This water crisis is fulminating faster than most folks realize. A train wreck in the making in the Southwest.
Below, for review, experts fleshed out the causes and expectations for drought in my recent vid.
Month: July 2022
Can We 3-D Print a Steak?
Update on Lab-produced meat.
Progress ongoing. Could be a while.
Below, reminder – Land use map of the US shows the acreage currently going into cattle production.
In the West, Water’s for Fightin’. So’s Money.
Good update on the Great Salt Lake crisis in Utah above. The lake is drying up, and threatens to toxify the area. ABC does a better job of featuring the impact on wildlife than others I’ve seen.
They also mention to proposed solution of piping water across the mountains from the Pacific to replenish the lake, one of a growing list of “adaptations” to climate change that, obviously, all taxpayers across the country would have to kick in on. Other examples would be the proposed “Ike Dike”, a 30 billion dollar proposal for a series of locks and sea walls to protect South Texas from increasingly violent storms and a rising ocean.
In another part of the west, Palm Springs, where over 100 golf courses exist in a historic desert, there’s talk of pumping water from the midwest to prop up a profligate lifestyle, and it’s sparked a lively conversation in the local paper.
In response to the various letters on pumping water from the Mississippi River to the West:As an engineer, I believe a large pipeline from near the mouth of the Mississippi would be expensive, but sustainable. A month of average flow from the Mississippi would fill every empty reservoir on the Colorado River.
A smaller and less expensive system would use the existing reservoirs and hydroelectric dams on the rivers that cross Midwest on their way to the Mississippi. Install pumps at each reservoir that pump water up to the one above it. At the most upstream reservoir, pump it up over the Rockies to the Colorado River. This last leg would require the construction of a pipeline of 200 miles from eastern Colorado to western Colorado and an elevation change of only a few thousand feet.
What is clear is that the West is dry, and we need solutions that ensure we will have the water we need not only in 2023, but in 2300. The current reservoir system has served the West for over 100 years, but the lack of planning and forethought for a sustainable future is obviously an error. There are too many plausible solutions to endure mandatory conservation.
David B. Clark, Las Vegas
I live in Red Wing, Minnesota. Recently I have noticed several letters to the editor in your publication that promoted taking water from the Mississippi River or the Great Lakes and diverting it to California via pipeline or aqueduct.
I will save you some time by informing you that it is not going to happen because the local citizenry here doesn’t want you to have that water. There are very, very many people living along the Mississippi River and around the Great Lakes that really, really don’t like California or Californians.
Californians should remember their own history, namely the Owens Valley water wars when valley farmers dynamited an aqueduct that was stealing their water and draining into the sewer that is Los Angeles.
We have plenty of dynamite in Minnesota. My advice to you is: Don’t Californicate the upper Midwest.
Paul Cofell, Red Wing, Minnesota
Continue reading “In the West, Water’s for Fightin’. So’s Money.”I’ve seen different letters on the topic of getting Mississippi River water for westerners. Why don’t you get the water from the ocean? It’s a lot closer. I know they can convert water from salt to drinking water. By doing so, it would be a lot better since global warming is happening and oceans are rising — this may help the coastlines from flooding! If we send men to the moon, we can do this too.
I work on the Mississippi River on a boat that pushes barges up and down the river for exports and imports. The people that live all along this river and the rest of the country needs this river. Farmers need to get the harvest to export. If you pump the river, it wouldn’t last long, for all the barges that do the transporting could be halted. Then we would have another disaster on hand — a big one!
I don’t know who comes up with these ideas, but they are crazy. Use the ocean water, convert it, and save the shores from global warming!
Joey Peterson, Oquawka, Illinois
“Don’t Look Up” in Real Life
I’m going to try to find the original source for this.
For now, a synopsis.
The maximum temperature reached Tuesday in Coningsby, England — 130 miles north of London — was unlike anything the village had ever observed. It was an outlier in the truest sense: about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above the previous highest temperature.
Continue reading ““Don’t Look Up” in Real Life”That high temperature, 104.5 degrees (40.3 Celsius), shattered the national temperature record for Britain by a lofty 2.9 degrees (1.6 Celsius).
Ordinarily, when temperature records are broken during heat waves, they do so in a few places and by fractional degrees. But on Tuesday, records in the United Kingdom toppled over a vast area and by enormous margins.
The magnitude and extent of Tuesday’s temperatures underscored the exceptional nature of this extreme event — which scientists say would have been impossible without a boost from human-caused climate change.
Pat Michaels was to Climate Denial like Classic is to Coke
Above, somewhat of a profile of Pat Michael’s activities in support of fossil fuel misinformation. Includes the famous “beat down” administerered by Ben Santer when Dr MIchaels presented boilerplate denial talking points to a congressional committee.
Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who became a lightning rod in debates around climate change, reviled by activists and revered among skeptics for using his academic pedigree to challenge the broad scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of global warming, died July 15 at his home in Washington. He was 72.
