ionization) could be developed to enable further control over, and development of these reservoirs of the sky. This would be another method for generating new water cycles, bringing more water on to land, to participate in productive biological and economic activity, before returning to the ocean in a cycle which can be potentially more steady and sustainable than what nature provides alone.
For the cases of California and Texas desalination and atmospheric ionization should be employed as soon as possible along the relevant coastal regions.
We know nuclear powered desalination systems can work, and will work the best in the context of a national fusion driver program – raising the energy flux density of the economy and providing the critical physical economic growth factor needed to get our nation out of the present economic collapse, including the water crisis.
Demonstration and testing of ionization-based weather modification systems can begin almost immediately, as the facilities are generally small and relatively simple to construct. For a few tens of millions of dollars demonstration facilities could be constructed and utilized to better understand the viability and potential of these systems.
These are the approaches needed to ensure the stable and continual water supply for at least the coastal regions of California and Texas.
Ultimately a continental perspective will likely be required as well, with some variation of the NAWAPA design. This can address the needs of the high elevation regions of the Great Basin, and the places which may be too far inland for the effects of desalination and ionization to effectively reach.
This brings us back to the opening point. The objective solutions exist, it is the commitment to the future which is lacking. In just the last decade China has demonstrated that successful actions can be taken, while the United States has effectively done nothing.
Underlying this stark distinction in expressed actions (or inactions) is the deeper issue, the cultural recognition (or lack there of) of mankind’s unique role as a creative force, on the planet, and soon beyond. With this inherent power comes the responsibility, not for maintenance, but for improvement.
Mankind is the only species on this planet which can begin to understand such grand processes as the changing relationship of our Solar System to the Milky Way galaxy, and utilize that understanding to improve the conditions for life here on Earth. It is time we act accordingly.
The author can be reached at benjamin.deniston@gmail.com
By Benjamin Deniston · benjamin.deniston@gmail.com
“Right now [california] has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.”
This was the assessment given by Jay Famiglietti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a March 12 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.
As has been covered by Lyndon LaRouche and his EIR magazine for decades,1as well as by his LaRouche Political Action Committee since its formation. the water situation in California (and the entire Southwest) has been heading towards a crisis, and new initiatives are needed to secure the future of the region. Despite coverage, warnings, and repeated campaigns by LaRouche and his associates, this issue has not been addressed, and we are looking into the beginning of the depths of a new stage in the crisis.
Here we will again address this challenge, but from a new vantage point.
While many in California (and the nation) are suffering the consequences of inaction, we will start by looking to the region in the world which has acted to begin to address their water crisis, China. Lyndon LaRouche has recently pointed to China’s activity as the critical point of reference for addressing the water challenges of California, Texas, and the Southwest. The United States needs more than a water program, it needs a shift in thinking – the fullest expressions of which are clearest in the implications of China’s orientation to the development of space, through their lunar program, and the new perspective provided by such an orientation. In the view of this author, this takes mankind to the highest currently accessible viewpoint for addressing the crisis, a galactic perspective.
From this vantage point, we will then examine the options for solving the western water crisis.2This is based on the longer analysis this author developed in 2014. See “Solve the World Water Crisis,” EIR January 30, 2015, Volume 42, Number 5; or this author’s contribution to the EIR special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” Dec. 1, 2014.
Over the past two years, Lyndon LaRouche has increasingly emphasized that the activity of China is the reference point for understanding how to handle the current water crisis in the western United States. In the recent years China has started to complete some of the largest and most important water management projects ever developed.
As the Hoover Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam were leading expressions of the great United States economic leap lead by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930’s, today China’s Three Gorges Dam (on the Yangtze River) stands as an emblem of China’s economic surge. The Three Gorges is the largest power production facility in the world3Not only the largest hydropower station, but the largest power station of any kind., with a capacity of 22.5 GW, well above the Hoover Dam’s 2.1 GW and the Grand Coulee’s 6.8 GW. In terms of storage capacity, the Three Gorges’ 40 km³ surpasses the 35 km³ of Hoover and 12 km³ of Grand Coulee.
