Stuff You Should Know - How Droughts Work

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Droughts can be an inevitable feature of a local climate or a catastrophic result of human meddling. Learn the ins and outs of droughts including the American mother of them all, the Dust Bowl. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host.

I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry, the chairster making copies. And this is Stuff You Should Know. That was a classic skit, wouldn't you say? And that one of the only ones I liked by that guy.

By Rob Schneider? Yeah, I wasn't the biggest fan. Did you see the one where Sting was there? He's like, Sting, stingling, bing, bing, bing, dong, making copies. Yeah, it was funny. I mean, I'm not anti-Rob Schneider, but I just wasn't like... How could you be anti-Rob Schneider, honestly? Nobody.

It's like being mad at like a friendly horse or something. Yeah, exactly. Look at that stupid friendly horse. Yeah. What a weird intro. Yeah, well, par for the course pretty much, my friend. Well, although his career has dried up. That was good and vicious.

Man, I hope he doesn't listen. Before we get into the whole drying up reference, Chuck, a weird long, long, long overdue for giving a huge shout out to our Kiva team. Yeah, that's right. Several years ago, it feels like many years ago, we did a podcast on microlending. And we said, hey, let's start a Kiva team. Kiva is an international lending organization, microlending, where they pair you with people. Actually, it's all over the world now.

You need money on a small basis. You loan them the money. You can get paid back and pull your money back out or you can re-loan it. We have a very active team. And let's hear some numbers. Okay, so our team captain, Glenn, of Glenn and Sonya team, Captain Fame, sent us some stats recently. We have the Stuff You Should Know team has 8,453 members, as of July 31st.

How much have we loaned so far? You ready for this? We need a drum roll. Jerry, can we put in some sort of drum roll effect or a Wilhelm scream or something like that? All right, okay, that's nice. That's very good. Here we go.

$3,251,025, dude. I know. That is crazy. Yup. And that's out of 117,539 loans, which is a total of 13.9 loans per member. I don't know how people are doing like nine-tenths of a loan, but that's impressive in and of itself. And what that means is people get repaid and they just kind of do what I think we do is

just kind of roll that into another loan. Yeah, you re-loan it. They make great gifts. I think at least one person sent you a Kiva gift card to congratulate you and Emily on Ruby Rose. That's right. And that's always a nice thing you can do at holiday times or birthdays or whatever. It's not too late to join.

We're not like, oh, you're new to the team. It's a very supportive, great team. And again, like you said, very active. You can go to kiva.org slash teams, I believe it's plural, slash stuff you should know or just search stuff you should know on kiva.org and it will bring up our team and you can join and be embraced by our teammates. That's right. Yeah.

So thanks to Glenn and Sonia as always for nudging us in the right direction and keeping up with the stats. Yeah, really? Big help. And congratulations to our team on getting the 3.25 million dollars in change in loans. Absolutely. Hey, so droughts, huh? Yeah.

Rob Snyder, he the droughts. Right. The natural progression of things. Don't forget, sting was in there. That's true. All right, let's talk droughts. They're serious thing. Yeah.

I mean, it's natural disasters, what it is. It is. Although, so Robert Lam wrote this article that forms the basis of this in part. Yeah. Robert of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, award-winning Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Yeah, yeah. They won an award. Congratulations.

He points out that droughts are fairly natural. There's a lot of debate over whether climate change exacerbates droughts. But for the most part, droughts are natural. They're seasonal. They're temporal. They come and go. Or in some cases, they just stay. And then you got a desert.

And it becomes a natural disaster when you apply humanity to it. Kind of like, do you remember those overhead projectors? Sure. And they would have transparencies, so there could be like different, they could overlay stuff. So you have drought transparency, and it's just whatever. But then you overlay humanity on it, and then it becomes a natural disaster. Yeah.

I thought that was a pretty good point, actually, that Robert made. In and of itself, if there were no humans, there would be a drought. The land would dry up in certain regions. Animals would leave because there's no water. Or die. But it's like, who cares? They're not humans. Vegetation would die, or the few animals that could stay would stay, and the few plants

that could still grow would grow. And then that would just be the new ecosystem. Right. And then no big whoop. Potentially, if it wasn't permanent, it would shift back, and the life would come back to the area. That's right. But again, humans, like you said, wouldn't give a big whoop if it wasn't for humans living

everywhere. Sure. And using tons and tons of water, mostly to grow those crops. So we've talked about this again and again. But 90% of what I saw the most recent stat I came across was 92% of the global supply of fresh water is used to irrigate crops. And 50% of that, only half, is reused, is captured and reused. So that means we lose a lot of water to agriculture, and agriculture's kind of leaky, you could

put it that way. And the fact that we try to grow crops everywhere and use a bunch of the fresh water creates this kind of vicious cycle that exacerbates droughts, or at the very least makes our reliance on a climate to not be droughty, really important. I just put a lot of words together, and there's sense in there somewhere. No, it makes total sense. Just go back and listen to that last sentence a few times, everybody, and it'll finally come through.

