Did you hear that Lake Mead will have NO USABLE water in only 6 years? How much PROOF do the 'deniers' want?

Question

http://www.livescience.com/environment/080212-dry-lake-mead.html

and something else to think about...

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm

Answer 1

ouch....  good luck to mankind.

Answer 2

Denial is the way people deal with fear-ask any psychologist/psychiatrist

I believe doubters feel they have no control over this situation and laugh it off

Answer 3

Here's what Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has to say about it:

"Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. 'There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,' Chu said, 'and that’s in the best scenario.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazi...

Of course Lake Mead will be drained to the point of being unusable.  The cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego can simply use bottled water, right?  For their showers, lawns, toilets...  

So many people have no clue how quickly the current warming (including shinking snowpack) is going to hit their lives.

Consider what happens to real estate values in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Tucson and San Diego when it becomes crystal clear that this is a permanent, long term trend.  And the stock market is worried about a slight ding in Citibanlk's profits due to a few shaky subprime loans in Stockton?  What a joke.  

Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Tucson... how many tens of millions of people will have their life savings wiped out?  Denver won't fare much better in the long run (they rely on the same snowpack), but the State of Colorado has better water rights to Colorado River water, so their moves to exercise those rights will protect them short term while accelerating the draw-down of the reservoirs downstream.  Northern California will be hit as well as Los Angeles sucks water south.

Water conservation will help for a while: ban lawns, etc, but we can't stop the long term trend without far more dramatic moves to cut carbon emissions (and China has to be involved... good luck).  Food costs may skyrocket as cities buy water rights from agriculture and food production goes down.

When water becomes too expensive, to discourage waste we'll all install outhouses in our back yards, we'll reuse bath water (from our biweekly baths), and showers will be a rare and very expensive luxury.  Welcome to Senator Inhofe's new world, coutesy of decades of oil industry propaganda, denial and inaction.

Some people will continue to be in denial of course, right up until the day that their tap runs dry.  They couldn't possibly accept responsibility for their own inaction.  Eventually refugees who can't afford their escalating water bills will move from Los Angeles to Denver to Atlanta then to wherever water remains, sucking aquifers dry along the way.  The trends are all clear by now.  Exactly what magical force do deniers think is going to prevent this?  (If we all just close our eyes, the scary monster will go away?)

The U.S. has a small problem compared to India, where the glacial source of the Ganges could be gone at some point in the 2030s.  China will stop the flow of rivers going to Southeast Asia (they're building the dams now), and 2.4 billion people in asia (nearly half the world's population), many in countries with nuclear weapons, could find themselves in a life or death struggle for water.

Tell me that scenario, at the same time as real estate values in the Colorado Basin and other drought-hit areas of the U.S. fall to near zero, isn't going to seriously challenge world economies (even the underlying currency systems).  What magical force pulls us out of the downward spin?

Edit -

I love the responses talking about the Medeival Warm Period.  The planet supported what population at that time, 350 million?  So about 6 billion of today's population must die to return to that state?  The deniers are alarmists!  The economic basis was what... debts were paid in what, chickens?  Have you converted your paper wealth to chickens?  You're prepared to put "The MWP was warmer" on your tombstone, aren't you?  I'll make sure it gets there.

http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/changes/...

"Thus the brief 100 years of historical streamflow measurements of the Colorado River have been wetter than most of the 400 years studied with tree rings."

Call 100 years of records a weather event if it pleases you, water in the Colorado River is grossly overallocated.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/...

"The Colorado River Basin includes seven states: parts of California, the nation's biggest farm producer; Wyoming, and five of the 12 fastest-growing states: Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.

Until now, water needs have been met by selling or leasing water rights from farms to cities. As population growth demands more of a shrinking water supply, battles could erupt over dwindling farm land and rural landscapes drying up. Some farm production might have to shift elsewhere because of urban growth."

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/

"The period 1905-1922, which was used to estimate water production allocated under the Colorado River Compact, had the highest long-term annual flow volume in the 20th century, averaging 16.1 MAF at Lee’s Ferry. The highest annual flow volume occurred in 1984 (22.2 MAF), and the highest 3-year average is 20.3 MAF for the period 1983-1985. The lowest annual flow volume is 3.8 MAF in 2002, followed by 3.9 MAF in 1934 and  4.8 MAF in 1977. In the Lee’s Ferry record, which does not account for consumptive use upstream, flow in the early 21st century is the lowest in more than 100 years of observations, averaging only 5.4 MAF during the 3-year period 2001-2003. The lowest previous 3-year average flows were  7.3 MAF from 1954 through 1956 and 8.0 MAF from 1933 through 1935."

http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/changes/...