And the Three Gorges is just one part of the largest water development program ever undertaken by mankind, currently in process in China. Their South Water North river diversion program is in the process of completing two of its three parts, the Eastern and Central routes (with the third, the Western route, still in planning).
Compare these programs to develop and utilize China’s Yangtze and Yellow river basins with the earlier projects in the United States to develop the Colorado, Sacramento, and San Joaquin rivers. Five projects (All American Canal, Colorado River Aqueduct, Central Valley Project, California State Water Project, and Central Arizona Project) enabled the diversion of 20 km³ of water, to the direct benefit of 65 to 80 million people.
Just the Eastern and Central routes of China’s project are expected to divert a greater amount, 27 km³, directly benefiting somewhere in the range of 400 million people. The planned Western route would bring the total of China’s South Water North program to 45 km³, over double the five cited projects of the southwestern United States.
The southwestern United States hasn’t initiated any new projects of this scale since the 1960’s, while China has developed their projects in the recent decades, with much of the work being done in the past ten years.
But these projects, themselves, are shadows, expressions of something deeper.
While California, Texas, and other western states are traveling deeper into water crisis, it is not because they have run out of viable options or programs, which could address the western water crisis. In the administration of President John F. Kennedy plans for the nuclear desalination of seawater where developed, and more advanced nuclear desalination plans have been created since. In the 1960’s the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) was designed and proposed as a plan to divert a fraction of the abundant freshwater of the northwestern regions (Alaska and Canada) down throughout the Southwest – a project which would have ensured the water needs for the entire western region.
So while California is suffering from the national turn away from the future orientation which existed from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, China is surpassing those achievements of our past. Clearly, the issue is not merely the designs and projects, as such, but the spirit – the commitment to the creation of the future.
Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, this – a grasp on the creation of the future – is expressed even more clearly in China’s space program. Heading towards the completion of their lunar exploration program, China is poised to initiate a development of the Moon, bringing mankind into a new relationship with the Solar System. The potential leading driver is the expressed interest in developing the helium-3 resources as a fuel for advanced fusion power systems.
While to many this may seem unrelated, this provides the needed vantage point to develop a broader conceptual perspective to better understand deeper and more fundamental aspects of the global water system – insights which may transform how we address the water crisis facing California and the western United States.
Here we will add some new considerations, allowing us to re-think what we are actually dealing with when we speak of California’s water crisis.
It is mankind’s mission and obligation on this planet to improve the conditions for life – to develop and improve the planet, by understanding, managing, and improving the systems and processes at play. That is what mankind naturally does, what he must continue to do, and the global water system is a critical case in point.
Ultimately the hydrological cycle is a single global system. For mankind, the most fundamental characteristic of this is the evaporation of ocean water, the transport of atmospheric water vapor, the precipitation of atmospheric water over land, and the eventual flow of surface and ground water back into the oceans.4Obviously there are many other aspects to the global water system, and various sub-cycles as well, but this serves to provide the basic conceptual framework needed here. Again, for more information see this author’s contribution to the EIR special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” Dec. 1, 2014. This is what provides the vast majority of water resources utilized all over the world. The general challenge mankind has been dealing with for millennia is to manage and improve these cycles.
Starting with the earliest irrigation systems, man better utilized small streams and rivers. This expanded to larger scale systems. Reservoirs and flood control systems were developed. By the early 20th century the United States set new standards with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the management and diversion of the Colorado River (along with other impressive projects).
Today, China has responded to the needs created by the past fifty years of economic and technological growth by raising the bar further with their Three Gorges Dam and their South Water North project. Tomorrow, to continue this process of natural development, we’ll need to go to larger (international, continental) systems, like NAWAPA, but, also, we’ll need to make a new leap, towards understanding how to better control these cycles (and not just on a larger scale, but from a qualitatively higher level).
This takes us to the cosmic (solar and galactic) perspective, implicitly provided by China’s space program.
The Earth, and all its systems (water included), was never an isolated body.
In terms of bulk energy input, the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun drives the entire global water cycle, by pumping the atmosphere full of water vapor via evaporation. Another solar system process contributes to the circulation of the atmospheric water vapor, the rotation of the Earth.
