Oil Industry Provides Water To Drought-Stricken Central Valley In Southern California -- New Yok Times

This is a pretty interesting story sent in be a reader, thank you. The New York Times is reporting:

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The 115-year-old Kern River oil field unfolds into the horizon, thousands of bobbing pumpjacks seemingly occupying every corner of a desert landscape here in California’s Central Valley.

A contributor to the state’s original oil boom, it is still going strong as the nation’s fifth-largest oil field, yielding 70,000 barrels a day.

But the Kern River field also produces 10 times more of something that, at least during California’s continuing drought, has become more valuable to many locals and has experienced the kind of price spike more familiar to oil: water.

The field’s owner, Chevron, sells millions of gallons every day to a local water district that distributes it to farmers growing almonds, pistachios, citrus fruits and other crops.

It is one of the more unusual sources of water, one whose importance has increased in a year when the drought has forced farmers to fallow fields and bulldoze almond orchards.

The water is pumped out of the same underground rock that contains oil; after the two are separated, the water flows through an eight-mile pipeline to Bakersfield’s Cawelo Water District, which this year will rely on Chevron’s water for half of its supply, up from an average of a quarter. The district sells it exclusively to farmers for irrigation and reduces its salinity by blending it with water from other sources.

This was a most interesting data point:

According to the Western States Petroleum Association, 323 acre-feet of water were used in fracking 830 wells in California in 2013, compared with 2.7 million acre-feet for agriculture here in Kern County, the heart of California’s oil industry.  

Rounding:

• in 2013, the oil industry used 300 acre-feet of water for fracking in ALL of California
• in 2013, in Kern County alone -- one county -- agriculture used 3 million acre-feet of water

So, for Kern County, agriculture alone: 3,000,000 acre-feet of water; add in all of California's oil industry fracking water and one gets 3,000,300 acre-feet of water.

Two very important statistics were not noted in The New York Times article: irrigating golf courses, and marijuana farms.

Quick: how much water does the average golf course in California use per year: 350 acre-feet.

So, ALL fracking in ALL of California used less water than the AVERAGE amount of water to irrigate ONE golf course in California.

ALL fracking in ALL of California used less water than the amount of water required to irrigate ONE AVERAGE golf course in California.

Of course, that begs the next question. How many golf courses ARE there in California? Drum roll ... drum roll ... 1, 126.

So, rounding 1,000 x 350 = 350,000 acre-feet to irrigate all the golf courses in California. Add the water used in fracking and we get 350,300 acre-feet. Okay. 

Water used by the oil industry for fracking is NOT an issue.

In both cases, adding ALL California fracking water is a rounding error when added to water used in Kern County alone for agriculture or when added to water used for all the golf courses in California.

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Marijuana Uses A Lot Of Water Per Plant, But Not That Much State-Wide 

The places one will go when one starts surfing the net!

So, back to marijuana farms. Daily Record News is reporting:

On a 21,000-square-foot field for marijuana, Hoffman’s estimate, like Graham’s, comes out to about 840,000 gallons of water annually.

That's about 2.5 acre-feet.

21,000 square feet is about one-half acre. House size? FactCheck.org is reporting:

In addition, at about 10,000 square feet, Al Gore’s home is a little less than four times the size of the average new American home built in 2006. In contrast, the Crawford ranch belonging to Bush was about 4,000 square feet.

So, a marijuana farm, about half the size of Algore's McMansion, will use 2.5 acre-feet of water annually (and annually is important; once a well is fracked, it is rarely fracked again; a fracked well is a one-time event for all practical purposes. Marijuana farms and golf courses will use water year in / year out.

For the record: my one-room apartment in the Dallas-Ft Worth area is 651-square feet, though I would like to move into a one-room apartment with 901 square feet.  

Warning: I often make simple arithmetic errors. 

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Global Warming: Fortunately Chinese CO2 Is Not Our CO2

Zacks over at Yahoo!Finance is reporting:

Ford Motor Co. has posted record sales of 549,256 vehicles in China in the first half of 2014. This translates into a 35% surge from 407,474 vehicles sold in the first half of 2013. The automaker’s passenger car joint venture – Changan Ford Automobile  – also witnessed a 39% increase in wholesale vehicle sales in the first half of 2014 to 397,958 units as against 286,433 units sold in the same period a year ago.

My hunch is that, by executive order, Governor Jerry Brown, in a joint-pen-signing ceremony with President Obama, will sign a non-binding proclamation to build a CO2 barrier along the US Pacific Coast to divert the westerly Chinese CO2 to the north (Canada) and to the south (Mexico).