"During the final, deepest years of the drought (years 17-22), costs to Upper Basin municipal and energy water uses were even larger. Total damages (including the non-consumptive uses) reach as high as $2 billion/year in the final years of the drought. Hydropower losses and salinity damages eventually could reach levels comparable with the losses by consumptive uses."

Yes, my point assumes that global warming is occuring.  It accepts scientific input such as that two thirds probability estimate from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  Get over it.  I don't believe that accepting science needs to be justified in detail in every single question and answer.  

Playing the denier game of "you can't prove it to me" in every question and answer has proven to be pointless.  It's a false argument that should only occur with a frequency that matches its odds of being correct: somewhere in the range of 0 to 5%.

So rather than evade the topic of "what would happen if"... you tell us... what if the vast majority of scientists are right, and the drought in the Colorado River Basin IS happening in the context of a warming and drying planet?

Good luck, especially if you live anywhere from Wyoming to New Mexico to California.

Answer 4

So....a single weather event can't be used as evidence to refute global warming, but a single location can support it....good to know!  And we can ignore all non-atmospheric variables that contribute to our claim...hmmmm.

In that case, my apartment never exceeded 80 degrees last summer...explain THAT!!

Answer 5

Maybe a good reason why this couldn't possibly be a natural occurrence.

Is it just me, or has a lake never, ever dried up in the history of the world?

Answer 6

Snow pack levels in the Colorado and Gunnison river basins are above average this year, if this pattern continues will have no worries.  March is usually one of the wettest months of the year.

Haha, thumbs down.  The snow melts and runs into the river, filling up the reservoirs.

Answer 7

I have seen some Koolaid drinkers in my time, but I think you should be the Koolaid drinkers mascot.

Answer 8

i have always conserved water. bath for me is once a week. but i do wash up with a pan of hot water. i have learned because i was homeless and had to learn the hard way in making do with what i had. life had been hard for me but things are getting better.

Answer 9

ya know what,  people like you really p**s me off.  You are a bleeding heart supporter of this c**p and you dont even know why.  All of your arguements make you look really stupid to me atleast.  You always type like you are enraged at man for what you think is going on...  But really, who is to blame?  People that have been dead for over 100 years!!!!  Is it my fault that people started using coal 200 years ago?  Cars were invented before I was born, before most people that are alive today were born.   So what the h**l do you want?  Do you secretly want 5 billion people to die so we can start over with new, smart ideas?  Is it anyones fault that there are well over 6 billion people on earth?

If people didnt show up, and start using the water, then the lake level wouldnt go down.  In desert areas like that, the lake level probably depends on every little drop of water to maintain its level.  This has NOTHING to do with global warming because the existence of people that need water in order to live has NOTHING TO DO with global warming.

You havent heard of the ancient cultures of the american southwest that moved because of a drought?  Apparently not...  Someone else already had to deal with this in the past, and what did they do?  They moved on and lived somewhere else.

Answer 10

From your link:

"The study concludes that natural forces such as evaporation, changes wrought by global warming and the increasing demand from the booming Southwest population are creating a deficit from this part of the Colorado River system."

Why are you ignoring the  "increasing demand from the booming Southwest population" portion.  

How about the droughts of the 1930's was that a result of burning coal for power?  Droughts have been a recorded part of history.  As a matter of fact, droughts have been decreasing since the these past decades.

But the ball is in your court.  Most experts have said that the best way of reducing co2 emissions with the least amount of damage to the environment is nuclear power.  Most skeptical organizations are pro nuclear energy.  But the environmentalist movement has blocked any new construction of nuclear power plants for thirty years.  Support nuclear energy and immediate actions will be taken to reduce co2 emissions.

Edit:  What percentage is due to the booming population, and what is due to "global warming"?  50-50?  90-10?  Until you quantify that amount you cannot blame AGW

Answer 11

Water will not stop falling out of the sky onto the mountains. It may fall as rain instead of snow, but that water will still end up in lake Meade.

Answer 12

This will solve all the problems right here so listen.

STOP BUILDING CITIES IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKIN DESERT. DESERTS LACK ADEQUATE WATER SUPPLIES AND WHAT IS THERE IS TAXED TO THE BREAKING POINT WITH INCREASING POPULATION CENTERS.

That should help some. Move north or east and the Earth will be saved and Lake Meade will be usable again. Happy now?

I visited Lake Meade last March and it looked fine to me and the DAM TOUR GUIDE never mentioned anything about it.

Answer 13

It wastn't even a lake until we built a d**n.  Calm down.  Lakes have dried up before.  They'll dry up again.  

Do you blame EVERYTHING on global warming?