The Capitalist Climate: 15 Weeks of Drought in Andalusia

Editor's note:

This compiled series of reports spans 15 weeks of drought in Southern Spain. When I found these reports in a neglected discord channel I was immediately struck on a personal level. Workers experiencing the destructive effects of global warming are hardly ever given a voice, and when they are, their "spotlight" takes the form of snippet quotation. The personal nature of Miguel's writing makes these accounts a treasure trove in proletarian reporting. Unlike what other communist publications often indulge in, this piece is not an outsiders report. The most laudable part of the reporting is that Miguel does not mince words or push an agenda other than that of proletarian revolution.

The upside down punctuation (¿) was requested to be included by the author.

The global importance of spreading this reporting is paramount. Miguel's message is clear: We must stop climate alarmism. We must fundamentally alter our agro-industrial system of production. We must conduct our communist revolution.

This week's report will be slightly longer than what I plan for this project of mine, as it is the first proper chapter, and therefore needs some context.

Two weeks ago, the flowering of cherry and orange trees started, which is odd since they should be blossoming in a week. This is relatively normal since trees react to their environment, and temperatures have been rising quicker than expected since around 2011 (¿climate change?). I started the report-week with many hopeful divinations. Sadly, we saw disappointingly little rain. Wednesday morning all of us woke up to find the street wet but lacking puddles. The week has been growing in maximum temperatures steadily, and while the mornings remain fresh, the ground has dried fast.

The clouds are all thin and high altitude, their chance of bringing rain is nonexistent, their albedo is almost nothing (they give little shade). Yet, I must say that the first two days of the report-week had rainclouds.

The reservoirs, from 29.98% has lowered to 29.80%, the average of the past ten years was 64.67%.

This week, max temperature remained stable. On days 1-4 & 7 we saw a sky with all but a few, very small, anemic high altitude clouds, perhaps cirrus, cirrocumulus or castellanus. On days 5 & 6, the sky was blotted for a few hours by clouds, and they could have left some rain, but in the end they didn't, at least not in the hills. Perhaps there has been some rain in the mountains. The first 2-3 hours of light of all days have had low height clouds that slow down the warming of the day, this has been beneficial.

Some of my countrymen and the less-disgusting press have talked of the water issue without me pressing them to. Yet the presence of the problem in the streets and official discourse is almost nonexistent. At least now it has injected itself.

Unexpectedly, the ponds east of Mesas de Asta have not dried up yet. I should go and take a look, ideally, check their depth. I will make an "update 3.1" detailing my findings.

The reservoirs, from 29.80% have lowered to 29.74%, the average of the past ten years was 65.54%.

This week, max temperature rose slightly, yet the days have warmed up quicker than past week. Most of the time, the only clouds in the sky were diverse species of cirrus. The exception was when on Tuesday, the day started with a sky of nimbostratus... without rain. Let's hope wind blew the moisture towards the mountains. I take advantage of this event to denounce the critical incompetence of the town hall of sherry, that haven't even made an attempt at provoking rain by seeding the skies with silver Iodate.

My countrymen don't talk a lot about the issue, but the official press does, yet neutered and little, since they do not propose solutions of any kind and confine themselves to talking about this life or death issue like if it were a novelty.

Sadly, I couldn't check on the ponds east of Mesas de Asta, but I walked 50 kilometers Monday across the hills, traveling through secarrales (very dry terrain) and lower Guadalete. The river still exists(thank god), although it flows slowly and we can appreciate the considerable backflow of saltwater. The land is very dry, we even got to see a small tornado. I have witnessed unusual activity at the wastewater treatment plant; it appears that it may be dumping not fully treated wastewater (very brown, still fermenting) into the Guadalete. More research is needed, an inside contact would be ideal.

The reservoirs, from 29.74% have lowered to 29.25%, the average of the past ten years was 65.97%.

This week, temperature remained stable, perhaps, on average, even (very) slightly fresher than last week. There have been a variety of clouds, ranging from days of sun with cirrus to skies covered by stratus; those, sadly, did not provide apparent rain.

The issue is not very present in the people's voice. Its presence in the press however is big, and the issue is treated as the threat that it is, yet with the typical useless alarmism of the liberal press.

The Andalusian PP wants to push further the Doñana reclamation project. This is not going to affect the Guadalete basin directly, yet it will worsen the state of water supply in the Guadalquivir basin severely and will make an emergency transfusion from the big river into the small one more... unlikely.

The reservoirs, from 29.25% have lowered to 28.89%, the average of the past ten years was 66.15%.

This week, daytime temperatures have not changed. The night has been much hotter, going from fresh nights where people sleep with blankets to warm nights where a sing sheet will suffice. The sky has been void of clouds almost all the time, the few times it wasn't, it was due to stray cirrus clouds.

