Re: OT ; Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:47:28 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 04/10/2024 04:26, rbowman wrote:

t's fossil water, meaning it's leftover from the last ice age. Because
of the soil structure and the fact it is still a semi-arid region,
recharge is extremely slow. In other words, when it's gone, it's gone
and it's time to try to pull another rabbit out of the hat.

 
Read up what the Russians did to the Aral sea.
Capitalism is not the problem

Not at all. In the US Chaco Canyon is a great object lesson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park

Like parts of Africa they managed to create a desert. Trees aren't a
renewable crop in semi-arid environments.

The Phoenix area is another example. The Hohokam built an extensive
network of irrigation ditches and made the desert arable. Without a
copious amount of water to flush the soil salinity builds up and defeats
your efforts.

The Central Arizona Project canal follows some of the prehistoric routes
and pulls water from the Colorado to enable growing crops like cotton in
the desert to say nothing of supporting the growing population of Phoenix.
It may be of interest of future archaeologists trying to figure out what
happened to the civilization -- if there are future archaeologists.