{"id":812,"date":"2012-11-11T18:53:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-11T18:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/11\/desert-dust-in-our-future"},"modified":"2012-11-11T18:53:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T18:53:00","slug":"desert-dust-in-our-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=812","title":{"rendered":"Desert dust in our future?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I\u2019ve just watched a preview of an upcoming public television special, \u201cThe Dust Bowl,\u201d directed by acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns. And there\u2019s a chilling message near its end.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d better be mindful of our water. The consequences of doing otherwise are too chilling to ponder.<\/p>\n<p>The special takes note of this fundamental truth: If we lose the water we lose the land.<\/p>\n<p>There are still many of our Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle neighbors who remember the Dust Bowl well. It turned daylight into dark in an instant, as black clouds of choking dirt rolled for years across the landscape, enveloping everything \u2013 and every being \u2013 in their path.<\/p>\n<p>What caused it? Two factors: indiscriminate plowing of native grasslands and crippling drought.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the drought that should cause us great concern today. We\u2019ve developed better plowing techniques that help reduce soil erosion. However, we haven\u2019t yet stopped using Ogallala Aquifer water to a degree that threatens its existence \u2013 and our communities\u2019 survival.<\/p>\n<p>One of the people interviewed in the documentary, which will air on KACV-TV on Nov. 18 and 19, says we could run out of water in sections of the Texas Panhandle in the next 20 years. Then what? Well, think of the worst, and it\u2019s likely to happen. <\/p>\n<p>Irrigated farmland is gulping huge quantities of groundwater every hour. The aquifer doesn\u2019t regenerate nearly fast enough to replace it. <\/p>\n<p>The Dust Bowl special doesn\u2019t dwell too much on the water supply, but there\u2019s enough of it in the broadcast to cause anyone who\u2019s paying attention some serious concern.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve just watched a preview of an upcoming public television special, \u201cThe Dust Bowl,\u201d directed by acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns. And there\u2019s a chilling message near its end. We\u2019d better be mindful of our water. The consequences of doing otherwise are too chilling to ponder. The special takes note of this fundamental truth: If we &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=812\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Desert dust in our future?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}