The issue is not very present in the people's voice. Its presence in the press however, is big, and the issue is treated as the threat that it is, yet with the typical useless alarmism of the liberal press. Now the press adds articles about changing sea temperatures, (the phenomenon of el niño) and say that it could bring rain, but drought. This seems to have stemmed from the cult to an ¿expert? that predicted the snows of filomena.... If this wasn't obvious, to me all of this smells to liberal press drama over some extremely serious issues. Instead of inventing saviors, we should start to build a stronger Guadalete basin, ready to survive the new normal. The tables should meet up immediately and the people have to rise up in order to overthrow the water wasting-golf playing-capital owning elites.

The cereals have died in various fields, it seems that overall harvests will be horrible. It is likely that the drought situation will lead to the death of olive trees.

My contacts on the fields give bad news.

The reservoirs, from 28.89% have lowered to 28.41%, the average of the past ten years was 66.45%.

This week, daytime temperatures have risen significantly, yet the night has become noticeably fresher. The sky has been populated by cirrus, and occasionally altocumulus.

The issue is detectable in the people's voice. Its presence in the press however, is big, and the issue is treated as the threat that it is, again with the typical useless alarmism of the liberal press. The shamans that try to make the population placated by inventing future rains without any clear evidence are multiplying like cancerous cells; Saselandia (a big youtuber and also a big source of cringe) has added another conspiracy to the arsenal of the shamans, now it seems that the government is fumigating the skies in order for it not to rain.

¡Yet there has been a victory on the propaganda front! The AEMET has lambasted Jorge Rey, prophet of made up rains predicted via severely unscientific methods. The main source of rain forecasts for the shamanistic press has been struck down, forcing them to retreat to the chemtrail theory or to the ENSO theory! The AEMET has warned of the risks of spreading fake news too. The ENSO theory is currently being investigated by none other than Tai himself, as soon as he communicates his findings to me, I will do an unscheduled update on the drought issue.

There has been another victory, last sunday morning, there was light rain for around 5 minutes, although it was insignificant, it remembers us that the likelihood of precipitation has not disappeared

The reservoirs, from 28.41% have lowered to 27.86%, the average of the past ten years was 66.49%.

Pictured: Jorge Rey predicting the end of drought via ants

This update comes late, because embalses.net has not updated on time.

This week started at an unlivable temperature, but has cooled down. This reached a peak on saturday, when it rained intensely, lasting only 5 minutes. The rain was preceded by dry thunder, which I have recorded. This week has had growing cloud diversity, in order of appearance: cirrus, altocumulus, nimbostratus, cumulus, altostratus, stratii.

The issue is rarely talked about. Its presence in the press has waned, end of the day, the damage has already been done: the wheat is not going to die twice. The shamans are still around, but they are less, especially since the far right press prefers to accuse the government of blowing up dams.

The ENSO theory has been investigated, the ENSO should bring a wetter winter and a warmer summer. This means that this summer will be even worse than expected but reduces the likelihood of a rainless winter. It is likely that the Saturday rains were felt the next day with way greater force on the mountains (Zahara-El gastor reservoir has risen 13%). This week has been a good week, it could have been very bad.

The reservoirs, from 27.86% have risen to 29.13%, the average of the past ten years was 66.38%.

This update came late, I was tired.

This week started cold and with a great diversity of clouds. It developed to warmer days and skies barely populated.

The issue is only talked about when the land is dry and death is visible. Its presence in the press has become background noise. The shamans seem to have gone extinct, and the accusations of dam destruction have been mostly dismissed.

I will add the issue of the rocieros, which I didn't talk about last week, because I didn't feel it related enough to the basin at hand. I have changed my mind. The junta has asked the national government permission to open a dam in order to flood a river, to satisfy the wants of these pilgrims.

The reservoirs, from 29.13% have lowered to 26.77%, the average of the past ten years was 66.11%.

This is extremely severe, whatever is the excuse for the disappearance of these 39 Hm3 of water, it better be a good excuse, ¿the rain of last week? Like if it had never happened. It has been as if we lost the water for 4 weeks and 2 days. If this happened every week, we would run out of water in 11 weeks. The need of Revolution over reform to permanently solve these problems is undeniable.

This update came late, I had personal problems.

This week was warm and with no clouds, it warmed up for half a week and then it developed to a colder and wetter climate, with more and more varied clouds.

The issue is talked about more among the people, but still, not nearly enough. Its presence hasn’t changed much. Rumors exist that the price of cereal-based products in Spain may rise brutally, due to the lack of a cereal harvest. Some farmers affirm that products like beer may increase their price 5 times over.

First Thought (the youtube channel) has re-mentioned this crucial issue, correctly blaming the problem on the market’s inability to adapt to modern hydric conditions, as well as describing the reaction of the AgroCapital as what it is, a search for miraculous technology to patch a completely dysfunctional system.

