I'll give you a second to think about why that is a terrible idea.

One would think that solar powered desalination would be an obvious choice. The fact that this is not being exploited means I am missing something obvious - probably cost.

You think that just possibly those farms are there for a reason other than farmers being stubborn?

Your idea happens inadvertently fairly often... at which point half the lettuce in the US is thrown out because of possible e-coli contamination.

Sadly, the horse has left the barn at that point.

These appear too many times in the article to take the idea seriously.

How ironic.

Oops - I meant to say LVIS-GH is what I wrote the embedded code for. LVIS refers to the first generation instrument which I did not work on. Sorry Dave.

If only that were true.

I worked at NASA Goddard in the Laser and Remote Sensing Lab - many of those projects were decidedly in a realm that could be considered Earth Sciences (which is under the same Sciences and Exploration directorate), I am referring to Cloud Physics Lidar, LVIS (which I virtually single handedly wrote the embedded software for), and Cloud Aerosol Transport System. These instruments fly on the Global Hawk and or ER-2 (I think CATS is going to space) and on the surface seem to have a large overlap with NOAA's mission... but in reality they do not. Most other of the instruments out of that lab are spaceborne - and the methodologies used are applied to other missions: after all we can verify a wind mapping lidar here on earth.. good luck trying that on Jupiter.

While we worked with NOAA and NCAR (we flew on their aircraft) it turns out that in practice there was very little overlap with NOAA, and nothing of value would be gained having them under NOAA - aside from there being the word "Atmosphere(ic)" in the name. In fact, many of these instruments are deployed to support Ice Bridge - which is simply a stop gap aircraft based capability until ICESAT-2 is launched. Now.. should ICESAT-2 be a NOAA project? Nobody is arguing that is should be - and I don;t see Ted Cruz making this case either. He just doesn't want the capability... at all.

I am surprised that one hasn't been stolen yet.

Lower the them down there with a bed, access to water and a drain hole. Put a glass cover on it. Every 24 hours toss down food. They only come up when they are dead.

I started out as a Chemistry major. Changed that quick enough when even my professors wondered just what I was planning on doing for a living. All of the CE's that I know that are working in their field are metallurgists.

This is what they said about the Taliban in the 1980's.

It isn't so much ISIS that is the problem - it is the shitbirds that they will provide safe haven for.

PS not that I think execution is a very good idea: it sure doesn't seem to deter much crime (and apparently the legal process is more expensive than merely letting them sit in jail free cable tv and all).

Why not administer anesthesia before electrocuting/gassing the prisoner?

After all, they do this with lethal injection (at least they did in my state).