Tag Archives: drought

December 2015 in Review

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Now it’s time to review December 2015, before we get on to reviewing 2015 as a whole.

Negative stories (-10):

  • Some car dealers are deliberately talking customers out of buying electric cars that they want, because the car dealer will make less money on oil changes. (-1)
  • Breaking news: we can’t believe everything we hear on the internet. Some of it is deliberate government and corporate propaganda, and some is “online filter bubbles” or marketing algorithms telling each of us only what we want to hear. Data used by all these algorithms is becoming more and more valuable. (-1)
  • Cyberattacks or superflares could destroy the U.S. electric grid. (-1)
  • Guns cause gut-wrenching, accidental deaths of children quite frequently in the U.S. The U.S. has a rate of violent assault 5-10 times higher than our close Anglo-American cousins, which in turn have higher rates than most of Europe and developed Asia. (-1)
  • I mused about whether it is really possible the U.S. could go down a fascist path. I reviewed Robert Paxton’s five stages of fascism. I am a little worried, but some knowledgeable people say not to worry. After reading Alice Goffman’s book On the Run though, one could conclude that a certain segment of our population is living in a fascist police state right now. There is some fairly strong evidence that financial crises have tended to favor the rise of the right wing in Europe. (-2)
  • After more than a decade of drought, there may not be enough water to sustain both Lake Powell and Lake Mead in the U.S. desert southwest. Some are suggesting draining Lake Powell. (-1)
  • This year’s “super El Nino” might have happened with or without climate change, but climate change made it more likely. I have to admit though I enjoyed sitting on my front porch in shorts on Christmas here in Philadelphia. (-1)
  • Jeffrey Sachs makes a pretty good case that the rise of violent religious fanaticism in the Middle East is largely the CIA’s fault. (-2)

Positive stories (+13):

    • Las Vegas is planning to go all renewable by 2017, mostly centralized solar. (+1)
    • Children have a natural aptitude for learning to recognize patterns. Now all we have to do is figure out which patterns we should be teaching them to recognize. (+1)
    • Some U.S. Presidential candidates want to invest in infrastructure, which is good. A national infrastructure plan might also be good. (+1)
    • Ericcson released some technology predictions for 2016 and beyond: Artificial intelligence will start to assist us without the need for smartphone screens. Virtual reality will start to come into its own for tech support, sports, dating, and shopping. And we will start to see more sensors embedded in our homes and eventually our bodies. (+1)
    • Trends in Ecology and Evolution made some technology predictions too: “managed bees as transporters of biological control agents, artificial superintelligence, electric pulse trawling, testosterone in the aquatic environment, building artificial oceanic islands, and the incorporation of ecological civilization principles into government policies in China”. (+1)
    • A serious but treatable infection can destroy a tumor. (+1)
    • Self-driving cars could drastically reduce the amount of land required for parking in cities. There are some moves toward car-free central cities around the world. (+3)
    • We had the Paris agreement. It is possible to be cynical about this agreement but it is the best agreement we have had so far. (+2)
    • New York City recently finished planting a million trees. (+2)

So we end the year on a positive note!

abandoning Lake Powell

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Lake Powell is on the Colorado upstream of the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, controlled by Glen Canyon Dam. Lake Mead is downstream of the Grand Canyon, controlled by Hoover Dam. With the decade-plus drought affecting the basin, there is actually talk of bypassing Glen Canyon Dam and just letting Lake Powell drain into Lake Mead.

One option involves filling Lake Mead first. This would allow Upper Basin water to flow past Glen Canyon Dam for storage in Lake Mead. A legal analysis published in The Water Report, issue 112, concluded that the plan doesn’t violate the Compact, because the counting point for Upper Basin water deliveries could be moved downstream, from Lees Ferry to Hoover Dam. Another option is to release water through Glen Canyon Dam’s river outlet works at 3,374-foot elevation. There’s also the option of drilling bypass tunnels — as former Reclamation Commissioner Floyd Dominy once suggested.

Upper Basin officials say that losing generation at Glen Canyon would cause a “spike” in electric power prices, raising rates by as much as 500 percent. This is highly unlikely. Glen Canyon Dam’s power may be marketed to 174 Southwestern utilities and providers, yet it contributes less than 1 percent of the total capacity of the Western power grid. There are also alternative power sources available.

If Glen Canyon Dam went offline, gas-fired power plants could instantly meet the demand at a similar cost. In fact, given Lake Powell’s recent decline, the dam has already been producing only 60 percent of its generating capacity. Yet no electricity rate “spikes” have occurred.

 

condensation

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Here’s an article on using condensation as a water supply. It’s a somewhat obvious idea – first, collect all that air conditioner condensate and use it for something. Second, use solar energy to condense some more.

The machine is based on Spanish technology. Local developers John Vollmer and Moses West are testing it out and allowing it to be evaluated by numerous entities, including the military.

The machine takes water from the air in the form of humidity and converts it into drinking water. It’s not a new process, but the machine does it on a large scale and much more economically than before.

“As long as you have 30 percent humidity or greater, there’s no such thing as a drought,” West said.

