It’s important to note that nearly 100 years ago, on November 24, 1922, delegates from seven U.S. states gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to sign the Colorado River Compact—and inadvertently set the region up for failure.
The delegates believed the average Colorado River stream flow was 16.5 million acre-feet per year. So, their agreement apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet of water annually to provide for growing cities, industrial applications, and irrigation for farming in what they hoped would be a sustainable way. This would allow the remaining 9 million acre-feet per year to maintain the Colorado River ecosystem. Or so they thought.
The instrumental stream-flow data they employed to inform the compact came from a 22-year period between 1900 and 1921. In an almost unbelievable twist of fate, the Colorado River enjoyed a significantly higher stream flow during that 22-year period than at any other period in the last 500 years! We now know this through tree-ring analyses.
Compact signatories therefore legally bound themselves to unrealistically large allocations because their input data, unbeknownst to them and by sheer chance, came from an anomalously wet period in the climatic history of the U.S. Southwest. People in the region have been dealing with the consequences of this ever since.
It seems highly unlikely that the compact will be renegotiated given the current political climate. Politics may supersede nature in the short run, but Mother Nature will rule in the long run.
The Southwest is dooomed
The Southwest is dooomed
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/tre ... NPNvhsTmRI
- Kim O'Hara
- Former staff member
- Posts: 7064
- Joined: Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:09 am
- Location: North Queensland, Australia
Re: The Southwest is dooomed
That article confirms and extends previous research which had already reached similar conclusions, e.g. https://www.ecowatch.com/megadroughts-2031955357.html
If you want to know what it might feel like, try The Water Knife by Bacigalupi, which I have mentioned here before. If you don't know it, here's a good intro to it - https://www.npr.org/2015/05/28/40829580 ... -cuts-deep.Ecowatch wrote:“Historically, megadroughts were extremely rare phenomena occurring only once or twice per millennium,” the report states. “According to our analysis of modeled responses to increased GHGs, these events could become commonplace if climate change goes unabated.”
Rising temperatures will combine with decreased rainfall in the Southwest to create droughts that will be worse than the historic “Dust Bowl” of the 20th century and last far longer. The Dust Bowl lasted no longer than eight years, and affected 100 million acres around the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and adjacent lands in Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. Dust storms swept through large swaths of former farmland, depositing dust as far east as Chicago, New York and Washington. It is estimated that more than half a million people were made homeless, and some 3.5 million Dust Bowl refugees migrated west, in hopes of finding work.
Kim
Re: The Southwest is dooomed
Surely, there must be some rituals that can be performed?
Virgo
Virgo
- Kim O'Hara
- Former staff member
- Posts: 7064
- Joined: Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:09 am
- Location: North Queensland, Australia
Re: The Southwest is dooomed
Sacrificing the oil and coal bosses to Kali would be a good one.
See this topic for other suggestions - https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=31593
Kim
Re: The Southwest is dooomed
I've been to Lake Powell a few times, it's a very beautiful and surreal place. There's Rainbow Bridge and Antelope Canyon there. Last time we were there our ski boat hit a rock and sank. And then the houseboat was retired due to old age. Seemed a fitting end to an era for family vacations.
It's a harsh environment there, never really meant for humans to control.
It's a harsh environment there, never really meant for humans to control.