While these are well-recognized cosmic drivers of climate and the water cycle, growing evidence indicates that another cosmic factor plays a significant role: the activity of the galaxy. For example, one of the most recent pieces of evidence comes from a new study indicating that cyclical variations in the Earth’s climate correspond to the travels of our Solar System through the galaxy. As our Solar System travels around the Milky Way it oscillates above and below the plane of the galactic disk, experiencing varying galactic environments as it does so. In this recent study the authors indicate that the Earth’s climate appears to fluctuate in correspondence with these galactic travels, in a roughly 32 million year cycle.5“Is the Solar System’s Galactic Motion Imprinted in the Phanerozoic Climate?” Nir J. Shaviv, Andreas Prokoph, and Ján Veizer, Nature Scientific Reports, August 2014, article number: 6150.
Many will ask what such a slow and long-term variation (32 million years) has to do with our immediate water crisis, where California has only one year of water left?
In the most basic sense understanding this factor means better understanding the fundamental nature of the Earth’s climate system, but, even more specifically, this galactic vantage point could be what’s needed to enable us to see new solutions for California, Texas, and other water starved regions.
A leading theory for explaining the interaction between our Solar System’s galactic environment and the climate on Earth points to the role high energy galactic cosmic rays play in controlling the ionization and electrical properties of the lower atmosphere, factors which appear to affect cloud formation and the condensation of atmospheric water vapor, though the details of these interactions are still being investigated.
If we can learn to better understand the microphysics of these processes, perhaps we could begin to manage and control the atmospheric ionization and electrical conditions affecting cloud formations and precipitation. If adequate control could be developed, this would mean that we would no longer be limited to accessing the water which has already fallen to the ground (on average, about 113,000 cubic kilometer of water precipitates over land each year), because we could being to tap the much larger amount of atmospheric moisture, including the stores over the oceans (on average, about 413,000 cubic kilometer of water evaporates from the ocean each year, 90% of which simply precipitates back into the ocean without making it on land).
For California, for example, the moist atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean would become the largest reservoir the state has ever seen. This is not mere speculation. As will be discussed and cited below, various systems have already been successful in generating rainfall by tapping into these processes, though more work needs to be done.
Recent analysis of the long-term history of California’s hydrological system further points to the importance of this galactic perspective. The existing hydrological systems and precipitation patters found in California (and other regions) are not static, but vary and change (over years, decades, and centuries), underscoring the need to look beyond the management of local and regional water supplies, and seek a qualitatively higher level of control over the system.
Based on developing and studying various records of the climate and hydrology of California over the past few thousand years, recent research has shown the the 20th century did not represent average conditions, but was more of an anomaly.6“The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow,” by Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam, University of California Press, February 12, 2015. Compared to the past few thousand years, the 20th century for California was generally wetter and more stable, with earlier centuries regularly experiencing more extreme variations. This included periodic mega-droughts, lasting decades or more, and mega-floods (which have been known to fill the entire Central Valley with water!).
Presently there is a serious concern that California could be heading into a period of prolonged drought, averaging significantly less precipitation and river flow than the state had become accustomed to in the 20th century. Cosmic factors (for example, variations in solar activity and galactic cosmic rays) as well as terrestrial factors (for example, cycles in regional ocean temperatures and volcanic activity) all play a role in such climate variations. While ongoing efforts are still trying to determine the varying relative strength of these different effects, the bottom line is clear: California, and the West generally, can’t simply rely on local, or even regional water cycles. With expanding populations and variations in precipitation and water availability, the future of the West depends upon two categories of approach. First, the expansion of regional water management and diversion systems to a continental scale. Second, to transcend the management of of surface and ground water (that which has already precipitated), by going to the oceans and to the atmosphere to bring new flows and cycles of freshwater onto the land.
This publication has extensively presented efforts to revive the NAWAPA project (from the 1980s through today), a grand design to improve the water cycle of the North American continent by directing northwestern water throughout the Southwest. This would ensure stable and adequate water to not only California and Texas, but to the entire elevated regions of the Great Basin as well. The scale of this project is truly impressive, potentially diverting between 130 and 200 km³ per year (compared with the 45 km³ per year of the full South Water North program of China7Although there is a potential to add an major extension to the Western route of China’s project, which could add another 200 km³ per year to the system. ).
