California Ag

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Aquafornia points to a piece about California water that has parallels here in New Mexico:

The future for agriculture rests on the availability of water. Plain and simple. Much has been written about the competition for water with the competing interests of farmers pitted against urbanites and food processors vying for water against other “sexier” industries. We’ve all seen it. What I have observed is that for most of this time there has at least been a case made in the public debate about water for the inherent, intrinsic value of agriculture to the community at large. Local officials and state decision makers usually can be counted on to understand the importance of agriculture and its role in the economy.

Europe Hotting Up

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It seems increasingly a waste of blog time to point out papers that show the planet’s warming. We already know that, right? So apologies for wasting your time, nothing really new to see here, move along. Today’s paper of the day comes from Paul Della-Marta and the University of Bern and colleagues:

[O]ver the period 1880 to 2005 the length of summer heat waves over western Europe has doubled and the frequency of hot days has almost tripled.

I’m being facetious, because this is an example of the sort of ongoing climate science research that has relevance beyond settling the unsettleable climate wars debates – giving folks at a regional scale useful information about their changing environment. From the AGU press release:

“These results add more evidence to the belief among climate scientists that western Europe will experience some of the highest environmental and social impacts of climate change and continue to experience devastating hot summers like the summer of 2003 more frequently in the future,” Della-Marta said.

On Democrats and Designated Hitters

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Never let it be said that political scientists shy away from the important questions:

Since its introduction in 1973, major league baseball’s designated hitter (DH) rule has been the subject of continuing controversy. Here, we investigate the political and socio–demographic determinants of public opinion toward theDHrule, using data from a nationwide poll conducted during September 1997. Our findings suggest that it is in fact Democrats, not Republicans, who tend to favor the DH. In addition, we find no effect for respondents’ proximity to American or National League teams, though older respondents were consistently more likely to oppose the rule.

(hat tip Andrew Gelman)

Daybook

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update:

  • word of the day: mesic – having a well-balanced supply of moisture

When Arroyos Run

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aerial photo of Albuquerque, date uncertainIt was pouring rain when I left the office this evening, so I took surface streets rather than the messy freeway. The concrete arroyo by my work was running high as I passed, so I started slowing and watching every time I went over one. They were raging and roiling and doing their best to remind me of a point I often miss living here in the city.

I was talking to a pal the other day who’d been looking at old aerial photographs of the city. She was describing the mental exercise of mapping the old landscape to the new. The included picture, courtesy of the University of New Mexico’s Earth Data Analysis Center, is worth a click through if you’re from Albuquerque and want to understand what she was talking about. I don’t know when it was taken (my guess is the 1930s). Up near the picture’s right-hand corner, right about under the “6”, is where my house is today.

The developed part of the picture is primarily the Rio Grande valley floor, and you can see all the old arroyos cutting their own way down from what is now the city’s eastern heights. Every one of those arroyos is now gone – in fact, the entire area visible in the picture is paved over save a strip along the river. But the water still has to go somewhere, so we’ve substituted a spiderweb of concrete arroyos for the old dirt ones. It’s a way of containing that which cannot be controlled.

Must’ve been something to see the water come down those arroyos back in the day.

Wim!

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From Sam Abt:

In a battle with no prize and slight prestige, Wim Vansevenant, a Belgian with Predictor, finished as the lanterne rouge, or last man in the pack, for the second successive year.

He thrashed his nearest rival, Geraint Thomas, a Briton with Barloworld, by six minutes with a sterling 134th place in the time trial on Saturday.

Monsoon Variability

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I got a note last week from a California resident thinking about moving to New Mexico. She had a lot of great questions, including wanting to know more about this “monsoon” thing. I tried to explain that it’s not a big massive raining all the time in all the places sort of thing. Here’s the data:

In Bernalillo County, where I live, we’ve got 16 volunteer weather stations that have reported in to the COCORAHS network every day this month. The mean/median (essentially the same) is 1.1 inch (28 mm). Half the reports fall between 0.7 and 1.4 inch (18 and 36 mm). Max: 2.1 inch (53 mm). Min: 0.4 inch (10 mm).

That’s the spatial variability that happens when one small storm cell after another rakes across town. Some hit the rain gauge. Some don’t.

The Value of Water in Alternative Uses

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I recently scored a fascinating volume at the used bookstore: “The Value of Water in Alternative Uses, With Special Application to Water Use in the San Juan and Rio Grande Basins of New Mexico.” Published in 1962, it’s the result of a study of the economics of various ways of allocating New Mexico’s water.Given that I’ve been writing about this of late, I was intrigued see what people were saying about it 45 years ago. The answer? Pretty much exactly what we’re saying today.

Within roughly one half of the United States – the area from the 100th meridian westward except for the Columbia River basin and adjacent coastal streams – a transfer of water demand from one point to another will have no effect on the over-all shortage, since the entire region’s projected demand for water is substantially greater than the region’s maximum regulated flow.

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Why Not Just Let ‘Em All Dope?

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If you’re in anyway following Le Tour, you’ve almost certainly had a conversation over the last week about whether it would make sense to just let ’em all dope. Joe Lindsey from Bicycling magazine has a thoughtful guest post over on the Freakonomics blog making a pretty persuasive case that it’s a bad idea. A couple of central points:

  • Good dope is expensive. If it were legalized, winning would favor, even more, the wealthiest competitors and teams.
  • The best dope, like the cows blood crap Rasmussen is accused of trying to smuggle out of the United States, is illegal for human use.
  • Lots of riders don’t want to dope. They’re already screwed under the current system, but if doping were legalized, they’d be really screwed.

And on a related note: below the fold, the Wikipedia list of cyclists who have “trained in Italy“. You might want to print out this list and keep it handy to compare with the riders on the podium tomorrow in Paris:
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