“We have a cool, pleasant ride today…”
My new favorite Twitter feed is @jwesleypowell, who is tweeting his trip down the Colorado River into the great unknown: Soon after dinner, we discover the mouth of the San Juan, where we camp. The tweets are drawn from the publicly published version of John Wesley Powell’s journals, which is a ripping good read. But [...]
Earth, air, fire and water
I tried my best while I was out riding this morning to get a picture that shows the strange discomfort flowing past in the Rio Grande and the irrigation ditches that flank the river as it passes through town. Need words to help – the water at this spot, on one of the ditches in [...]
Drought – An Update
For grins, I just checked the latest climate data for Baton Rouge, which is in the grip of a fierce drought. July’s been a decent month for them. Still below normal, but better than it has been. From July 12-14, they got 2.84 inches of rain. It’s the last day of the month, so I [...]
The Ag Irrigation Conservation Paradox
Ever surprising. Although increased irrigation efficiency is one of the most widely promoted solutions to increased water demand, its actual effects on the water balance are complex and even paradoxical. The cost to farmers of delivered irrigation water is minimal, meaning that there is little benefit from installing expensive water-conservation technology in terms of reducing [...]
You Can’t Make Up Shit This Good
Nora, over at Escape Pod, captures something remarkable about the Manhattan Project: [T]he more I learn about the Manhattan Project the more it feels like a fabricated story. Oppenheimer is said to be the father of the atomic bomb, but really he’s just the only person in the world that rolled high enough Intelligence, Wisdom [...]
Sierras and the Colorado Basin: We’re All In This Together
A reminder that Northern California’s water problems and the Colorado Basin’s are linked, in this new paper by Paul Miller and Thomas Piechota on snowpack around the West. Miller and Piechota focus primarily on Colorado Basin snowpack (which as we know is declining) but note the relevance of the Sierra Nevada as well: Decreasing snowpack [...]
Rainwater Harvesting in New Mexico
Is it legal in New Mexico to catch the rain that falls on my roof and put it in a barrel for later use? Kinda. Sorta. Maybe? I love this question, which I’ve written about in the newspaper (sub/ad req) in the past, and which came up last week when I was talking to the [...]
Elephant Diaries: The Revenue Problem
Heartbreaking words by Josh Brodesky inside the Arizona Daily Star newsroom last week as another round of layoffs came: The cuts filled the newsroom with an eerie stillness accented only by tears and typing. The next day’s paper still had to be put out. I think most staffers knew a day like Thursday would come, [...]
No Living With Me Now
Maggie Koerth-Baker in BoingBoing yesterday: In reality, global cooling was never a broadly accepted Theory. It’s reasonable to assume that a good chunk of Americans never heard about it at all. And global cooling never had the support of most climate scientists, let alone scientists in other disciplines, like biology and public health, which [...]
Worst since the Dust Bowl?
In this epic dry year, we’ve heard a lot of “worst since the Dust Bowl” comparisons. I’ve been arguing that it’s a bogus comparison – one horribly dry year against a decadal scale phenomenon. But there’s a second reason, nicely captured by Kevin Welch today in the Amarillo Globe-News: Farming practices imported from the Midwest [...]
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