It is serious business, though, and very sad and devastating. Between 15,000 and 100,000 people died in 2011 in East Africa with their drought. And right here in the U.S., we have suffered through some pretty rough drought here in the last 50 years. In 2012, they said it was the worst conditions in 50 years in corn production. You put a dent in corn production, that's going to put a dent in the world markets. Well, yeah. It's a big deal.

America runs on corn to get Dunkin' Donuts. Even Dunkin' Donuts have corn in them. The world, to a certain degree, runs on America's corn, too. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And when something like corn, as we'll see, agriculture gets hit by drought, obviously. And when it gets hit by drought, because of the globalized marketplace that we live in

today, when food prices go up, some of the poorer countries get priced out of the market. And they see things like food riots and starvation and all sorts of bad stuff. So droughts have terrible effects. Yeah. It's a snowball effect. And it seems like I don't know if it's getting worse, and if it is getting worse, if it's anthropogenic or whatever. But Texas, in 2011, Texas had the driest year since 1895, which happened to be the year

it started recording this kind of stuff. So it's the driest year on record for Texas. 2013, California had the driest year on record, thanks to the ridiculously resilient ridge. And Australia went through what's called the Millennium drought from 1997 to 2009. They had a terrible drought. They actually, like some places like Melbourne actually figured out how to live in drought conditions and survive and actually keep going pretty well. And a lot of people are studying what Melbourne did because they did it so well.

That's because Australians are resourceful and smart people. Very resourceful. But not smart. And smart. Okay. I wasn't saying anything. I'm just kidding. Just rubbing my eye, I got distracted.

So, well, even here in Georgia, we had a pretty wicked drought. I remember. Two or three years ago. Do you remember the governor led a prayer circle praying for rain? And it rained. Did it rain? It did rain. And I don't remember that part.

No, it rained. And there was a lot of hullabaloo because they were like, well, he led the prayer circle on the day where they called for like 90% chances of rain. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did it rain while they were praying? Because that would be kind of cool. That would be kind of cool.

I don't think that's what happened, though. But I do remember that. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Pray for rain. Do your rain dance. There was talk of war between Georgia and Tennessee. And Tennessee said, we have guns.

Yeah. And Georgia said, we have guns. We have guns, too. Yeah. And there's a tense standoff. Yeah. And we left and went to New York City where there are no guns. We had something on the books already.

So let's talk the basics of drought. drought is obviously when it doesn't rain enough to sustain the ecosystem like it should. It's basically you're losing water through evaporation, which is when water vaporizes, or transpiration when water moves through the soil and through the plants and then leaves and is not so useful to us. Right. So you're losing water faster than it's being replenished. Yeah.

That is a drought. And again, this is all viewed through the lens of humanity. Like water isn't lost when it goes through the soil. Sure. It is to us. It's great. Until we get it out of an aquifer that's being replenished. That's right.

But it's not necessarily lost unless you really look at it through the human lens. Right. And there are many, many factors that go into whether or not a drought occurs and how long it lasts. Here are a few immediate causes. One is high pressure zones, sinking air means you get a high pressure zone, which means you have clear skies and warmer temperatures. And if that stalls over a region, then more water is going to evaporate.

So that is going to exacerbate the problem. That's like the ridiculously resilient ridge over California from I think 2013 to 2014. It was just this high pressure zone that just said, I'm sticking around here for a while. And not only did it lead to high temperatures and low humidity because it's a high pressure zone, it also blocked tropical cyclones that normally are brought to California by the West release. It just shot them up toward the Arctic or down toward Mexico. And California for two different reasons didn't get precipitation and is still in a pickle

as a result. Well, usually when you have a prolonged drought, you can point to a number of factors like the ironically a perfect storm that causes no storm. Right. Or Obama. Another reason is air pollution. There's a decade long study completed, I think in 2013, from the University of Maryland, so Terps, and they found that air particulate, which is pollution, dust, soot, sulfates produces

more intense storms in wet areas or it leads to more intense storms in wet areas and reduces rain in drier areas. So basically just again exacerbates whatever is normally going on there. It creates weather extremes. Creates weather extremes. It's a great way to say it. It's weird though because so particulate matter, yeah, I'm trying to figure this out. So they don't know the mechanism is uncertain at this point, so there is no answer if that

was your question. I'm abandoning figuring it out then. And then here in the southeast, one causes wind blowing inward from the ocean is usually a good thing because that brings in from the Atlantic on the eastern seaboard brings in warm, humid temperatures and in the summertime and if they shift or weaken, then they're going to bring in less moisture and less rainfall and I think that is what happened. Was a wind shift and whenever it was we had our drought. When was that?

