Water

California. What a fine state, as in what a fine state of affairs you've gotten us into. California, land of sunshine and apricots, blue skies and sunny beaches. California does provide a counter balance to the heavy concentration of money and political muscle concentrated in Bos-Wash (the Boston to Washington D.C. urban nightmare of the east coast).

    As you may have heard, the epic drought in California has finally resulted in mandatory water restrictions, which seems to have triggered an outpouring of crazy. Don't eat this! Don't eat that! Sinner! Repent! We are all going to die!

This is just the first chart from Alissa's story. It's here because her's is too small to read. This one can be embiggenated. I got this one from Denis Bider. It was derived from an interactive chart posted by the L.A. Times.

   Alissa Walker has a fine story on Gizmodo about how much water it takes to produce our food. That's where most of the water goes - agriculture, as in irrigating the Imperial Valley. People started trying to irrigate the Imperial Valley back around the turn of the last Century. One of their first attempts sprung a leak, with surprising consequences.

The first canals were being constructed by 1900 under the guidance of chief engineer George Chaffey.
The Imperial Canal was completed within two years. It received water from the Colorado River, which, by the time it had flowed to the Imperial Valley, contained massive amounts of silt. The Imperial Canal filled with silt at an alarming pace. Attempts to create a diversion around the silt blockages led to disaster, when winter flooding in 1905 tumbled the diversion canal. The whole of the Colorado River poured into the Salton Sink, forming the Salton Sea. The area was a scene of flood for two years until the canal breach was mended. As the waters dried up the Salton Sea was reduced in size, but it is still the largest lake in California. - Wikipedia

Store-enough-food-for-a-year Mormonism is starting to look like good advice.

Via Posthip Scott.