Lorri Gray-Lee, who has headed the Bureau of Reclamation’s Boulder City office (the folks with that big dam) is heading to the Pacific Northwest, and Terry Fulp, her deputy, is stepping in as acting chief. This is one of the Bureau’s more important jobs, herding the Lower Colorado cats. Not exactly herding, even. Cajoling. Persuading. …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: Gray-Lee moves on, Fulp steps in’ »
I am not an expert in branding. So I do not know whether renaming the iconic Very Large Array is a good idea. What I do know is that when the idea was proposed, hilarity ensued. I do know that covering this story will be fun for months to come: Proposals will be accepted via …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: renaming the VLA’ »
Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute has clearly not thought terribly hard about the use of science in supporting policy decisions. If he had, he would not have said this (the subject is climate science, but you can substitute anything you want here): The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, …
Continue reading ‘A remarkable bit of science policy ignorance’ »
Alex Breitler has done us all a useful service, not only debunking the Not Twain “Whiskey’s for drinkin’” quote but also pinning down, via Barbara Schmidt, where it first got attached to Twain: She believes, based on a Google Books search, that the quote probably was first attributed to Twain in the 1960s.
I had occasion this evening to revisit “Sensitivity of Streamflow in the Colorado Basin to Climatic Changes,” by Linda Nash and Peter Gleick, circa 1991: Water availability, quality, and demand may be affected by higher temperatures, new precipitation patterns, rising sea level, and changes in storm frequency and intensity. Water supply and water management in …
You thought I was kidding about building pyramids. No, not for a minute. I am deadly serious, and I have an ally:
I’ve become entranced with “Stein’s Law” as an alternative to the faux Twain “water’s for fightin’ over” as a cliche to help guide water policy rhetoric: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. The draining of Bonny Reservoir in eastern Colorado to comply with the terms of the Republican River Compact – such …
It’s that time of year when a water wonk’s thoughts turn to the hills, to the romance of the beginnings of a winter snowpack’s accumulation. But there is a problem every year at this time – soil moisture. In particular, a lack of data about soil moisture. This matters come spring, when things start to …
On the subject of the problem of declining revenue from water conservation, there is this, from the February 2009 10-k filed by American Water Works, a private water utility, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: Increased water conservation, including through the use of more efficient household fixtures and appliances among residential consumers, combined with …
Continue reading ‘The conservation-revenue dilemma, private sector edition’ »
Lissa and I are in St. Louis, a wet place. I know it is a wet place because there is no dirt. Or, more specifically, there is no bare dirt. Something’s growing everywhere, the result of 38 inches (97 cm) precipitation per year. I’m always struck by that when I visit a wet place. While …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: more on our forests burning’ »