Was that 2012? 2011? It may have been. Something like that around then. Yeah. I mean it was fairly severe. I just remember all the lakes were way down and I don't think we got to the point where they had forced rationing but they were advising everyone and asking everyone to be better stewards.

It was a big deal. Everybody was really nervous. I think the lake where Atlantic gets its fresh water is down like 12 feet or something like that. Yeah. It was serious stuff. No good. Did you talk about like changes in different areas from, did you mention La Niña or El

Niño? Not yet. Do you remember that Chris Farley, when he was El Niño back in the 90s, was like, I am El Niño which means La Niño in Spanish. So you know what that is. I sort of remember that. There's a documentary out about him now which I'm eager to see. Oh yeah.

I haven't checked that out yet. I want to see that as well. So El Niño is actually named for little baby Jesus. Did you know that? I did not know that. Yeah. Back in the 1600s, Spanish fishermen off the coast of Mexico named it El Niño because it was this weird arrival of really warm water in December in the winter months.

They were like, oh well obviously it's the Christ child. So they named it El Niño and that is when there's warmer than average water temperatures in the tropics around like basically off the coast of Mexico, right? Yeah. And those warm the air and create wetter than average conditions in some parts of the U.S. and other parts of the world and drier than average conditions in the other parts. That's right. And then there's the reverse of that La Niña.

That's right. It's colder than average temperatures. So those places that normally get wetter than normal and drier than normal are flip-flopped. But either way, you get extreme weather events like floods and droughts from this and they aren't exactly certain what creates this, just that they're pretty sure it's natural. Yeah. Well actually they do have a decent idea. Okay.

In 2003 something happened, which the same thing happened in the 1950s when we suffered a pretty bad drought in the U.S. There were two ocean cycles that basically flip-flopped. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation. And these things flip back and forth basically over time and they cause either more rain or less rain. And the PDO is what causes the shift in those surface ocean temperatures. The what causes the shift? The Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Okay. So but what caused these things to flip-flop? Well they just flip-flop periodically over time basically. Weird. I don't buy that though. Like something makes those things flip-flop. Well, yeah. Maybe so.

I don't know. That's what I want to answer. Some people probably say that's just the cycle of nature. I guess so. That's a cop out. But they say that every 20 to 30 years this is going to happen and when you combine them with other factors it basically gives everything a boost. And that's what creates El Niño or La Niña?

Yeah, that's what they think. It's more like it works in concert with El Niño and La Niña. So these things have happened at the same time, which is the reason California is in such a drought right now. Wow. So you have the warm PDO plus El Niño means it's going to be wetter and cooler, PDO plus La Niña equals drier and La Niña is influenced by the trade winds basically blowing on top of the water.

I think you already said that. Right. It just like circulates that water and the deep water comes up to the surface. Yes. Chili. Yeah. From chili or it's chili water? Chili water.

Gotcha. So Chuck, there's different categories. People love to categorize stuff, right? Oh yeah. There's actually different categories of the categories for droughts. I thought that was going to be interesting. It's a little bit of a brain buster. But you can kind of subdivide the categories for droughts into geographical or seasonal

descriptions and then descriptions of drought severity, right? So with a geographical or seasonal description, it's kind of like here's an area and this is the kind of drought conditions you can expect. So there is a permanent drought, which is basically what you think of with the desert. It's a place that gets a minimal amount of precipitation and it never catches up to the amount of evaporation or transpiration. That's right. Right?

So it's just always dry there. Permanent drought. It's an arid climate. Arid climate. And then next you have seasonal drought, which is like drought comes, dry conditions come on a predictable calendar. Yeah, like the dry season or the wet season in a country. Those two are pretty standard.

No big surprises there. But the next couple- He almost said no big whoop again. Almost did. He saw that. My mouth went whoo. Unpredictable drought is when there are irregular dry spells where it's usually humid or rainy. And then invisible drought, I'd never heard of that.

I think that's fascinating. That's when it is raining and you think, how can we be in a drought because it's raining? It just means it's too hot probably and it's not raining enough because too much evaporation and transpiration is going on. Right. So it's invisible to the naked eye. It's like being skinny fat to where like you're thin on the outside but your liver's got a ton of fat all over it.

Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the people that have like really thin faces but from the neck down they have weight. No. I hate those people. I'm jealous of those people because I have a big fat face. Like there's no picture I can take. I could show my legs or my arms and people would say, what a thin guy. You know?

I think you look great. But everything from my nose to my waist gives me away. I'm going to do that. I'm going to start posting pictures of my legs and my arms. Okay. Like Danny DeVito, he always does the troll foot. That's still a nice small tiny butt too. We've all noticed.

I'm going to take pictures of that too. That's the talk of the office. You're going to post one pictures of yourself. Everyone's body is fine. I'm not body shaming. All right. That's good. What I'm saying is I'm jealous of people with thin faces.

I got you. So we got one category down. Yes. Which describes like a region and area. Although invisible drought doesn't really fit into that but whatevs. Sure. Okay. The next group of categories, man.

I sound like we're using an overhead projector. This is this dry. I like it. It's appropriately dry for the drought episode. Well you have to go through these. It's part of it. Okay. So these categories make sense to me.

They describe like the severity of a drought, right? Yes. And you can pretty much go from one to the other and it makes sense. So like a meteorological drought, it basically says that this week, this time last year, we had about an inch and a half more rain than we got this year so far. No big whoop. No big whoop. Yeah.

Basically, my brother-in-law, also named Josh, would notice this kind of thing. Oh yeah. He's a little bit of a weather bug. Yeah. I like weather bugs. Okay. You would like Josh. And he's one of the few things, few people besides like maybe a meteorologist who would

notice this. Which is why it's called the meteorological drought. That's right. You don't have to be really paying attention to even notice this. That's right. Okay. That's stage one. Yes.

Stage two is an agricultural drought and that is when you're talking about crops. And agriculture is going to be one of the first industries or parts of the world affected by drought, obviously. So this is when farmers are starting to notice. You might hear a news blurb or two if there had been drought in the news. But it still hasn't like you're not walking around the streets talking about it yet. No. Just farmers and Josh are speaking to one another about the drought.

That's right. What's next Josh? The hydrological drought. This is when like we start to notice. And that's when you're like, hey man, I went to my lake house this weekend and it's all ugly. Yeah. Like clay red muddy junk everywhere.

I can see the submerged buildings. The underwater cities are visible. Like in Lake Lanier, you know there's a town down there. Oh yeah? Yeah. You didn't know that? I don't think so. There is a town down there when Lake Lanier gets low enough.

You can see it. You can see a Gulf 76 sign sticking up out of the lake. Wow. Yeah. Like the old like ball one that's orange with the blue 76. Yeah. What was the town? Like some part of Buford or something I guess.

Yeah. Interesting. You didn't know there's a town under Lake Lanier? No. I didn't. Isn't that creepsville? I don't know about creepy. Oh, it's creepy.

I think it's cool. I mean, if there were people living down there with gills, that would be creepy. Yeah. So the point is Chuck, that we notice, the people with gills notice, everybody starts to notice the hydrological drought. It's like the talk of the town. And then the next step is where it gets really, really bad, socioeconomic drought. This is when the government tends to step in and say, you who have odd number addresses

can water on Tuesdays, Thursdays. Those of you with even addresses can water on Monday, Wednesdays, or it can flip-flop. It depends on your local government. True. Isn't that set in stone? Right. But the point is, there are now restrictions taking place. There are now things being enforced, there are people are being asked to cut back.

Yeah. And the reason why is because we're seeing a real effect like through the economy. Yeah. Like Robert points out something I've never really thought of, tourism of course is going to dry up with the water in some places, food shortages, shipping may be affected, imports and exports, and in less developed parts of the world that can be really bad. Here in the U.S. it may just mean socioeconomic annoyance, but in other parts of the world it could lead to political unrest and armed conflict and panic and disease and like really,

really bad stuff. Right. So, socioeconomic drought and let's take a break and let's talk a little bit about other effects of drought in the dust bowl right after this. Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb

her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we kind of just gave some overview of how drought works or how bad it can get. That's right. So what causes this?

I mean, we talked about weather being a factor, obviously. There's not a lot we can do with that. We have our How Weather Modification Works episode that we did and a TV show based on that too, a TV episode. But not everybody agrees that, say, like cloud seeding works. Some people say it really, really works. Other people say it doesn't really work. Yeah.