May 2015 in Review

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Negative stories:

  • MIT says there is a critical long term decline in U.S. research and development spending, while spending is increasing in many other parts of the world.
  • Lake Mead, water supply for Las Vegas and several other major western U.S. cities, is continuing to dry up. The normal snowpack in Washington State is almost completely absent, while much of Oregon has declared a state of emergency. As the drought grinds on, recycled water (sometimes derided as “toilet to tap”) is becoming more common in Calfornia. This is not bad in itself – on the contrary it is an example of technological adaptation and closing the loop. It does have a cost in money and energy though, which are resources that are then not available for other things like education or infrastructure or whatever people need. In other words, drought makes us all a little bit poorer.
  • We’ve hit 400 ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not just some places sometimes but pretty much everywhere, all the time.
  • There may be a “global shortage of aggregate demand“, and most countries are not dealing with it well. In many developed countries, increases in average longevity could lead to a trend of long-term deflation. This could eventually happen in almost all countries.
  • Climate change is going to make extreme weather more frequent and more damaging in U.S. cities. The 2015 El Nino could break records.
  • There just isn’t a lot of positivity or hope for better passenger rail service in the U.S.
  • Human chemical use to combat diseases, bugs, and weeds is causing the diseases, bugs and weeds to evolve fast.
  • Unfortunately there is no foolproof formula to make education work.

Positive stories:

  • Less leisure time could mean less sustainable outcomes, because people just have less time to think and act on their good intentions. I’m putting this in the positive column because although people in the U.S. and many other countries still work long hours, the trend so far is less work and more wealth for human population as a whole over very long periods of time. Obviously the transition is not smooth or painless for all workers all of the time.
  • I found a nice example of meta-analysis, which aggregates findings of a large number of scientific and not-so-scientific studies in a useful form, in this case in the urban planning field.
  • May is time to pull on the urban gardening gloves.
  • Melbourne’s climate change adaptation plan focuses on green open space and urban tree canopy.
  • Painless vaccines may be on the way.
  • The rhetoric on renewable energy is really changing as it starts to seriously challenge fossil fuels on economic grounds. Following the Fukushima disaster, when all Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down, the gap was made up largely with liquid natural gas and with almost no disruption of consumer service. But renewables also grew explosively. Some are suggesting Saudi Arabia is supporting lower oil prices in part to stay competitive with renewables. Wind and solar capacity are growing quickly in many parts of the world. Lester Brown says the tide has turned and renewables are now unstoppable.
  • Commercial autonomous trucks are here.
  • The UK may have hit “peak car“.
  • Seattle is allowing developers to provide car share memberships and transit passes in lieu of parking spaces.

Washington State drought

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Washington State has a snowpack problem.

“Snowpack is down to just 16% of normal,” Inslee said. “This is an unprecedented low. Several mountain areas have already melted out and have little to no measurable snow left…. On the Olympic Peninsula, where there would normally be 80 inches of snow today in the mountains, the glacier lilies are blooming.”

No mandatory rationing has been ordered, but because conditions recently worsened, Inslee took the step to declare the statewide emergency. Fellow Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown of California declared a statewide drought emergency in 2014, and last month ordered municipalities across the state to cut water use by 25%.

In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown has declared a drought emergency in seven of the largest counties. Seven other counties have requested that an emergency be declared. Combined, that’s about two-thirds of the state.

recycled water

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Recycled water, i.e. treating sewage back to drinking water standards, has been around for awhile and doesn’t raise many eyebrows in truly water scarce areas. Which is why it is getting more popular and less controversial in California cities. Here are some fun pictures of politicians drinking it out of beakers with big smiles on their faces.

Which, maybe because we are in mayoral election season here in Philadelphia, reminded me of this great scene from The Wire.

 

April 2015 in Review

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Negative stories:

Positive stories:

  • Mr. Money Mustache brought us a nice post on home energy efficiency projects. This was a very popular post.
  • Biotechnology may soon bring us the tools to seriously monkey with photosynthesis. (This is one of those stories where I struggle between the positive and negative columns, but clearly there is a potential upside when we will have so many mouths to feed.)
  • Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is retiring. That might sound bad, but his ground-breaking ideas are continuing on and actually seem to be going mainstream.
  • Lee Kuan Yew, who took Singapore “from third world to first” in one generation, passed away (in March, but I wrote about it in April. Let me be clear – I am an admirer and it is his life I am putting in the positive column, not his death.)
  • Donella Meadows explained how your bathtub is a dynamic system.
  • Robert Gordon offers a clear policy prescription for the U.S. to support continued economic growth.
  • I explain how a cap-and-trade program for stormwater and pollution producing pavement could work.
  • Joel Mokyr talks about advances in information technology, materials science and biotechnology.
  • Some U.S. cities are fairly serious about planting trees.
  • Edmonton has set a target of zero solid waste.
  • Saving water also saves energy. It’s highly logical, but if you are the skeptical type then here are some numbers. Also, urban agriculture reduces carbon emissions.
  • Peter Thiel thinks we can live forever. (positive, but do see my earlier comment about mouths to feed…)
  • A paper in Ecological Economics tries to unify the ecological footprint and planetary boundary concepts.
  • Philadelphia finally has bike share.

drought, drought, and more drought

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NPR has yet another story on how bad the drought is getting in the western U.S.

The historic four-year drought in California has been grabbing the headlines lately, but there’s a much bigger problem facing the West: the now 14-year drought gripping the Colorado River basin…

The snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, where the Colorado and much of the Southwest gets most of its water, is again at less than half of normal this year…

Some of the West’s biggest metropolises — Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego — all grew up during what scientists now believe was a wet period, a relative anomaly in the West.