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"Recycled"

Granddaughter's Sculpture

Other than the tuna can for the "Weber grill," everything else should be self-evident.

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Tongue-In Cheek

I wrote the note below based on one data point: the headline; nothing more, nothing less. It will be interesting to see how closely the tongue-in-cheek note below matches reality.

Reality: 

• none of the $3.7 billion will be used for deportation; I wasn't the only one who noticed that

 
President Obama Seeks Almost $4 Billion To Care For His Children

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

President Obama will seek $3.7 billion in emergency funds from Congress  to meet the country's  “moral obligation” to care for unaccompanied minors who have flooded in recent months to the southwestern border, White House officials said Tuesday.

Nearly half the money would go to the Department of Health and Human Services for food, housing and medical care for the tens of thousands of children and teenagers who have arrived at the border, senior administration officials told reporters.

The rest of the money would be aimed at deterring further migrants by strengthening law enforcement, going after smuggling networks that ferry people from Central America and expanding the number of deportation hearings.

Nothing was said about actually returning the children to their home countries. The breakdown will go something like this:

DIRECT COSTS:

US Agency For Dreamers

• High Commissioner, annual salary: $250,000
• Executive director, high commissioner's spouse: $200,000
• First year's full-time equivalents: 51 @ $80,000 average each = $4,080,000

Room and Board

• Housing, military bases, and seaside resorts:  $500 million
• Food: off-budget; will come from existing USDA programs including "Food Stamps," cheese, milk subsidies

Medical

• Mobile medical care units: $500 million
• CXRs (tuberculosis surveillance): $50 x 60,000 "children" = $3 million
• Immunizations: off-budget; excess immune sera from NIH, CDC, UN
• Louse control: one-time bath provided by water parks as marketing tool
• Birth control pills and contraceptives: $75 x 30,000 "children" =  $2.25 million
• Planned Parenthood: $1 million

Centers For Dreamers, Administrative Services

• Lease for 25 centers @ $1 million/location = $25,000,000
• Social Services: 100 full-time equivalents at $50,000 per annum = $5,000,000 
• Transportation to and from living quarters to CFDAS facilities = $2,000,000

Education

• K - 12: off-budget; local school districts
• English as a second language: educators, 3,000 FTE's at $75,000 each = $225 million

Re-location Costs

• Finding parents already here in the states: off-budget; Lois Lerner/IRS has (had?) that data
• Finding parents not yet here in the states: off-budget; NSA has that data
• Notification costs: $0.46 "Forever" stamp and $3.00 handling fee x 50,000 = $173,000 (donation from Hillary Clinton Foundation)
• Taxi expense for the four children who reunite with their parents: $750 x 4 = $3,000 (tax-deductible donation from Joe Biden and his wife) 

Subtotal:  $1,267,780,000 ($1.268 billion)

INDIRECT COSTS:

US Supreme Court:

• $5 million for new recreation facility
• $5 million for new dining facility
• $5 million for new auditorium
• $5 million for new legal library study 

California:

• $500 million for bullet train initiative
• $500 million for renewable energy initative

Texas:

• $0

New York State:

• $100 million for speaking fees for Hillary, Schumer, et al, to promote the program
• $10 million to New York Times to write feature story on program 
• Wall Street Journal: $0

New Jersey:

• $100 million for continued Hurricane Sandy reimbursement to parents of Guatemalan children

Arizona:

• $0

Los Angeles:

• $50 million for documentary, "Humanity Crossing the Pan-MexicUS Desert"; Director Sean Penn; Producer Mel Gibson; starring roles for Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie (migrants); Tommy Lee Jones (sheriff)

New Mexico:

• $50,000 for Santa Fe art colony to document humanity crossing the Pan-MexicUS-Desert

Portland, Oregon:

• $50,000 for New Age band to provide music for documentary

SUBTOTAL, Indirect Costs: $1,280,100,000  ($1.28 billion)

TOTAL, Direct and Indirect Costs: $2,547,880,000 ($2.32 billion)

Miscellaneous that Congress will write into the bill authorizing this expenditure: $1,152,120,000 ($1.15 billion) (amendments from Blue State congresswomen and senators, only). Shortfalls in the budget can be accommodated by eliminating direct health care expenses and obtaining medical care off-budget through military health care facilities and the Veterans Administration hospitals. Deaths, though expected to be few, will be in national cemeteries at expense of Social Security Administration and the military.