We talked about cloud seeding a couple of times, I think. It's been used to affect during wartime to wash out trails supposedly in Vietnam. That's what they say. But I don't know. Everyone's not convinced. So when it comes to things like El Nino or La Nina, as it stands now at our primitive technological place in human history, there's not much we can do about that. The most we can hope to do is really kind of figure out what causes drought in other

ways and see if we can do anything about that. And the person in the hot seed or the thing in the hot seed as far as that goes right now is climate change. There's a big debate over whether we can do anything about drought conditions through climate change. And all that has to do with CO2 supposedly. Yeah. Well, between the last five decades, between 1950 and 2000, where the warmest in 600 years

in the United States, temperature-wise, and I'm sorry, I think that's globally. But in the US and the Southwest, they are predicting a rise as much as nine degrees by the year 2100. And that is accompanied by the 2-degree, 2-degree, 1.4-degree rise over the past 100 years. So what they think is that as more and more CO2 enters the atmosphere, this rise in temperature that it creates from this greenhouse effect will actually create drought-like conditions. And one of the ways that it will create drought-like conditions is by creating high-pressure areas, which remember, don't have a lot of humidity, they have high temperatures, they're dry

conditions. And they also simultaneously, this denser air and dense air above it, right, or warmer air above it, prevents the air below it from rising, right? Because that's how winds and currents, air currents, are formed. Warm air near the tropics rises and replaces the cooler air to create this cycle, right? That's right. Well, if the air above it is equally warm, the air below can't rise. And when you have a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that air in the middle,

I think in the mesosphere, stays warm, so you've got a big chunk of the atmosphere just hanging out around the earth's surface. And when that upwelling doesn't happen, you don't have that upwelling action that also creates thunderstorms and generates large amounts of torrential rain, which really helps things when you have droughts. So they think, and this is all just a conjecture at this point, but that's the big explanation for how climate change can lead to drought-like conditions, and that if we can reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we can conceivably reverse those drought-like conditions.

Well, and don't they think that climate change just in general causes more severe everything, like more severe storms and extreme flooding and so, I mean, it's definitely something to consider? Yeah. Sure. I'm trying to tiptoe around this one, because there is a debate. Not really. No?

No. It's basically fraudulent whether there's a debate over whether climate change is real. Okay. The climate change is real. Like almost all scientific consensus is laid it down. So where's the debate that it's human cost or not, and whether we can do anything about it? Or is there no debate about any of that?

There's debate still, but it's not real debate. Like the scientific community is generally in agreement that there is climate change and that it is a real problem. I don't know what the consensus is on whether we could do anything about it. I think probably most people would say we should at least try. It's worth trying. Sure. Why wouldn't you?

Well, a lot of people say you shouldn't, because it will affect like ill-hand or economic progress. Oh, business, economic, sure, sure. People like China say the U.S. is like, oh, hey, we're laying off of greenhouse gas emitting stuff and we're getting a little greener. You guys should too. And China would say, well, you guys kind of got to this point by spitting a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere.

It's China's time. Yeah. Go sit over there and be as green as you want. Leave us alone. Right. There are political landmines to traipse around in getting everybody on board to reducing the climate footprint or the carbon footprint of humanity. Yeah.

What riles me is when you see, usually on social media, when someone's in the winter time, like it's the coldest winter I've seen in years, so much for global warming. Yeah. Warming? Warming. A warning. How about that? Was that a Freudian slip?

But there's a great video that Neil deGrasse Tyson does. You can find it on YouTube about the difference between weather and climate, because those are two entirely different things. And he does this little thing on the beach with a dog that's great. And it hit that Neil deGrasse Tyson way. With his shirt mostly unbuttoned and everything. Well, he's on the beach, of course. He's got on his clam diggers, you know.

Yeah. His Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned. He's a cool cat. He is a cool cat, but yeah, he explains it very simply, the difference between weather and climate. So before you go say something dumb, like it's super cold in June, so there's no global warming. Just go watch that video.

That's my recommendation. And I want to recommend a book called Merchants of Doubt right now. I'm reading. And it's about how the tobacco industry, climate change, denial, all this stuff is largely the result of PR. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

It is a very interesting book, actually. And I think there's a documentary based on it that just came out, too, if you don't like reading. Who does? I do. Robert points out, too, in this article, predicting drought isn't really something you can do necessarily. You can predict seasonal droughts a month or so out.

And you can, I guess, you can predict certain conditions that, like right now, they're saying that California is probably in trouble for the next 20 to 30 years. Yeah. Like, I don't think they see an end in sight because of the various climate factors going on. Yeah. It's not like, I mean, any rain would help, but it's not like a rainy few weeks here and there is going to make much of an impact.