The North American continental water cycle can be estimated to be about 3,150 km³ per year (as measured by freshwater river runoff). Of that, 1,466 km³ flows out of the northwest, and only 113 km³ from the southwest. Using measurements and analysis from NASA earth monitoring satellites, the total amount of photosynthetic production can be estimated for these same regions. Comparing these two values allows for a simple, but insightful measure of the productivity of the continental water cycle, and of its respective basins. The figures below are measuring “billions of tonnes of photosynthesis per year” divided by “cubic kilometers of freshwater runoff per year,” to measure the productivity as “tonnes of photosynthesis per cubic kilometer of freshwater flow.”
These figures show, in terms of photosynthetic production, the water of the southwest is five and a half times more productive than the water of the northwest. This is a confirmation of what is intuitively clear, there is an excess of freshwater in the northwest, where the cold climate and lack of sunlight limit a more productive use of that water. By these values, a first order estimation of the effect of NAWAPA can be made, by estimating the potential increase in photosynthesis, and the increase in the productivity of the continental water cycle.
A way to ensure the availability of freshwater for the coastal regions is by purifying ocean water through desalination. This is effectively the creation of new, man-made water cycles. The ocean water brought onto land by man-made desalination will participate in various biological and economic processes, before ultimately returning to the ocean (as will all terrestrial water, for the most part). So it is not fundamentally different than what already occurs naturally, but, rather than being subject to the limitations (or variations) of natural cycles, desalination allows mankind to generate and control his own cycles, when and where needed (at least in coastal regions).
Currently the most efficient (in terms of required energy per unit of freshwater produced) is to pump ocean water through membranes in a reverse osmosis process, though this is considered to be an energy intensive process.8While energy intensive relative to our current economic stage, it is worth noting that man-made desalination is actually much more efficient than what what occurs naturally. All (or the vast majority) of the freshwater used by life on land has also gone through a desalination process, as the Sun evaporates water from the oceans, creating a flux of fresh (desalinated) water into the atmosphere. Taking the total solar power reaching the Earth’s oceans (~60,000 terawatts), and comparing that to the amount of ocean water desalinated by solar power (~413,000 cubic kilometers per year), results in an average efficiency of about 4,700 megajoules per cubic meter. If we only include solar desalinated water which makes it on the land, the average efficiency of the entire system is an order of magnitude less, about 48,000 megajoules per cubic meter. Modern man-made desalination plants are 100 to 1,000 times more efficient, operating at around 10 to 15 megajoules per cubic meter.
The key to vastly expanding the use of this capability is to increase the energy flux density of the national economy, as measured as power per capita and power per square kilometer. This can be translated into a lowering of the cost of power, enabling large scale desalination as a mode of resource development to enter the realm of economically affordable options. To do this today will require the rapid expansion of advanced nuclear power systems, and the greatest potential would come from a crash program for the development of fusion power, as Mr. LaRouche has called for in his economic policy memorandum for the United States.9“The Four New Laws to Save The U.S.A. Now! Not an Option: An Immediate Necessity,” by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., June 10, 2014.
Another avenue exists, one that is less explored, but holds greater potential if successfully developed: tapping into atmospheric moisture directly. As stated above, 90% of all the ocean water evaporated by the Sun precipitates back into the oceans, without participating in any productivity activity on land. This precipitation over the ocean is well over three times the amount of total precipitation which occurs over the land.
Since the Sun has already expended a tremendous amount of energy evaporating (desalinating and transporting) this water, the potential exists for this to be a much more efficient resource, if we can figure out how to tap into it.
This brings us back to our galactic perspective of the global water system. If high energy galactic cosmic radiation has an important influence on processes of condensation of atmospheric water vapor and cloud formation, through the process of ionization, why can’t we generate similar and related actions?
One method has been developed and demonstrated in a number of locations (Mexico, Australia, Israel, Oman, Abu Dhabi, etc.) utilizing ground-based atmospheric ionization systems.10See, “Expanding NAWAPA XXI: Weather Modification To Stop Starvation,” EIR, August 9, 2013, as well as this author’s contribution to the EIR special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” Dec. 1, 2014. These systems require running only a relatively small amount of power through a system of wires connecting a small array of towers, altering the ionization of the local atmosphere. The challenge is tuning the system to provide the correct ionization and electrical effects required to tap into these atmospheric reservoirs.
