Comments on: Drowning in Drought

By: Oscar Hayes

Oscar Hayes — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:58:04 +0000

Why not commission a study on the feasibility and cost of bringing water from the flooded upper Mississippi-Missouri catchment area down the Mississippi river and then west via I-170 to the nearest entrance into the Colorado River? Some significant pumping will be involved.

I will bet that is economically feasible. A very nice construction project.

Oscar

By: memory foam

memory foam — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:18:46 +0000

One factor affecting water use is the very large amounts of water consumed by livestock. It is not a very ideal climate for livestock but there is still a substantial amount in the SW and it is a very inefficient use, given the overall shortages. I don’t really know the solution, it is hard to tell operators to just shut down. Eventually though the day of reckoning will come to the SW region and this is an area where a difference can be made.

By: Michael F. Sarabia

Michael F. Sarabia — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:39:48 +0000

Las Vegas maximum temperature was 117° Fahrenheit (47°C), a record that has stood since 1942, matched on 19 July 2005. Las Vegas is my choice of the first major American city to die from Global Warming, the Canary in the mine.
No water to drink or irrigate crops, its real estate market is falling -still.
Lake Mead will soon become unable to produce electricity, its water level dropped over 70 feet and is less than 20 feet from its water ourlets that feed the generators.
Las Vegas is my choice of the “Canary in the Mine”>

By: Aaron H.

Aaron H. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:27:10 +0000

This is an interesting topic and I am actually in the midst of re-reading the classic book “Cadillac Desert”. The remarkable redistribution of our Southwestern water and poor long-term planning for the costs of trying to allow millions to live in a desert region are fascinating.

On the climate change point, you may want to assess that more carefully. I believe recent studies have shown that for most of this century the Western US was in a wetter-than-average cycle. See National Geographic at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/02/drying-west/kunzig-text

The National Geographic article also notes the potential climate change correlation, but it may also be the case that the diminishing water resources in the Colorado and other basins is a natural return to historic drought cycles. I’d like to hear more about how scientists are distinguishing between correlation and causation given the evidence of past water patterns in the southwest.

By: Michael F. Sarabia

Michael F. Sarabia — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:03:23 +0000

I believe you have found a key, very clear and simple indicator of Global Warming, not only the depth of Lake Mead, Superior and the Aral Sea (was the Second World’s Largest Lake, now about half empty) together with the flow rates in the Colorado, Rio Grande, Nile, Amazon and other rivers. A composite of total amount stored and flow rate in terms of the daily consumption of a City like Chicago may give us an easy to grasp indicator.

There may be some problems with desalination plants but in the Middle East they have more than a dozen of the largest
plants and California we may, finally, have one of them.