Right. It's pretty scary out there. Well, that's one reason why they're studying, for example, Melbourne, Australia, or Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I'm not quite sure how you say it properly. But under this drought, this millennium drought, Melbourne dropped their water usage by, like, 50% under drought conditions. They did it through local recycling programs.

Apparently, one really effective program was electronic billboards that said the shared reservoir is at, like, 25% of capacity right now. Oh, wow. Like, don't forget what's going to happen if we all run out of water. Right. Like, recycle your water, use gray water to water your plants, that kind of stuff. And it worked really, really well. They should just do dumb infographics for Americans as, like, the water getting lower

and then, like, dead people at the bottom. Here's where we're headed. Does it make sense to you now, person watering your lawn in Los Angeles? There's a lot of dead people in our reservoir, buried at the bottom. I think I too read a little bit about the L.A. drought or Southern California in general that they're not making enough headway with their conservation measures right now. Like, it's not putting much of a dent into it. Like their public campaigns?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Selfish people still watering their stuff. Well, it's the law of the commons. Like, supposedly, any shared resource, people are just, like, let everybody else conserve. I'll be fine. Give me everything I need.

This little bit doesn't make a difference. Yeah. And this article, I think it was a Scientific American article that I was reading about Melbourne being so successful. One of the ways they were being so successful was taking this shared resource, this reservoir, and saying, like, all of us share this and it's down to this level. So are you going to be the jerk who, like, makes a drop even more by taking more than your fair share?

Don't be the jerk that should be their campaign. One of the problems is, is California doesn't just have just a single shared reservoir. They get their water from a number of different sources. Big state. Yeah. So that's kind of, that would be tough to, like, hit that same note with California. Yeah. But as goes California, as goes the U.S. economies.

I think some estimates say California is the eighth largest economy in the world, state of California. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've heard that before. Dire consequences, potentially. So let's take one more break, Chuck, and then when we come back, we're going to talk about dire consequences indeed from the 1930s in the United States.

That's right. K.A. the Dust Bowl. No, something you should know, something you should know. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the Backyard Guest House over childhood home.

Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I teased the Dust Bowl in the beginning, and then we didn't get to it, but now we're getting to it. This is just like TV. And I became a little, oh, I know, just keeping people on the hook.

I became super interested when I was in Oklahoma recently, I went to the Woody Guthrie Museum in Tulsa, which is great, by the way, and they had a whole section on the Dust Bowl. And I didn't know much about it. I mean, I knew generally it was a drought in Dusty, but I hadn't looked into it too much. And since then, I've studied on it some and watched the great Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl. It was very good.

You know, those parts of that appear in Interstellar. Oh, really? Were there clips of that? Yeah. I don't remember. I mean, they'd play it like it's people. Really? Yeah.

Like Interstellar? No, not really. Oh, I love that movie. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. I thought that was such a great movie. Yeah.

You really didn't like it, huh? I had a lot of problems with it. I loved it. My biggest problem with it was just do the, let the viewer figure out the movie. Like I felt like every 10 minutes somebody was explaining something. You're talking, you're thinking of inception. Same guy, same problem. I don't think so, man, I didn't run into that.

You know how much I hated that part in inception. When you watch Interstellar again, just make a little note anytime someone explains what's going on and you'll have like 20 times written down on your little note back. I guess it didn't bother me in this one. It bothered me. And it's not like I have anything against Ellen Page in particular. Oh, sure you do. You're a Juno hater.

It doesn't have to do with Ellen Page. No, I'm just joking anyway. I know I just, for some reason, it didn't stick out to me in Interstellar. I just thoroughly enjoyed that movie. Well, good. I'm glad you did. I want to rain on your parade. Anyway, the parts of the Ken Burns documentary show up in Interstellar, but it's great just

on its own. Oh yeah. And the reason we bring up the dust bowl is because it's actually, it's larger than just a drought. People tend to think of it as a drought. But it's actually one of the, one of the, it demonstrates things you can do to prevent drought from becoming the worst case scenario, which is exactly what happened with the dust bowl.

Yeah. It was one of the worst natural disasters in the United States history for sure. Yeah. And it was just one natural disaster compounding another and another and another. And what happened actually starts in the 19th century when America was undergoing its westward expansion and the US government passed the Homestead Acts and these gave land grants to Western settlers who wanted to set up farms of between 160 and then later on 320 acres, which sounds like a lot, but they're actually not when you start thinking about these massive

states like Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas and all of this. And so what happened was eventually the, these plain states, the semi-arid grassland was carved up into a huge patchwork of smaller farms. And people started farming and things started going really well. The land became productive very quickly. Yeah. And at first things they were farming somewhat sustainably, you know, they still had grasses and still had cattle grazing on these grasses, which is all good stuff.

