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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (332084)	4/6/2007 6:55:44 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571690

"Pelosi Is Our Neville Chamberlain" Umm, Taro, that article has drifted into the realm of fantasy.

To: Taro who wrote (332084)	4/6/2007 8:20:45 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571690

Perfect drought" on the way in California? By Bettina Boxall Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES -- Nature is pulling a triple whammy on Southern California this year. Whether it's the Sierra, the Southland or the Colorado River Basin, every place that provides water to the region is dry. It's a rare and troubling pattern that if it persists could thrust the region into what researchers have dubbed the perfect Southern California drought -- when nature shortchanges every major branch of the far-flung water network that sustains 18 million people. Usually it's reasonably wet in at least one of those places. But not this year. The mountain snowpack vital to water imports from Northern California is at the lowest level in nearly two decades. The Los Angeles area has received record-low rainfall this winter. And the Colorado River system remains in the grip of one of the worst basin droughts in centuries. "I have been concerned that we might be putting all the pieces in place to develop a new perfect drought," said University of California, Los Angeles, geography professor Glen MacDonald, who has researched drought patterns in California and the Colorado River basin covering the past 1,000 years. "You have extreme to severe drought extending over Southern California and also along the east and west slopes of the Sierra and then you have it in the Colorado [basin], particularly Wyoming." That, coupled with wet winter-weather patterns in the southern Great Lakes region and the Northeast, MacDonald said, "is extremely similar to the last time we had a perfect drought, which was the late 1980s, early 1990s." Supplies in reserve Thanks to a bountiful Sierra snowpack in the spring of 2006, the state's reservoirs are in good shape. Southern California water managers say they have ample supplies in reserve and are better prepared for a prolonged dry spell than they were two decades ago. "We're watching this. We're not pleased. We're not worried either," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the region's major water wholesaler. "If it does continue, we have prepared ourselves for a multiple-year drought." "It used to be we thought that geographic diversity was enough" protection, he added. "In 1990 or so we realized it really wasn't." Since then, Metropolitan has constructed a large reservoir in Riverside County and is storing more water underground. The region's water agencies also have promoted conservation and water recycling, steps that have helped Los Angeles keep water demand relatively flat at the same time the city added a million more people. The snowpack in the eastern Sierra is shaping up as one of the lowest since the start of record keeping in 1940. Drought strained all three regions that supply Southern California twice during the 20th century -- in the late 1980s and the late 1950s, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography hydrologist Hugo Hidalgo, who has studied drought patterns with MacDonald. "These events have been relatively rare." They usually last for four or five years. But "the scary part," MacDonald said, is that ancient tree-ring records indicate they can go on for a couple of decades -- longer than anything experienced in modern times. The big reservoirs in the Colorado system, which last year provided Metropolitan with 30 percent of its water deliveries, are roughly half empty as a result of a drought that started in 2000. Federal officials have said that within a few years they may be forced to cut Colorado deliveries, although Arizona and Nevada would be hit before California, which has senior water rights. Skimpy snowpack As a result of this spring's skimpy Sierra snowpack -- it is 46 percent of the normal statewide average -- the State Water Project will somewhat reduce deliveries of Northern California water to the central and southern parts of the state. Bill Patzert, the climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, has said the Pacific is in an "El Niño-repellent" pattern that will favor drought in Southern California for years. A 2004 study by a team of researchers concluded that the western megadroughts that occurred between 900 and 1300 took place during a warming period that drove up temperatures in the western Pacific, producing an upwelling of cool waters in the eastern Pacific that caused drier, La Niña conditions to prevail. The researchers warned that global warming could promote severe drought in the West. seattletimes.nwsource.com

To: Taro who wrote (332084)	4/6/2007 8:57:58 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571690

"Pelosi Is Our Neville Chamberlain" So, that would make Bashar Assad our Hitler?

To: Taro who wrote (332084)	4/7/2007 4:26:35 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571690

The spectacle of Pelosi making nice with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and accepting at face value his claim that he is ready to "resume the peace process" with Israel had a large portion of official Washington tittering. LOL. The "tittering" is by incompetent GOPers who have managed to do nothing in over 7 years. Taro, I would think you could do better than that. Where did you say you got your engineering degree? Not by mail I hope.