Positive news: there has been a small rain, and another one is expected. This second rain is expected to be far greater than the last one.

The reservoirs, from 26.77% have lowered to 26.11%, the average of the past ten years was 65.95%.

This week started nice, with some clouds, mostly cumulus clouds. Though I have to talk about some beautiful altocumulus I saw on Wednesday, they were perfect, it looked like a chess board. Temperatures lowered throughout the week, the cooldown accelerated on Thursday. Since then, days have been somewhat wet, with occasional drizzle and some short-small rains some nights. Right now, it is drizzling behind me.

The issue isn’t talked about more or less, either on the streets or in the press. Certain liberal newspapers have dared to defend the golf fields, citing their water consumption to be “0.3%” of the national total, or that they use recycled water, or that their economic productivity/liter is higher than that of irrigation. They ignore (on purpose) that no matter how small a waste is, it remains a waste, and they too seem to forget that the recycled water should be used for other productive purposes, rather than the only alternative being to replenish the caudal of the rivers. ¡This water should not be kidnapped by these golfing leeches! This article I am talking about is a completely obvious scream of the golf tourism capitalists, ¡a textbook example of the capitalist propaganda machine! This is but another proof of the antagonism of the objectives of the capitalist class and the wellbeing of the working class.

The reservoirs have fallen despite all the drizzles and small rains. Yet we mustn’t worry excessively, most of the water that has fallen and must yet fall is still not in the reservoirs, but rather still moving towards them. This delay has been observed in other weeks where rains were concentrated near the end of the week. We will see the rest of the water reflected on next week's data, and the one after that one too. What I mean is that this week’s data are better than they look.

The reservoirs, from 26.11% have lowered to 25.80%, the average of the past ten years war: 65.54%.

This week started fresh and wet, with clouds, especially cumulous. The first day of the week had some drizzle. The temperature rose considerably and the sky has cleared up since. We are now in a warm week, but it is nothing extreme, the nights are still quite cold.

The issue is talked about less both in the press as well as on the street. This is a consequence of last week’s rains and the relatively cold temperatures. There are terrifyingly little articles about this, none worth mentioning. Municipal elections may have obscured the drought in the press slightly. But they are surely a smaller factor than rain.

The reservoirs have gone down anyway. Even though the aquifers were healed and the week moist and the nights cold, all of the consequences of last week’s rains that I forecasted would make this week either positive or a very small drop were greatly overestimated, not only by me, but by everyone around me too. The expected loss for a generic rainless week is 11-10Hm3, we got 9.

The reservoirs, from 25.80% have lowered to 25.26%, the average of the past ten years was 64.95%.

Last week’s update couldn’t be due to big commotions in my life that forbade me from centering on this small project of mine. Therefore I will emit a double comunique, yet since I haven’t taken any notes, I recommend taking the climate & propaganda sections with a grain of salt. This is why, in part, I am going to try to compensate via providing a “personal touch”.

Last week started fresh and damp, with a great amount of cumulus clouds. The first days had nightly drizzles and some daily drizzles too, which I remember pretty well, since they caught me moving heavy objects and were a staple of my stay at the mortuary. Temperatures fluctuated between the aforementioned freshness and the subjugating heat rays of father Sun, typical for Andalusia. This pattern stabilized as the week advanced, disappearing the fresh hours, as well as most cloud cover.

This week started warm, but with some moments of truce, such as spontaneous wind and fresh nights. These oases have gone extinct, not to mention cloud cover, which has basically disappeared, the sky is now endless, and quite beautiful blue. In fact, I have a photo I took in Trebujena of the only cloud I saw in my 4 hour wait for the bus, which I will annex to this update.

The issue is talked about little, but this is partly because everyone seems to have internalized it, every one of us knows that it don’t rain enough, nobody really talks about it, and when it is talked about, it is often as if it were a natural phenomenon without cause, and, sometimes, ¡Without consequences! Some even have the gigantic cognitive dissonance as to say it doesn’t matter since they lived through the drought of 1993-1995 ¿If you lived 1995, you must know how bad it was, right? ¿Do you want to live it again? ¿Do you want the water cuts to come back?

Well, what I meant is that we should focus on mobilizing the people, not raising awareness. Our discourse should be: “We are going to do whatever to survive whether they want it or not”, not “Things will be tough”.

Some time ago, I discovered the antiquity of the Albarizas, white lands that trap water in them and that are sprinkled around the hills of Jerez. They have been there since the Pleistocene, they aren’t a consequence of irresponsible agricultural practices. The land is looking summerly, the chumberas (cacti) are starting to give fruit and the sunflowers are drying up, I really can’t wait to go on a gathering spree of what grows by the side of the roads. I did not check the levels of the reservoirs last week, so this is going to be considered a “double week”, with all the information loss it implies. We have only 402 days left in freefall, theoretically, enough to last until the rainy season.