And these are native grasses that were drought resistant already. They were acclimated to this, again, semi-arid climate. That's right. So let's flash forward or fast forward a bit. To post World War I in the 1920s, there was a recession and farmers all of a sudden said, you know what, we can get these new machines and use these new mechanized farming techniques to try and make more money and turn some of this grass into wheat. Yeah.

Because I mean, if you, if you have like a hoe, right, and you're just hacking away at this semi-arid ground, you're going to be like, I've got 320 acres, but I'm just going to farm 20 of them because this is a lot of work, you know? But if you can go buy a plow and some oxen and later on a tractor to drag those plows, you can turn all 320 acres into productive cropland. Yeah. And so they overproduced wheat. Yeah.

There was a bumper crop year in 1930, was it, or 1931, where so many farmers bought so many plows and used these mechanized methods of farming that there was a bumper crop of wheat so much so that the price of wheat plummeted. And it just so happened that there was a recession, like you said at the same time. So there was an oversupply of wheat and an under-demand for it because everybody's broke. That's right. And so everybody said, well, what do you do? You just start...

Plant more wheat. Plant more wheat. Yeah. Basically expand your farm so to try and turn a profit. And so all of a sudden, all these drought-resistant grasses were no more. There was wheat everywhere and apparently wheat does not jibe. That quantity of wheat doesn't jibe with the natural landscape and the soil became dusty and dry.

And you couple that with a drought which hit hard over the period of like three years and high winds and everything blew away. Yes. So 100 million acres of topsoil ended up blowing away. Like just blew away. It wasn't there any longer. Yeah. All that was left was the rocky subsoil.

Like blew to the east coast. Yes. Some of it blew to California depending on where the winds blew. Some blew all the way to Washington, D.C. which actually proved to be fortuitous because that got Congress's attention. And these things were called black blizzards. And there's... Man, you seen the footage?

It's just unbelievable. It's just amazing. When these huge towering clouds of black dust were just coming toward these... What looked like these tiny little miniature houses. Yeah. It doesn't look real. No, it doesn't. It really happened on the Great Plains in the 30s.

Yeah. We're talking 150,000 square miles over Oklahoma or parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. And the drought itself was from 34 to 37 and 60% of the population left. Yeah. A lot of them moved to California. California wasn't very happy. A lot of them left their farms and were just broke basically.

They were the first generation to find themselves underwater because a lot of them, again, remember, there was this drive to make more money by producing more wheat even though there was an overabundance of wheat. So they really overleveraged themselves by borrowing more for farm equipment and farm hands and farm supplies. And when the bottom fell out on the wheat market, they were overextended and their homes and farms got foreclosed on. So all these people who were just a little while back were farming middle class people

were now homeless and on Route 66 and basically doing the grapes of wrath thing. Yeah. They said a lot of them moved west and I think you said that California was not so happy with that. About 10% of them ended up in California and it was not a great time for the country as a whole. So they didn't want all these new people, they called them okies even though about 20% were from Oklahoma, they didn't want them coming in there trying to get their jobs and

it was bad news all the way around in California. So in actually what's a pretty good example of the federal government doing something really, really right, they stepped in, actually FDR stepped in with the New Deal and created a lot of measures that tried to alleviate the worst effects of the dust bowl. And one of the things that they did really, really well was create the soil conservation service. So that was in 1935 and basically strict instructions to farmers to plant grass, plant trees, how to plow, how to terrace, how to hold rain water, how to portion off your farmland and

not just grow wheat over every square inch of it. Right yeah, leave some land to be fallow and regenerate after one year of production or a couple of years of production. And one of the other big pushes that's still going on these days is no till farming. One of the big problems that they did by knocking out these grasslands was first they got rid of the native grasses that were good at holding the topsoil in place. But then they actually tilled the topsoil and loosened the whole structure of everything so it was easy to blow away when these strong winds came in.

And apparently topsoil takes something like I've seen in a few places 500 years to produce one inch of new topsoil. So once it blew away, it wasn't coming back. And I'm not quite sure how they've replenished it since then. I mean I know that these soil conservation measures are helping, but I mean is it just grassland that's growing on subsoil still for the next couple hundred years? I don't know. You know, I know that somebody out there knows that though, some farmer.

I do know that they said by the early 1940s much of that land had been rehabilitated. And not only did the government step in and still install a lot of new laws and measures, but they also bought a lot of land to take it out of production. Yeah, about 11 million acres just to keep it grassy and stable. And the New Deal brought, it wasn't just the soil conservation service, we won't get into all these, but the works progress administration was created. The, I think the SES is now the Natural Resources Conservation Service. And they just, you know, they really stepped in and said, we can't let this happen again.

