PM's Self Reliance Tools: Why Martha Stewart Likes Drones, Water as a Weapon?

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

"Wise men talk because they have something to say;
fools, because they have to say something."
-- Plato

Drone Wars – Why Martha Stewart Loves Them

Have you heard that Amazon wants to become part of the drone culture? They’ve been demonstrating how drones can deliver products quickly. They just need government approval to begin their service.

Ms. Stewart has been raving about her Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Power Edition which she operates from her iPad sending it over her farm because she “loves getting overhead shots of the garden and livestock.”

In Japan, 2,300 drones are used to spray about 85% of crops and UAV technology for agriculture will make up about 80% of the commercial drone market. In Africa, drones are being used to spot poachers. The Navy is using them to search out pirate camps in order to warn ships. Stranded hikers are being found by drones as well.

They make political ads more interesting too…a campaign ad from a Montana congressional candidate shows him shooting down a government drone which had been spying on him.

The dark side of drone use of course falls on the shoulders of our government which misuse them to spy on private property and citizens and we’re already getting reports of near misses between commercial aircraft and drones.

Personally, I thought we’d all be using flying cars by now like on the Jetson’s cartoon. Hobbyists are already at risk. In April, a drone fell out of the sky and hit a triathlete at a race in Australia…we could always use private drones to fight back against unwanted surveillance from police helicopters and more.

Groundwater reservoirs are being depleted at an increasing rate

The rate at which the Earth's groundwater reservoirs are being depleted is constantly increasing. Annual groundwater depletion during the first decade of this century was twice as high as it was between 1960 and 2000. India, the USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China are the countries with the highest rates of groundwater depletion. About 15 percent of global groundwater consumption is not sustainable, meaning that it comes from non-renewable groundwater resources. The increased use of groundwater for irrigation also results in a rise in sea levels, with roughly one tenth of the total sea level rise during the period from 2000 to 2009 due to groundwater depletion.

The biggest killer: Since they pose little threat to property, heat waves are not included in most disaster reports. Since 1986, heat in the US has killed almost three times as many people has hurricanes have.

Water as a tool for controlling citizens?

The Detroit water system has been neglected for 50 years under democratic neglect, corruption and mismanagement…millions of gallons are being wasted daily due to broken mains and broken pipes. Thousands of residents are suffering through shutoffs from the city creating a beehive of anger and disgust. Water rates in the area are some of the highest in the nation (more than double what we paid in the desert of AZ).

Water is a renewable but finite resource. Nature’s water-replenishment capacity is fixed, limiting the world’s usable freshwater resources to about 200,000 cubic kilometers. But the human population has almost doubled since 1970, while the global economy has grown even faster.

Major increases in water demand, however, are being driven not merely by economic and demographic growth, or by the additional energy, manufacturing, and food production to meet rising consumption levels, but also by the fact that the global population is getting fatter. The average body mass index (BMI) of humans has been increasing in the post-World War II period, but especially since the 1980’s, with the prevalence of obesity doubling in the past three decades.

Heavier citizens make heavier demands on natural resources, especially water and energy. The issue thus is not just about how many mouths there are to feed, but also how much excess body fat there is on the planet. For example, a study published in the British journal BMC Public Health has found that if the rest of the world had the same average body mass index as the US, this would be the equivalent of adding almost one billion people to the global population, greatly exacerbating water stress.

With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply and quality constraints, many investors are beginning to view water as the new oil. The dramatic rise of the bottled-water industry since the 1990’s attests to the increasing commodification of the world’s most critical resource.

In the late 1980s I wrote a study for the National Bottled Water Association and the Poland Springs Water Co., each of which predicted Americans would consume ever increasing quantities of bottled water in the coming decades due to concerns over the quality of local supply and because of the status symbol factor. I was right on both counts. I also predicted aquafiers in many parts of the nation would encounter shortages as a result of this trend and because of certain climate factors which had been predicted by the weather service. Recently, President Obama went golfing on a course in CA which is experiencing drought conditions; apparently oblivious to his actions.

Not only are water shortages likely to intensify and spread, but consumers also will increasingly have to pay more for their water supply.

This double whammy can be mitigated only by innovative water management and conservation, and by developing nontraditional supply sources. As in the oil and gas sector – where tapping unconventional sources, such as shale and tar sands, has proved a game changer – the water sector must adopt all unconventional options, including recycling wastewater and desalinating ocean and brackish water.

Your comments and feedback are always welcome…

Yours in freedom,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’