Smart words from Phil Isenberg, California’s water sage: [O]ur historic population and economic growth—and the social and individual choices we have made—explain the water and environmental problems we face today. Unless we acknowledge that water supplies are limited, and act to temper our water use, we will limp toward the next drought, and act surprised when …
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For the latest “Ask me a Colorado River question,” a friend of Inkstain wonders: Q: Can you move water from one Colorado River Basin state to another? A: No. OK, this is the Law of the River, so of course it’s more complicated than that, with numerous edge case exceptions, but basically, no, you can’t …
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You showed such promise, El Niño, but this is simply unacceptable: The chance of a strong El Niño is not favored in any of the ensemble averages for Niño-3.4. At this time, the forecasters anticipate El Niño will peak at weak-to-moderate strength during the late fall and early winter….
From this morning’s newspaper, a column about a day with a research team studying the Cooper’s hawks that are making an increasingly comfortable living around my city: Cooper’s hawks are primarily woodland birds, and we have built an expansive urban forest across the Northeast Heights. The urban neighborhoods on the east side of the river …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere – the Cooper’s hawks of Albuquerque’ »
update: With the latest hourly reading, the elevation of Lake Mead has dropped to 1,081.84 feet above sea level, the lowest it has been since the reservoir was being filled in the 1930s: Previously: Last night at midnight, the surface elevation of Lake Mead dropped to 1,081.89 feet above sea level, half an inch above …
Continue reading ‘Lake Mead at 1,081.89 feet above sea level and dropping: Is this unprecedented?’ »
California state senator Darrel Steinberg on the California water bond: In the water world, you can’t always get everything you want, but there’s a whole lot in this bond that California needs. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on (I think) taking a lot of drugs and getting laid: You can’t always get what you want …
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Helen Ingram and colleagues on a few necessary conditions for a good solution to water management issues: Good policy design contributes to three key public needs: progress in problem solving that will make tomorrow’s challenges easier than today’s; representation of sufficient interests, so that the policy has a positive balance of support and is politically …
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It’s monsoon season here in New Mexico, which means thunderstorms popping up here and there and, one hopes, everywhere around the state. In my blog stats, I notice that around this time of year I frequently get traffic for people searching for things like “how much rain did Albuquerque get today”. I’m writing this as …
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There are many things that represent the profound, ambiguous complexity that is the United States of America – full of ambitious arrogance, profound success and the inevitable clumsiness when power combines with unintended consequences. Hoover Dam is one of them.
[View the story “California drought” on Storify]