Even though in the 1950s, there was another bad drought, but I think the measures. And the 70s. Yeah, the measure that, yeah, I remember in the 70s, that's why we have skateboarding. Oh yeah, that's right. I mean, not completely, but that's when they went to the swimming pools because they were empty in California. But thanks to those measures, things in the 50s and 70s didn't reach the levels that they did in the 1930s.

And I read this really great article called Rethinking the Dust Bowl. I can't remember where it's from, but it's posted on the podcast page for this episode on our site. Yeah. And it was basically saying like, this was a really good example of the government stepping in taking really good measures because ultimately what created the Dust Bowl was parceling out the Great Plains into these small farms. If you're a small farmer, taking soil conservation measures is not economically beneficial to

you. You're not going to see a lot of the benefits and it's going to be very expensive, right? And if you're just a small farmer, it doesn't matter. Your farm doesn't matter. But if you put a bunch of small farms together and no one's taking soil conservation measures, then what you have as far as from an ecological standpoint is one gigantic farm with no soil conservation measures. And that's what set up the Great Plains for the Dust Bowl.

Federal government came in and said, you guys are small farmers. You don't have to be big farmers, but we're going to put a bunch of you together to form what's called a soil conservation district. And we're going to say, if you plant these trees for windbreaks and you do these other soil conservation techniques, we're going to subsidize your farms. And it worked really well. And a lot of small farmers got these subsidies and the Great Plains was saved, hooray! But then the same article was like, this is also a really good example of how the federal

government doesn't work because as smaller and smaller farms were bought by bigger and bigger farms and consolidated into like big agra, these subsidies are still available for these farms and farming companies that would have carried out these measures anyway because they would directly benefit from the money that they put into it, they're still getting government subsidies from it. So it worked really well at first, now it's not working anymore, it's just kind of a waste of money. They should have had a stipulation in there though that like, farms of certain size or

something, I don't know. Shoulda. Shoulda coulda woulda. I didn't find that really interesting, I can totally get why you suggested this Dust Bowl drought episode. Yeah, it's good stuff, we've had a lot of asks for this one lately, so. You got anything else? No, sir.

If you want to know anything else about the Dust Bowl and droughts and that kind of stuff, go to HowStuffWorks, type those words into the search bar and it will bring all this up. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Batty Email from a bat guy. Okay. Hey guys, I'm a bat biologist specializing in threatened and endangered species in the eastern US.

It was a great episode and you nailed it, especially the section on echolocation. I'll add that while most insectivorous bats do catch their prey while on the wing, some have specialized to flutter slowly and their echolocations are so sensitive and high-pitched and they're hearing so sensitive that the bats can glean insects from vegetation in the darkness. This could be in response to stealthy moths that have learned to sense bat echolocation and evade. Round and round goes through predator prey arms race.

One clarification though is regarding the effect of white nose syndrome. You said in the podcast that the itch is what wakes the bats from hibernation. It's more that the bats immune system is ramped up by the late stage fungal infection and their metabolic requirements are beyond what they have prepared for. The damaged wing membranes are especially susceptible to evaporate water loss and most hibernation interrupted bats are thought to die of lack of water rather than lack of food. Additionally, new studies indicate that the clinical signs are in stages of the disease

and that the chemical imbalances cause internal damage before the visible fungal hyphae do. One mechanism for this is chronic respiratory acidosis caused by increased dissolved CO2 levels in the blood. Man. I told you he's a bat biologist. He's a bat guy. I listen to you guys every day and I've taken SYSK onto the woods on bat surveys more than once.

Thanks for the podcast. I knew we'd been on a bat survey before. I did do. It's a great balancing act of fact and BS of to each their own and holding humanity to a higher standard. You guys consistently hit it out of the park. Man. That is nice.

That is from Jason Whittle. Thanks, Jason. And my wife's hometown of Akron, Ohio. Nice. And where LeBron lives too. That's right. And you know what? Our episode shared by, oh boy, now I can't think of it, the bat society.

The best society of America or the world bat society? I can't remember which one. But one of the larger bat organizations shared our podcast and said we did a great job. So I thought that was cool. Oh man. That's awesome. Well, thank you. Thanks to the bat society.

Thanks to Jason it was, right? Jason Whittle. And if you want to be cool like Jason and send us a really interesting email full of tons of facts, you can do that. You can tweet to us too at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us that email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And in the meantime, you can hang out at our super cool home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison.

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