There seems to be a theme to the news this morning.
A drought-stricken Colorado river is drying up.
The water in Cañon City and northern El Paso County tastes foul.
And the future of the Colorado River? Well … we’re probably gonna have to wear shades, but it ain’t exactly looking bright.
No wonder the bears are coming down from the mountain to kick ass.
“All y’all are fuckin’ this shit up,” says Yogi.
“We’d eat you, if we thought it would help, but you don’t even taste good anymore,” adds Boo Boo. “Like cheap industrial lager and soda pop.”
“And B.O.,” says Yogi. “You using any of this water to take showers, or are you just soaking the lawn and washing the Suburban?”
Here in the Land of Entrapment the monsoon has been more of a non-soon, and when asked when we might expect some relief the answer is “Not soon.”
The administration’s drought map shows that 3% of New Mexico is in “severe drought,” namely Albuquerque, Santa Fe and parts of the northeastern corner of the state. About one-third of the state, predominantly in northern New Mexico, is suffering from “extreme drought,” the map shows.
The outlook notes that conditions are unlikely to improve over the next two weeks, with all but the northern and western edges of New Mexico facing 100% probabilities of above-average temperatures.
Meanwhile, my old stomping grounds around Española remain on fire.
I’d love to claim the moral high ground here. But I’m down here in the sandbox with the rest of the dummies. Part of the problem.
We have a lawn. Smaller than the one we got when we bought the house, at the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert. But still.
I drink two cups of coffee and one tall mug of tea every morning, plus a bottle or two of water on my bike rides, and more after I get home. There’s that daily shower too. Sometimes it’s jailhouse style, but occasionally I go full Hollywood.
I let God wash the car, when She’s of a mind to. Lately She’s not in the mood. Keeps sending us bears.
Mad Blog Media 
Jesus, what a cheery post to wake up to!
“…Udall said that the U.S. is totally failing to address the overall cause of the river’s decline. “There’s a whole bunch of scientific studies that suggest that this is very much human-caused,” Udall said. “It’s due to our greenhouse gas emissions and the warming of the earth right now.””
True, Brad, but to some degree, that answer misses the obvious. Ma Nature never invited 40-plus million of us to live in the desert, either. Especially with our lawns, alfalfa fields, pecans, golf courses, dairies, cotton fields, and other water hogs. We can keep blaming climate change (so stop buying cheap shit from China, you dummies, much of which is manufactured using….coal power), but part of climate change is 40 million of us living here and demanding what the river cannot provide.
Humans are fucking idiots. Brad wants to blame “climate change” because no one wants to mention the elephant in the room: we would likely be oversubscribing the river even without climate change, which is still in its infancy anyway.
Oh, and U.S. emissions have been in decline for the last couple decades (by almost 20%). In part because we have outsourced so much work to the rest of the world. I think China now emits about twice what the U.S. emits as the World’s Arsenal of Cheap Shit.
We all need to live a little more frugally. For example, forswearing that data center that will emit more CO2 than all of New Mexico’s largest cities. Sheesh…..how could we miss that?
Well, we can debate the data and who the bad guys are until the wells run dry.
That what the 7 states living on Colorado river water have done for decades. Politicians do the blame game every 2 years. China is the bad guy not us. Who moved much of US factory production to China? Corporations? Wally world? Cheap ass americans?
The Southwest drought conditions are well documented. Phoenix will be over 110 degrees for the next week. Climate change is accelerating. Weather patterns are quickly changing. A record breaking El Nino is occurring. Europe is on fire and in drought. By the way, the last 20% or so of aquifers are contaminated with heavy metals and other pollutants. So, are we crying wolf?
Nah, our nation is just greedy, ignorant, stupid, and lazy. And we are led to disaster by a fat dotard. Plus we have three other old delusional autocrats, plus a guy who thinks he is a god, with nuclear weapons.
Good morning Herb ole buddy. Is the bar open? I want to sanitize my mouth before I kiss my ass goodbye.