From what has been demonstrated already, some of these systems can induce condensation and rainfall over a 100 kilometer radius, and, perhaps most important, can utilize a small array of such stations to create pressure gradients which draw more atmospheric moisture inland (from over the ocean).
Perhaps additional methods and technologies (other than ionization) could be developed to enable further control over, and development of these reservoirs of the sky. This would be another method for generating new water cycles, bringing more water on to land, to participate in productive biological and economic activity, before returning to the ocean in a cycle which can be potentially more steady and sustainable than what nature provides alone.
For the cases of California and Texas desalination and atmospheric ionization should be employed as soon as possible along the relevant coastal regions.
We know nuclear powered desalination systems can work, and will work the best in the context of a national fusion driver program – raising the energy flux density of the economy and providing the critical physical economic growth factor needed to get our nation out of the present economic collapse, including the water crisis.
Demonstration and testing of ionization-based weather modification systems can begin almost immediately, as the facilities are generally small and relatively simple to construct. For a few tens of millions of dollars demonstration facilities could be constructed and utilized to better understand the viability and potential of these systems.
These are the approaches needed to ensure the stable and continual water supply for at least the coastal regions of California and Texas.
Ultimately a continental perspective will likely be required as well, with some variation of the NAWAPA design. This can address the needs of the high elevation regions of the Great Basin, and the places which may be too far inland for the effects of desalination and ionization to effectively reach.
This brings us back to the opening point. The objective solutions exist, it is the commitment to the future which is lacking. In just the last decade China has demonstrated that successful actions can be taken, while the United States has effectively done nothing.
Underlying this stark distinction in expressed actions (or inactions) is the deeper issue, the cultural recognition (or lack there of) of mankind’s unique role as a creative force, on the planet, and soon beyond. With this inherent power comes the responsibility, not for maintenance, but for improvement.
Mankind is the only species on this planet which can begin to understand such grand processes as the changing relationship of our Solar System to the Milky Way galaxy, and utilize that understanding to improve the conditions for life here on Earth. It is time we act accordingly.
The author can be reached at benjamin.deniston@gmail.com
The near-final voting results in Nigeria today, show the election of the opposition candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, as the next President, who will take office on May 29. Almost 30 million Nigerians mobilized themselves to peacefully change their government. At this moment the vote tally shows Buhari (APC) 14,953,378; Goodluck Jonathan (PDP—People’s Democratic Party) 12,827,522 with one state, Borno, left to count.
This election, which was free, fair, transparent, and most importantly, unhampered by ethnic-religious violence, is special for the Nigerian population, as previously their leaders were imposed on them, without their consent or peaceful participation. There is a sense of the spirit of freedom which the poet Percy Shelly describes in his “Defense of Poetry.”
This historic action by the Nigerian people will have profound effects not only in Nigeria and all nations on the African continent, but throughout the world as well. The rejection of the ruling PDP, with Goodluck Jonathan the president for the last 6 years, was driven by the populatio’ns extreme frustration and rage in response to 16 years of failed policies that have made simple existence a daily challenge. The victory of Buhari could not have been linearly predicted a year, or even six months earlier; this is the most significant accomplishment for Nigeria since its 1960 liberation from the British Empire.
Shortly after Nigeria achieved independence, its founding leaders were assassinated in a 1966 coup that led to the ugly and bloody, Biafra civil war from 1967 to 1970, leaving over one million dead. From 1970 to 1999, Nigeria was ruled by various military governments (except for one brief period), including Gen. Buhari for 18 months from 1984-1985. All the governments following the end of military rule in 1999 were controlled by the PDP until this election.
Immediately after President Jonathan wisely conceded to General Buhari for the benefit of the nation, cheers broke out and citizens were dancing in the streets, representing a genuine, joyous excitement about what they had just accomplished.
Now the real challenge begins for the new Buhari administration; the expectations of the newly energized Nigerian population are very high. Buhari, in his campaign, has made a high priority of economic development—building infrastructure, and creating productive jobs, especially for the youth suffering from 90% unemployment. This priority is also reflected in the APC Manifesto.
