Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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The catastrophic chain of events that water and power authorities are working to prepare for amid the desertification of the Colorado River basin would amount to a "complete doomsday scenario," harming water and electricity supplies for millions, according to new reporting from The Washington Post.

While the Biden administration earlier this year ordered water use cuts in Arizona, Nevada, and parts of Mexico that use water from the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, officials in the region are examining how they can keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead—the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S.—from reaching dangerous "dead pool" status, in which water levels would drop so low that water no longer flows downstream.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, with Lake Powell's surface already having fallen 170 feet, the reservoir is even closer to reaching "minimum power pool" status.

If water levels drop another 38 feet in Lake Powell, which is currently a quarter of its original size, the surface could approach the tops of eight underwater openings allowing Colorado River water to pass through the Glen Canyon Dam.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/12/compl ... ado-river/

Well, Mother Nature doesn’t like Gaia being continually assaulted by selfish people.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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featureless wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:06 pm We're fucked. Most just haven't realized it yet. That is my most rose colored glasses assessment.
Yep. It's only a matter of time.

A geography teacher told the class I was in that the aquifer was being drained at an unsustainable rate in 1988, and it was probably old news then. The polar ice caps have been shrinking at appalling rates for years, too. All that water has to be somewhere, which is probably the atmosphere. Water, as that Geography teacher told us, is the fuel for weather (like hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.). The severity and frequency of hurricanes have increased several-fold in my lifetime. I haven't tracked the frequency of tornadoes, even though I'm more likely to be affected by one of those than by a hurricane (I'm a few hundred miles inland, but even here we get weather from remnants of hurricanes once in a while).

For myself, and being selfish, I hope I don't live long enough to see the world go to dystopia mode. If I do see that happen, I hope my elder relatives are spared the experience.
Eventually I'll figure out this signature thing and decide what I want to put here.

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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I found it amusing that earlier this year there was a lot of talk about "well, let's build a pipeline to get water from the upper Mississippi River and divert it to the west."

And then later in the year, news about record low water levels on the Mississippi, shutting down a lot of the barge traffic. I live near the Mississippi and I am pretty sure that nobody around here would support diverting the river upstream to help out California because they did not manage their own water use.

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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wings wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:48 pm Wait. This isn't news. John Wesley Powell is muttering "I told you so," from his grave, over a century later.
https://legacy.npr.org/programs/atc/fea ... part1.html
Yup.

Decades of unsustainable development and 8 billion mouths to feed and water supported, primarily, by major infrastructure that is 50 to 100 years old and finite resources. Something has to give.

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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The Google logo right now is of early video game creator Jerry Lawson. That and this story remind me of playing Oregon Trail on an Apple 2 with my kids when they were little and I was useful. Somewhere in storage is a 5 1/4" floppy with a record of my burrial on some long forgotten trail.
Should have waited and taken the train.
Getting old, or is it just me?

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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Humans are not of supernatural origin. We're part and parcel of the planet we live on. It's comforting to believe that we have some say in the part we play, but we are as driven by what evolution has made us into as any other creature. We may be at the top of the heap but it's our genes calling the shots. Sixty-four, three letter codons. Of the four letters with which they are written, “O” and “D” aren't among them. Perhaps we need a fourth stop codon.

Asteroid? Flood? Nah, we got this.

If it's within our capacity to change our behavior or our technology or perhaps both, we will. Bitching about this person or that party just generates more heat and CO2. We have the map, we just need to put those who can read it behind the wheel.

Buckle up!
Getting old, or is it just me?

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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I'm just happy I saw much of the western USA while it was verdant and very much alive - from 70's thru early 90's - rivers roaring, lakes full, primitive areas unspoiled and not overrun with people and trash, snow capped mountains, lush forest, plentiful fishing and breath taking vistas. Well kept national forest filled with natures wonders. Most grateful that I did it when I was physically able to do so either thru work or sabbaticals between work and pleasure. Hopefully it will survive and return to the good, but I have little hope people will be the savior - it will have to be mother nature or force majuere - most haven't a clue what's happening, right up until it bites them on their ass and by then it's too late.
"Being Republican is more than a difference of opinion - it's a character flaw." "COVID can fix STUPID!"
The greatest, most aggrieved mistake EVER made in USA was electing DJT as POTUS.

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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I think I've recommended Cadillac Desert here before, but it is worth recommending again.

Cadillac Desert (1986), is a history by American Marc Reisner about land development and water policy in the western United States. Subtitled The American West and Its Disappearing Water, it explores the history of the federal agencies, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and their struggles to remake the American West in ways to satisfy national settlement goals. The book concludes that the development-driven policies, formed when settling the West was the country's main concern, have had serious long-term negative effects on the environment and water quantity. The book was revised and updated in 1993.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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California is the land of Hollywood and make believe and 'dream big and it will come true'. It wasn't just Tinseltown that was peddling this bullshit, Democratic and Republican politicians in Sacramento were also peddling it, with the help of those PR types like we saw in "Mad Men". The main CA utility PG&E Co. used to push people to buy electric appliances because, "...gas and electricity are cheap in California..." Every month I use less electricity and natural gas, but my bills get higher.

They used to call California ocean desalination a disaster. But water crisis brings new look
https://archive.ph/lUzUz#selection-1633.1-1633.93

California drought costly to growers, jobs as farmland shrinks. New study shows how much
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/ ... 82317.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Complete doomsday scenario': Experts warn that the Colorado River could dry up by 2023

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It is unfortunate that our governments, local, state and Federal have had the idea they can change the environment to suit the people, unlike the Native Americans that learned to live in that environment.

We have examples of trying to change the environment from earlier times with the Texas/Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Texas drought of the 1950s. and other weather/climate events. Weather tends to be cyclical, such as the La Nina/El Nino wether pattern that affects much of the United States. We need to look at how we are affecting the cycles such as the clear cutting of the worlds largest carbon sink, the Amazon Rain Forest. They clear cut and burn releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. Oil Companies release tons of Methane gas, with a who gives a shit attitude, from leaking wells and pipes. They don't worry, they can buy politicians that will kill and action to regulate them. Same goes for coal.

The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. What have we really changed in the fifty plus years to help our planet? Our cars and trucks are cleaner running, But I still see those jacked up diesel pickup doing the"Rolling Coal" from the stoplights. We find out that recycling the plastic is almost a bust because very little is recycled and much of it still ends up in the ocean causing problems with the sea-life.

We need to change, but as long as we have the naysayers voting no to change by blocking legislation, we are doom.

It is heck when you have a sister-in-law and her husband both with PhDs in environmental science.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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