His family confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.
Dr. Michaels, who spent decades as a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and as Virginia’s state climatologist, was one of the most prominent contrarian voices in political and policy discussions surrounding climate change.
He did not dispute the rising temperatures widely documented around the planet, nor did he deny a human role in the phenomenon. “I believe in climate change caused by human beings,” he told The Washington Post in 2006. “What I’m skeptical about is the glib notion that it means the end of the world as we know it.”
Below, a deeper cut – one of my videos from 2009 features vid from Michaels presentation at a Heartland Institute conference on the topic of “No warming since 1998”. (to his credit, he cautioned that audience on that talking point).
IEA: Europe Vulnerable to Russia’s Gas War
Description from Deutsche Welle:
The International Energy Agency warns that the EU’s efforts to end its reliance on Russian gas are simply not enough. The agency says the bloc is set to have insufficient gas supplies to see it through winter, if Russia turns off the taps. The message from the IEA came just as Russia’s Gazprom reportedly sent a letter to European importers declaring “force majeure” on deliveries down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany. The state gas producer said “extraordinary circumstances” meant the resumption of flows was beyond its control. Germany’s government says it’s now considering whether to extend the life of its three remaining nuclear power plants to alleviate the looming crisis. Meanwhile, the EU signed an agreement with Azerbaijan on Monday to double gas imports to Europe in the coming years.
In 2021, Russia sent 155 billion cubic meters of natural gas to the European Union. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline alone has the capacity to send 55 BCMs in a year. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan sent a total of 8 billion cubic meters to the EU last year. Under the deal, it is now expected to deliver still only 12 billion this year. So that wouldn’t even come close to replacing flows down Nord Stream 1, let alone Russia as a whole. Is the prospect of Russia stopping all supplies to the EU by the winter a realistic one?
Germany Solar Sets New Record, While French Nuclear Gasps in Heat
Germany produced a record amount of electricity from solar on Sunday and is set to exceed that again on Tuesday as a heat wave grips Europe.
About 38,174 megawatts were generated from solar panels on Sunday and high levels are expected through Wednesday. A fresh record is possible on Tuesday, with a maximum 38,287 megawatts forecast.
A brutal heat wave is moving into western Europe, baking many areas. Temperatures are set to peak on Tuesday and Wednesday in Germany as the heat begins to ease elsewhere, according to state forecaster DWD. The extreme temperatures are sparking wildfires in Spain, France and Greece.
“Historic heat is forecast to take hold of parts of western Europe this week, where all-time record high temperatures could be recorded,” Maxar Technologies LLC said in a report.
The UK may see the highest temperatures ever recorded, with forecasts at London’s Heathrow of 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit) on Monday and 40 degrees on Tuesday. It will hit 42 Celsius in Nantes, France on Monday, also a new record. Paris will have a high of 39 Celsius Monday and 40 degrees on Tuesday, according to Maxar.
German day-ahead power rose to 397.09 euros ($403.21) a megawatt-hour, the highest since March, on Epex Spot SE. Power supplies are short as warm air reduces wind generation, leaving solar to make up the shortfall.
Electricite de France SA’s nuclear-output cuts are expected to stretch into next week as a heat wave sweeping across Europe pushes up river temperatures, restricting EDF’s ability to cool its plants.
Continue reading “Germany Solar Sets New Record, While French Nuclear Gasps in Heat”The French utility said that two power stations on the Rhone River will produce less electricity in the coming days, adding to cutbacks at another plant caused by rising temperatures on the Garonne.
In Texas Heat Wave, Solar Shines
Continue reading “In Texas Heat Wave, Solar Shines”On Monday the good people of Texas, many still suffering from lingering trauma as a result of the February 2021 failure of the state’s power grid, braced for bad news. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the much-maligned entity that manages Texas’s famously independent grid, warned that the situation was dire because of “a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available.” If things got worse, rolling blackouts might be needed. Not great!
Fortunately, the worst didn’t happen. There are a few reasons why. To reduce demand, many Texans turned up the thermostat by a few degrees to help save power, and ERCOT’s emergency response program paid some large energy customers to scale back usage during peak times. And significantly, solar power, which has been the star of the Texas grid so far during this interminable summer, continued to set records for energy production. If your air conditioner has been steadily running all summer long, you can thank the mighty power of the sun.
“We’ve got twice the solar we had last summer, and something like three times what we had eighteen months ago,” energy consultant Doug Lewin told me on Monday. “We actually set another solar record today, and we set one yesterday. Renewables throughout most of May and June, as we’ve been experiencing extreme heat, really were the difference between [having] a whole lot of conservation calls and potential rolling outages and not having them.”
“The Runway has Melted”
I’ve posted recently about how, in Greenland, global heating is melting the permafrost and compromising airport runways.
In the UK today today, the heat is just plain melting the runways.
Michael Mann on “Reaping what we’ve sown”