As Minister of the Petroleum Trust Fund in the late 1990s, Buhari had embarked on road-building programs. During his brief period as head of state, Buhari rejected a new $2 billion loan from the World Bank, designed to drive Nigeria further into debt. He also made himself an enemy of the IMF, which actions were not unconnected to the coup launched against him, which opened the floodgates to the destructive IMF Structural Adjustment Programs from which Nigeria never recovered.
Security and corruption are Buhari’s other two top concerns for Nigeria.
Today, the infrastructure in general remains poor. Nigeria’s rich agricultural potential remains underdeveloped. However the most egregious failure of this and previous administrations is the paucity of electrical power for Africa’s most populous nation — almost 180 million people. Only 2,500 megawatts of electricity are available each day, leaving Nigerians to fend for themselves with expensive personal generators and home batteries. There is no Nigerian household or small business that does not experience a blackout at least once every day.
Despite the deadly presence of Boko Haram, which did launch limited attacks on Nigerians during the election, the economy remains the number-one issue that drove Nigerians to oust President Jonathan. The single most important task for the next President of Nigeria, is to provide plentiful, accessible electricity to revive Nigeria’s anemic economy.
The world is changing through the emerging leadership of the BRICS configuration with the New Development Bank, the AIIB, and other new agencies, projects and policies exemplified by China’s “Belt and Road” commitment to vast development, and most importantly, into space. This is where Africa’s future lies. Nigeria must play a leadership role; this is the import of the successful election in Nigeria.
The near-final voting results in Nigeria today, show the election of the opposition candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, as the next President, who will take office on May 29. Almost 30 million Nigerians mobilized themselves to peacefully change their government. At this moment the vote tally shows Buhari (APC) 14,953,378; Goodluck Jonathan (PDP—People’s Democratic Party) 12,827,522 with one state, Borno, left to count.
This election, which was free, fair, transparent, and most importantly, unhampered by ethnic-religious violence, is special for the Nigerian population, as previously their leaders were imposed on them, without their consent or peaceful participation. There is a sense of the spirit of freedom which the poet Percy Shelly describes in his “Defense of Poetry.”
This historic action by the Nigerian people will have profound effects not only in Nigeria and all nations on the African continent, but throughout the world as well. The rejection of the ruling PDP, with Goodluck Jonathan the president for the last 6 years, was driven by the populatio’ns extreme frustration and rage in response to 16 years of failed policies that have made simple existence a daily challenge. The victory of Buhari could not have been linearly predicted a year, or even six months earlier; this is the most significant accomplishment for Nigeria since its 1960 liberation from the British Empire.
Shortly after Nigeria achieved independence, its founding leaders were assassinated in a 1966 coup that led to the ugly and bloody, Biafra civil war from 1967 to 1970, leaving over one million dead. From 1970 to 1999, Nigeria was ruled by various military governments (except for one brief period), including Gen. Buhari for 18 months from 1984-1985. All the governments following the end of military rule in 1999 were controlled by the PDP until this election.
Immediately after President Jonathan wisely conceded to General Buhari for the benefit of the nation, cheers broke out and citizens were dancing in the streets, representing a genuine, joyous excitement about what they had just accomplished.
Now the real challenge begins for the new Buhari administration; the expectations of the newly energized Nigerian population are very high. Buhari, in his campaign, has made a high priority of economic development—building infrastructure, and creating productive jobs, especially for the youth suffering from 90% unemployment. This priority is also reflected in the APC Manifesto.
As Minister of the Petroleum Trust Fund in the late 1990s, Buhari had embarked on road-building programs. During his brief period as head of state, Buhari rejected a new $2 billion loan from the World Bank, designed to drive Nigeria further into debt. He also made himself an enemy of the IMF, which actions were not unconnected to the coup launched against him, which opened the floodgates to the destructive IMF Structural Adjustment Programs from which Nigeria never recovered.
Security and corruption are Buhari’s other two top concerns for Nigeria.