People are really good at voting against their own self interests, right? Wow, stuff is so cheap at Wally-Mart. But that job your Dad had forty years ago? Hmmm. Remember Larry before he had a falling out with this pickle barrel? Larry’s wife had a quip: “People are stupid”.
As far as climate and the N. American Southwest, we are in a very strong negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) cycle and it’s been negative for most of the last twenty years. That condition has in the instrumentally recorded past corresponded with drought in the Southwest.
I dicked around with this a while ago on my blog (below). Elephant Butte Lake filled up after the dam was built during a positive PDO cycle. Last time the PDO was on balance negative in the fifties through the seventies, Elephant Butte Lake was almost empty. Then the PDO sign flipped positive and Elephant Butte filled up and we were awash in rain for twenty years.
https://labikes.blogspot.com/2018/01/drought.html
The PDO is really strongly negative right now (updated NOAA chart here: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/pdo/ ). Ocean warming due to increased CO2 and atmospheric heat retention stored by the ocean is posited to drive the PDO persistently negative so that might explain our current dire situation–shades of past warm spells in the last two millenia. A while ago I read a paper that posited that the great southwest megadroughts around 1000 or so A.D. were caused by a solar maximum coupled to a volcanic emissions minimum which resulted in warmer climate and century long megadrought in these parts. So it doesn’t take much.
The North Atlantic Oscillation is less well understood, at least by me in my dotage, but some models predict these extreme variations in Europe climate will get worse as CO2 increases.
So the public needs to remember that each of those Amazon Trucks carting cheap shit from China, each new Chevy Exurban, each McMansion, each new subdivision in the middle of nowhere, and each new Data Center has an ultimate price. We always live at Ma Nature’s mercy. And when we fuck with Ma Nature, Ma can fuck back in spades. And she gets the last word.
Word, Khal. Ma Nature don’t need no stinking Viagra. She is ready, excuse me while I steal a Carlin riff, to shake us off the planet like a dog shakes off fleas.
But, Tucson has at least 50 years of water left, and the Raytheon plant there just got a $16B contract for more Tomahawk missiles. So, what am I whining about? To steal another riff, life’s been good to me so far. Except, I apologize to Andy and Liz every time we talk for what our generation has done to ruin their planet.
I’m wondering what happens to the Rio Not So Grande when the gusher from the Colorado River diversion is reduced to a trickle. Already, as I think O’G noted here, some of the Bosque is dying back in Albuquerque because not only is the river dry, but apparently the water table has sunk too deep to support the vegetation. Talk about the canary in the coal mine….
We didn’t have kids, so when we check out, it is with No Child Left Behind. No American kids from us demanding more than the environment can provide.
Not having kids was probably the best thing we could’ve done for Mama Earth.
And for ourselves, too. Herself would’ve made a great mom. But me as El Daddy-o? Of one or more critters that’s half me? Lord, lord, that’s an uphill pull with the brakes locked.
Mother Times has a squint at the Central Arizona Project. A real “Duh” moment comes from the mayor of Cave Creek, who spake thusly:
“The biggest thing for people to overcome is the idea of unlimited, cheap water.”
On an unrelated note, I wish the NYT would throttle back its gratuitous use of pipe-clogging video throughout its website. Not everybody is hooked up to the Bigger and Better Infobahn. Some of us are still putt-putting along the unpaved back roads in our rusty ol’ flivvers.
“They are threatening to shut down the Southwest,” said Brenda Burman, the (Central Arizona) project’s general manager. “It’s not possible to picture it.”
Oh, yes it is. Picture this: Chaco Canyon…Mesa Verde…Bandelier…
Nature just landed another hard left jab. Got that right cocked and ready to come over the top.
https://perimetermap.com/washoe
Yikes. I have a couple old pals who live up thataway. Been through the Reno-Tahoe-Truckee area a ton of times. As I recall Santa Fe-based BTI has a West Coast distribution in Sparks.
Here’s the InciWeb report. Nothing but bad news.