Colorado River at 13 Percent. Western Drought is a Crisis

Description:

About 70% of the American West is in a drought. Cities are telling residents to cut their water usage, farmers are abandoning their crops, and local officials are asking how much water is left for the millions upon millions of people who need it.

Colorado Sun:

Lake Powell, one of the Colorado River’s most important reservoirs, is set to receive 13% of its normal spring runoff, the lowest amount from upstream snowmelt on record, according to a federal forecast Thursday.

The reservoir, located on the Utah-Arizona border, helps pace the flow of water to millions of people, multibillion-dollar industries, hydropower facilities and protected environments in the immense Colorado River Basin. It is also in dire straits: As of Thursday, it held 23% of its capacity. It’s months away from extremely low water levels that would halt hydropower generation at Glen Canyon Dam. 

The expected record-low inflows won’t help. 

If the forecast is accurate, “it would be the lowest April through July volume on record for Lake Powell,” Cody Moser, a forecaster with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, said during a webinar Thursday.

The federal Colorado Basin River Forecast Center tracks conditions in the basin and prepares forecasts used by the federal government to determine how the water for 40 million people in the West should be managed.

Since Oct. 1, about 408,000 acre-feet of water has reached the reservoir. That includes water from the sudden snowmelt triggered by a record-breaking heat wave in March, Moser said.

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How Batteries, Wind and Solar are Pushing Gas out in California

I used this graph in a presentation this week.
It’s a demonstration of what cheap batteries are doing, and why the gas magnates are so freaked out about the energy transition.

Two days, separated by 5 years of battery deployment, are represented here. What you can see is that in 2021, while a considerable amount of solar was being generated, there was an issue at sundown, during the part of the day when workers come home and fire up appliances, AC and the like, when fast ramping gas generators had to come online and bridge the gap between falling solar generation and peaking demand.
Fast forward to this year, and look what batteries, and increased imports of wind energy, have done to that ramping period, and gas demand in general.
You can understand why fracking baron and Energy Secretary Chris Wright is doing his best to sabotage clean energy.

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:

Natural gas’ share of electricity generation in the market run by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) fell to a record low on May 16, dropping to just 3.1% of total generation. That day was not an outlier either; from May 13-17, gas’ share of daily CAISO output was less than 10%.

May is a relatively low-demand period in CAISO, which accounts for about 80% of the California electricity market. But comparing 2026 generation data through May 15 with previous years (2021and 2025) shows that the state’s long-running efforts to cut its reliance on gas-fired generation are paying off. California eliminated in-state coal generation more than a decade ago; a power plant in Utah supplying Los Angeles ended its coal use late last year.

In 2021, gas’ generation share never fell below 20% and was 40% or higher on 99 of those 135 days. In 2025, the number of high-market-share days (more than 40%) dropped sharply, to 56, but gas’ minimum daily share still never fell below 20%. This year has been a different story. There have been 68 days already when gas’ market share fell below 20%, and there has not been a single day when gas accounted for more than 50% of CAISO generation.

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The Republican Reset on Solar

Interview with Heather Reams, President and CEO of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a clean energy group aimed at Republicans.

Exact Solar on Substack:

What’s New: 

Four GOP House members have introduced the American Energy Dominance Act, a bill designed to revive renewable energy and efficiency tax incentives that were phased out by 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

Why it matters:

The OBBBA’s jarring rollback of federal tax credits created market uncertainty in clean energy industries, stalled projects across the country, and forced almost $35 billion in in-progress projects to be cancelled. 

Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, Max Miller, and Mike Carey partnered with North America’s Building Trades Unions to draft the legislation.

The bill removes accelerated expiration dates for commercial solar, clean hydrogen, and building efficiency tax credits to secure domestic supply chains and protect union jobs.

Unfortunately, the bill does nothing to extend or reinstate 25D, the tax credit for residential solar installations.
–
Unlikely this effort will succeed, but an election is coming.

Townhall:

As energy demand grows and costs continue to climb, many red states are adopting solar and energy storage as a practical way to lower utility costs and boost domestic manufacturing.

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Are We Screw (Wormed)?

“A challenge we thought we had beaten in the 1960s.”

Yeah, sort of like Measles, you dolt.

Weather Channel:

A flesh-eating New World screwworm was confirmed in a calf in Texas this week, news that could seriously damage the U.S. livestock industry and raise already high beef prices.

The parasitic larvae of the screwworm fly typically enter an animal through an open wound and feed on their flesh, eventually killing the animal if left untreated, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is rare for people to contract screwworm, and they do not pose any food safety issues.

Weather and climate have kept screwworms from entering the U.S., but climate change is extending its range northward, according to the National Institutes of Health. Warmer climates would also increase cattle tick populations and their range, which would also increase the outbreak potential for screwworm.

The parasite’s presence in the U.S. could be the result of a warming climate. Screwworms are cold-sensitive — they can’t survive unless low temperatures are regularly above freezing, year-round, according to Drovers, the oldest livestock publication in the U.S. Ideal conditions for adult flies are temperatures between 77 and 86, with relative humidity between 30-70%.

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Trump Admin Moves to Dismantle Key Ocean Sensor System

They hate knowledge. They promote ignorance.
The whole premise of science is that there are facts – facts and physics that are not amenable to human whims. Nature does not respond to the Republican Party Platform.
Authoritarians find this threatening – they cannot mold science with a tweet.

New York Times:

The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.

The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.

Scientists have used data from the system to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how changes in ocean temperature such as marine heat waves might affect fisheries or signal bigger shifts in the climate, and coastal flooding along the East Coast.

Administration’s explanation for removing key ocean sensing system
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