Today, the infrastructure in general remains poor. Nigeria’s rich agricultural potential remains underdeveloped. However the most egregious failure of this and previous administrations is the paucity of electrical power for Africa’s most populous nation — almost 180 million people. Only 2,500 megawatts of electricity are available each day, leaving Nigerians to fend for themselves with expensive personal generators and home batteries. There is no Nigerian household or small business that does not experience a blackout at least once every day.
Despite the deadly presence of Boko Haram, which did launch limited attacks on Nigerians during the election, the economy remains the number-one issue that drove Nigerians to oust President Jonathan. The single most important task for the next President of Nigeria, is to provide plentiful, accessible electricity to revive Nigeria’s anemic economy.
The world is changing through the emerging leadership of the BRICS configuration with the New Development Bank, the AIIB, and other new agencies, projects and policies exemplified by China’s “Belt and Road” commitment to vast development, and most importantly, into space. This is where Africa’s future lies. Nigeria must play a leadership role; this is the import of the successful election in Nigeria.
Despite Riyadh’s claim that its warplanes are striking only the positions held by the rebel Yemeni fighters inside Yemen, Fars News Agency has reported widespread bombings that included Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase; Saudi warplanes have reportedly flattened a number of homes near the airport.
In addition, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its most-recent report out today, has accused Saudi Arabia of using internationally-prohibited weapons in its air offensives against Yemen. Citing an example, it added that Yemeni officials have provided it with sufficient evidence which indicates that the Saudi-led warplanes on March 26 claimed the lives of 23 civilians, including 6 children and 5 women, in Bani Hawat village in west-central Yemen, using banned cluster bombs.
Five Persian Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait — backed by the US, declared war on Yemen in a joint statement issued last week.
It is evident that the Saudi intent is not only to defeat the rebels, who are trying to re-instate the earlier-ousted President Ali Abdul Saleh, but to destroy Yemen’s infrastructure as well. Fars News Agency today reported that Saudi Defense Ministry Spokesman Brigadier General Ahmad Al-Assiri, while speaking to the reporters today in Riyadh, disclosed that Riyadh’s aggression against Yemen is aimed at destroying the Arab country’s military and civil infrastructure. Al-Assiri reportedly said even if the rebel fighters surrender to the Saudi army there are predetermined targets that Riyadh should continue to destroy irrespective of the developments on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC’s) proposed resolution backing an arms embargo on the rebels in Yemen, and called for discussions between the GCC and the Security Council, reported Al Arabiya News Channel.
Despite Riyadh’s claim that its warplanes are striking only the positions held by the rebel Yemeni fighters inside Yemen, Fars News Agency has reported widespread bombings that included Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase; Saudi warplanes have reportedly flattened a number of homes near the airport.
In addition, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its most-recent report out today, has accused Saudi Arabia of using internationally-prohibited weapons in its air offensives against Yemen. Citing an example, it added that Yemeni officials have provided it with sufficient evidence which indicates that the Saudi-led warplanes on March 26 claimed the lives of 23 civilians, including 6 children and 5 women, in Bani Hawat village in west-central Yemen, using banned cluster bombs.
Five Persian Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait — backed by the US, declared war on Yemen in a joint statement issued last week.
It is evident that the Saudi intent is not only to defeat the rebels, who are trying to re-instate the earlier-ousted President Ali Abdul Saleh, but to destroy Yemen’s infrastructure as well. Fars News Agency today reported that Saudi Defense Ministry Spokesman Brigadier General Ahmad Al-Assiri, while speaking to the reporters today in Riyadh, disclosed that Riyadh’s aggression against Yemen is aimed at destroying the Arab country’s military and civil infrastructure. Al-Assiri reportedly said even if the rebel fighters surrender to the Saudi army there are predetermined targets that Riyadh should continue to destroy irrespective of the developments on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC’s) proposed resolution backing an arms embargo on the rebels in Yemen, and called for discussions between the GCC and the Security Council, reported Al Arabiya News Channel.
With representatives of the 30 nations that have been so far approved as the founding members of the China-led AIIB, attended the third AIIB working meeting at Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the past two days, and reported that the articles of association hav…
With representatives of the 30 nations that have been so far approved as the founding members of the China-led AIIB, attended the third AIIB working meeting at Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the past two days, and reported that the articles of association hav…
