jfleck at inkstain

9:01 am:

Watching roadrunner in the backyard. Unsuspecting sparrow flies up. Snap. Sparrow dead, spectacle of roadrunner breakfast kinda gross.

9:05 am:

Two house finches and a white-winged dove sit on power line, watching roadrunner eat sparrow. Are they, in fact, “watching”? Do they care?

9:09 am:

Roadrunner sitting on a stump, wiping off his beak. Can’t see what he did with breakfast.

9:22 am:

Roadrunner has left, pile of feathers on the ground where he dined, but can’t see a carcass anywhere.

Tags: birds, mind // 6 Comments »

I’ve got this energy-water hammer, and they all look like nails right now. Today’s nail is jatropha, one of the next-gen bio-energy darlings. Or not:

Jatropha, a biofuel crop favoured for its ability to grow in areas not suitable for food, may be about to become less popular.

A new Dutch study shows it uses 20,000 litres of water to produces one litre of jatropha biodiesel - more than the other crops used for biodiesel, rapeseed and soybean; and a lot more than ethanol crops such as maize (corn).

Tags: energy, water // 5 Comments »

This one was enough to lure me away from the all-MJ/Farrah news feed this morning:

In some valley towns the crime rates have soared. The link, officials suggest, are the water shortages to farming communities. The drought is said to have lead to higher crime rates in some Valley towns.

In the farming community of Mendota crime is up 100 percent, officials reported. Fresno County District Attorney Elizabeth Egan said that the spike is tied to the water crisis.

Tags: climate variability, water // 2 Comments »

I recently finished up a piece at the day job on the connection between water and energy, and perhaps as a result, everywhere I turn these days I’m seeing stories on the linkage. Today’s example comes from Cynthia Barnett:

Matthew Cohen, a professor in UF’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation, and post-doctoral researcher Jason Evans in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation analyzed energy and water impacts for four ethanol crops — corn, sugarcane, sweet sorghum and pine — in Florida and Georgia. Their study, published in Global Change Biology, found that all four yielded net energy; meaning they are viable for replacing fossil fuels. But it also concluded that ramping up production enough to meet U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act mandates for renewable fuels by 2022 “would have significant impacts on both land use and water resources.”

To we dry-climate southwesterners, Florida might seem like a what-me-worry water state, with 40 inches of rain (100 cm) in a bad year. But the problem really is all relative. It’s about how you use the water you’ve, and Barnett has documented Florida’s serious water problems.

Tags: energy, water // Add Comment »

My Albuquerque Journal colleague Mike Coleman has a nice example in today’s paper (might be behind paywall, a bit of a crapshoot there) of the horse trading now underway in an attempt to win passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill:

Rep. Harry Teague, a southern New Mexico Democrat, this week persuaded the authors of a sweeping, national climate-change bill to include language protecting small refiners and electric co-ops from some costs associated with the legislation.
Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and a lead sponsor of the bill, confirmed Wednesday that Teague’s amendments — opposed by some Democrats and large refiners — would be a part of the climate change package scheduled for a House vote Friday.
Inclusion of the amendments in the bill before the floor debate dramatically increases their chance of surviving and becoming law.
“Harry Teague was concerned about the impact this bill would have on small refiners, and we made an adjustment in the legislation,” Markey said in response to a question from the Journal at a Capitol Hill news conference. “As a result, I think Harry is looking very favorably on the bill.”

Tags: New Mexico, climate variability, energy // Add Comment »

When I was a kid, they had one of these things at the Los Angeles County Fair. I remember staring for the longest time, trying to figure it out.

(h/t Chris Corbin)

Tags: water // 2 Comments »

On counting to 60 votes in the U.S. Senate.

Tags: energy // Add Comment »

Some scientists predict that climatic changes could alter historic precipitation patterns, and reduce available water supplies. Carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere caused by fossil-fuel combustion, mostly in coal-burning power plants, threatens a significant climate change…. A National Academy of Sciences report estimates that the resulting temperature increase and reduction in precipitation could diminish water supplies by almost forty percent in the Upper Colorado Region.

David Getches, Competing Demands for the Colorado River, University of Colorado Law Review, 1984

OK, that was a few weeks ago, but you get my point. People have been talking about this for a very long time.

Tags: Colorado River, water // 3 Comments »

New Mexico drought conditions forecast to improve

Tags: New Mexico, climate variability, water // Add Comment »

In light of yesterday’s mediapalooza about the new federal climate report (see my contributions here and here), there’s an interesting on-the-ground reality check today in the Denver Post:

Colorado’s peak flow from snowmelt hit a few weeks earlier than normal, causing problems for some recreational users of the state’s rivers and complicating downstream irrigation strategies.

A dozen late-winter windstorms coated high mountain snow with dust, causing the snow to melt earlier than usual. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Erin Curtis said the peak occurred in late May.

BLM is especially worried about flows on the Colorado River in the western part of the state, where the so-called flat water is running especially cold and fast, at a flow now about five times what it will be later this summer….
Water storage may also be an issue, said Andy Barrett of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder.

Tags: Colorado River, climate variability, water // Add Comment »