Water Pulse Hums Faintly
February 14th, 2008The Colorado River snowpack is above average, and it’s just the middle of February.
Nevertheless, some researchers at the Scripps Oceanography operation north of San Diego published a paper this week speculating that Lake Mead could run dry within a decade.
A Review Journal editorial splashed some cold water on our faces the next day:
these doomsday predictions are getting awfully tiresome. Environmentalists issue them for three reasons: to strike fear in the gullible, to raise money from their allies and to spur lawmakers and the courts to craft policies they agree with.
Predictions such as these virtually never come true. From Thomas Malthus in the 1798 to Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, the forecasters of famine, abandoned cities and desolated economies always look like fools in the end because they refuse to take into account the ingenuity and enterprise of the human race.
Lake Mead go dry? The federal government and the states that depend on the reservoir simply won’t let that happen. The stakes are too high. We’ll wager that all the farms in California’s Imperial Valley, which suck up the lion’s share of river water, will go fallow before Lake Mead does.
It’s almost expected that students with no life experience (such as those who wrote the Scripps paper) would not take politics into account. In the end, with two-thirds of the Colorado River going toward artificial farms in the desert, humanity won’t let Lake Mead go dry.
February 16th, 2008 at 9:01 am
You gotta scare people. People are only scared with short-term issues and tangible issues. That leaves out the true issues of Government theft of our productivity and endless debt that only shackles our children. Our congress is concerned more with steroids in our sports heroes and finding dirt on their “other party” opponents.
California politicians buy votes over there by allocating water form Lake Mead to their friends who bought cheap desert land and turned a profit by hijacking water from Lake Mead at the expense of other states (the allocation is 8 million acre feet for California and 300 thousand for Nevada). Where is Harry when you really need him?
We are also regaled by threats of asteroids hitting the Earth, global warming, global cooling, global warming causing global cooling, not getting “free stuff”, etc. Remember, Rome burned while Nero fiddled. Sound familiar?
We tear out our lawns and pay insane bills for water while rice fields in the California desert get all the water they want essentially free. All this while Harry spends all our capital vainly fighting against Yucca Mountain (at considerable cost to our citizens), defending casinos against McCain’s assault on their profits, and fighting third-grade school ground battles with “republicans”.
Do you want to worry about something? OK, here it is. China holds most of our T-bill paper with Saudi Arabia a close second. All it takes is for them to stop investing in T-Bills to ruin our economy because it is so dependent on the wealth of its citizens being laundered through D.C. (for a large handling fee, of course). How about our Government printing money to send to its citizens so the incumbents can keep their jobs. What if a T-bill sale goes bad? Has anyone ever thought about that? These are things to worry about if you like to worry, but, somehow, I do not think we are.
February 16th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
WATER is the issue. WATER!
With this being so, why is it that land previously set as ‘zoned for single dwelling, LIGHT, is now being re-zoned to accomodate CONDOS?
Who is ‘on the payroll of the developers?’ Why does our County Commission continue to allow this to be? Is their need for GRAFT MONEY greater that Las Vegas’ nweed for WATER?
Let’s get serious….very serious!
February 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I agree with the first poster. Where is Harry when you need him on a SERIOUS issue. We moved our factory from CA to NV 4 years ago. We immediately became aware of the conservation efforts in place much more so than in CA. They still water freeway landscape with rainbird sprinklers. Almost all homes have lawns. People wash down their driveways and cars. There is no real concern with conservation like there is in NV. Our representatives should go to battle to get the CA allocation significantly reduced. Instead of helping himself and his party attack the GOP, Harry R. should help our state!
February 25th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Harry ‘Hands Up’ Reid will only help if there is financial gain for him! The sooner we realize that, the better!