In the midst of reading Nate Silver’s book, I felt like I ought to say something nuanced about the seasonal forecast that came out this morning: In this morning’s briefing, the forecasters were careful to explain that they’re not making predictions here, but rather forecasting odds – “probabilistic” in the jargon: “These impacts are not …
Here in the arid West, land of the pioneer spirit and the rugged individual, we have a longstanding tradition of sticking someone else with the bill for our water projects. The carefully constructed edifice that is Law of the (Colorado) River is complex set of legal and institutional deals among the basin’s water users built …
Regional water planning, it turns out, is the first step toward One World Government: The Integrated Regional Water Management Plan may sound harmless, but it is part of this “regionalization” program. Control of water on rural lands will transfer from landowners to government control agents or “water masters,” who will begin their work imposing limits …
At the risk of a “dog bits man” blog post, yet another analysis has concluded that droughts in the southwestern United States are likely to be worse, and rivers drier, as a result of rising greenhouse gases. This time, it’s the Verde in Arizona, part of the watershed that feeds the greater Phoenix area: Results …
Continue reading ‘Another look at increasing aridity under climate change in the West’ »
One of the problems with droughts is that, eventually, they end. That is by definition, because “drought” is the dry part of the range of variability for a given place. When you’re in one, the marginal value of water (and therefore marginal cost you’re willing to pay) is high. When you come out of it? …
Continue reading ‘Coping with drought – a question of marginal costs’ »
The typical “out with the old” etc. celebrations don’t have much resonance as New Mexico stares down a new water year. From the morning paper: New Mexico faces three problems in the new water year. The first problem is the winter forecast itself. There were signs of an El Niño forming, a climate pattern driven …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Happy New Water Year!’ »
Political news, and especially the important news that really affects the campaign, proceeds at an irregular pace. But news coverage is produced every day. Most of it is filler, packaged in the form of stories that are designed to obscure its unimportance. Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise.
Lauren Morello at E&E has a fascinating piece about research into the views of US farmers regarding climate change: “Most of the farmers will admit that climate change is happening,” he said of the growers he advises in western Kentucky, on the Corn Belt’s eastern fringe. “What they don’t want to hear is that it’s …
We love to predict things – and we aren’t very good at it. Nate Silver, in The Signal and the Noise.
From the Wall Street Journal (full piece $$$-walled): In 2012, the drought-stricken Western United States will ship more than 50 billion gallons of water to China. This water will leave the country embedded in alfalfa—most of it grown in California—and is destined to feed Chinese cows. ht DG