The reservoirs, from 25.26% have lowered to 24.41%, the average of the past ten years was 63.53%.

This week has started very hot, has kept the heat up and it looks like it is ending hot, but giving us a little bit of truce. The clouds are few, most of them various kinds of cirrus and the few that aren’t cumulous.

Through the windows, fire comes in at certain times of the day. Summer has begun.

Not much controversy about the gigantic drought risk is to be found, the newspapers talk very little about it and people even less, the incompetent local governments don’t help either. There exists a certain pattern in the capitalist press when addressing problems like this one, they will create some golden idol that either will fix all of our problems or forecast a great future, they always are wrong, and when they are wrong, they are never spoken of again. Never are the questions of utmost importance asked ¿Why were these unscientific, dangerous idols allowed to have such a platform for so long? ¿Is the press to blame for many of the problems nowadays? Now, some titles read things about some miracle technology that will increase farm output and decrease water consumption of strawberry production. The percentages are inconsistent and some look like something out of ads of pages where one would pirate movies, things like ¡SPANISH INVENTION REDUCES WATER OF STRAWBERRY BY 400%! I am not exaggerating at all.

Now that the sunflowers are drying up, as they should, we can see that the plantations remain with very big holes in the crop, where it hasn’t just taken longer to grow, but where plants have apparently died, missing, empty. This is likely because when the wheat started dying the sunflowers were sprouting, and this critical lack of water may have killed the sunflowers in drier spots which are basically now empty. Normally, this wouldn’t be that severe, as sunflower crop is the weak arm of our agricultural sector. A disproportionate amount of the income of the farmers comes from cereals and the sunflower is planted in order to have some small extra income between the years of cereal, but this year, since the situation for the farmers is already very bad, it is likely that this crisis in sunflower production may develop into a severe problem.

Our days in freefall are 275, today it’s the first day in the year that reserves dip below 400Hm3. Assuming a loss rate of 11Hm3 weekly, like we saw at the beginning of spring, our reserve days look even worse, we get around 250 days left. If losses were to get around 15Hm3/week, evacuation would be expected.

The reservoirs, from 24.41% have lowered to 23.80%, the average of the past ten years was 62.80%.

We have a heatwave. There are no clouds. There is no wind. It’s just too hot. The air is very dry, this helps, but it is important to drink more water.

The news has been speaking of a water crisis in a town called San José del Valley. In the basin, they have had a crisis of hydric supply. Shortly, they get all their water from a spring called Tempur, but it has only provided ¼ of the flow required for a long time, now, they can’t keep the pressure up, water has been cut. Many solutions to the problem are being started up, things are getting fixed, but we can expect this kind of event to become more and more common as time marches forward. The people talk about this, of course, but they talk more about what affects them directly: IT'S TOO WARM, ¡SOMEONE, SHUT DOWN THE SUN!

The emergency solutions are getting water from less-exploited sources, starting up unused wells, make connections with other wells already working, none of these is going to create more water, and it’s clear that the state of the aquifers is due to overexploitation by the agricultural and livestock sectors, both legal and illegal.

Our days in freefall are 268.

The reservoirs, from 23.80% have lowered to 23.20%, the average of the past ten years was 61.94%.

Update number 15 on the drought risk of southern Andalusia (Guadalete basin).

Last week’s heat wave has given us some quarter, temperatures are more manageable, but anyway, the heat can be oppressive even if one takes the necessary precautions, like drenching your cap, avoiding direct sunlight , wearing clear and not tight clothes…

From time to time there is some wind, but it is warm and it doesn’t allow you to cool down.

I assume that the crisis in San José del Valle has subsided, the time all of the solutions suggested would have taken has already been expended. The liberal press, as always, acts against our interests: It lies to us, as we have seen with their miracle inventions or the many shamans. It distracts us with stupid shit. It manipulates reality to reduce every chance of understanding and acting upon the world… It is NOT a source of information, but rather a force of tactical trickery.

It appears that some not enough/badly designed countermeasures from the state have been started to deal with the drought.

Last week’s Monday, we had an evening where a mysterious cirrostratus, homogeneous and gray, occupied the whole sky. I assumed it was just some anomalous cloud, it turned out that it was smoke coming from the Canadian wildfires that had crossed the Atlantic. The dome dispersed the next day, but a grayish tint remained in the sky for around 5 days. With a friend of mine, I went biking on the field. It was obvious next to the horizon that the sky was darker and grayish. With that friend I also saw the sunflowers, in my opinion, good enough to harvest.

Our days in freefall are 199. Day 0 will be on 19 January 2024.

The reservoirs, from 23.20% have lowered to 22.41%, the average of the past ten years was 61.10%.

Miguel.

M.S.

7-18-2023

Informacion sacado de Embalses.net y "mis ojos"