I wrote a piece in Sunday’s newspaper about new work by Ben Cook at NASA Goddard and his colleagues about the role of dust in the Dust Bowl drought. As the name implies, we knew the Dust Bowl was dusty. The new bit here is a much more clear understanding of the role of dust …
That I can sit here in the comfort of my own home, idly curious about irrigation in California’s Imperial Valley, and look up the 1950 Census of Agriculture’s California county-by-county data. 503,686 Q: How has irrigation in California’s Imperial Valley changed over the years? A: Great question, John! In 1950, there were 532,543 acres under …
Continue reading ‘What I Love About the Internet, Episode XIV’ »
stuff I wrote elsewhere
According to Fred Pearce, ((When the Rivers Run Dry)) 130 gallons of water are required to grow a pound of wheat.
California’s snowpack is collapsing, according to the LA Times: California communities face a strong possibility of water shortages and even mandatory rationing this summer because of record dry weather in March and April, a fast-shrinking snowpack and below-normal reservoir levels, state officials said Thursday. (via Aquafornia)
Nice piece in the New Mexico Independent today by Joel Gay about desalination as a source of water here in New Mexico: Coastal communities have been taking the salt out of seawater for years, but inland cities are starting to join them out of need. El Paso was in danger of exhausting its aquifer when …
Australians seem to want to confront the inevitable conflict between ag and urban water use by buying out the farmers: Australia’s government promised Tuesday to spend about $2.9 billion to buy river water from farmers in a bid to address the country’s worst drought in a century…. But a mayor in the farming district targeted …
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provided my introduction to the strange world of western water, so I was intrigued by the findings outlined here, in the introduction to David Zetland’s thesis: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET), a cooperative of retail and wholesale water utilities, serves 18 million people. This case …
overbanking on the Rio Grande
Given David Roberts’ apparent conversion to the view that simply everyone who matters in the climate change community agrees that the need to adjust to the problems being caused by climate change (“adapt”, in the lingo) shares equal importance with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (“mitigate”), I thought a scorecard of Gristmill’s coverage …