Dallas now must import water from East Texas due to explosive population growth.
If you think the 1930s drought that caused The Dust Bowl was rough, new research looking at tree rings in the Rocky Mountains has news for you: Things can get much worse in the West. In fact the worst drought of this century barely makes the top 10 of a study that extended Utah's climate record back to the year 1429.
YEP, the dust bowl era [long term drought] was a naturally occurring phenomenon exacerbated by the habits of man.
ReplyDeleteBut not caused by man.
Drought of a much worse nature occurring right now in New Mexico, part of a hundred year drought cycle, reduced rainfall.
And not manmade.
That Los Angeles area under natural circumstances is desert land.
ReplyDeleteONLY able to sustain the population by bringing water from extraordinary distance.
That aqueduct system of Californian of wonder of mankind.
But minus that water and those 20 million or so persons in the LA area high and dry and would have to move somewhere else.
For most of the west, this just means water becomes more expensive. Desalination is cheap enough now that we can rely on it for drinking and bathing. Lawns? Only for the wealthy.
ReplyDeleteIsrael has really pushed the desalination technology (and snowmaking too as a spin-off).
Where this is BIG is in agriculture. CA's Central Valley for example grows a majority of our fresh veggies in the USA. And CA is too far for a pipeline to the Great Lakes even if there weren't an agreement among the Great Lake States not to sell water. Texas also has a lot of Ag and has drained their aquifer. Colorado is already using up most of their snowmelt leaving little downstream for Ag use.
I'm not sure that folks outside the West realize just how much of it is arid. Basically from Eastern Washington all the way down to the Mexican border is dry. And it extends from the Rockies East well into Kansas. We could see some major increases in cost across all fresh veggies and into commodities especially with so much corn govt mandated for ethanol.
Stan d Mute