My friend Scot Key offered me double the rate they pay here at Inkstain (this is a joke, we are bloggers, we do it for “exposure”) so I’ve got a new post up over at his Better Burque. We mostly ride bikes and complain about how much this or that sucks, especially poorly designed and executed …
Continue reading ‘A new home for some stuff I write now and then’ »
One of my University of New Mexico Water Resources Program colleagues frequently points out what they call “green versus green issues” – environmental tradeoffs that are often under-examined because our environmental discourse focuses on one set of values without sufficiently incorporating other values. Today’s inbox missive: removing dams from the Snake River in the U.S. …
Continue reading ‘Green versus green: removing Snake River dams’ »
Apropos of nothing other than that Lissa asked and USDA Quickstats answered, turns out US hops acreage is at record levels in 2016:
Jay Lund (UC Davis) wrote an interesting piece this week offering some water management geographic comparisons – how does California stack to other geographically similar regions? This is an interesting approach, because a lot of water governance rhetoric is inward facing – we see our own problems, but don’t do a good enough job of …
Continue reading ‘Some points of comparison for California water’ »
Smart Faith Kearns on the headlines this week about the “discovery” of a bunch of groundwater beneath parched California: [O]n a symbolic level it’s really just fascinating how often we get caught up in stories being saved — by a good winter, a new dam, new water. I wish I didn’t find it so depressing. …
Continue reading ‘On California’s “new” groundwater and the hope for a savior’ »
Seems we’ve been at this for a while: update @jfleck it's tipping points all the way down — Brett Walton (@waltonwater) June 29, 2016
The dewpoint yesterday (Tues. June 28, 2016) passed a sort of vaguely science-based but somewhat arbitrary threshold for the start of the monsoon in Albuquerque – three consecutive days above 47F (8.3C): They’re partying in Tucson, too: It's official! The monsoon is here https://t.co/Aq14D9L3Aj via @tucsonstar — mike_crimmins (@mike_crimmins) June 28, 2016
The trick now is for the three U.S. states sharing the Colorado River’s water downstream of of Lake Mead – Nevada, Arizona, and California – to negotiate some sort of a deal that reduces their collective take on the river. That’s trick one. Trick two is for state negotiators to then sell the deal back …
Continue reading ‘The argument for California to make a Colorado River deal’ »
Lake Mead this evening is passing through a historic milestone – below elevation 1,072 feet above sea level for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s.