This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Decades-Long "Megadrought" Looms For Entire US As Lake Powell Runs Dry, NASA Warns
With the number of people living in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains, and the volume of water they need, having increased rapidly over recent decades - and, with NASA scientists expecting these trends to continue for years to come - the current severe drought combined with the tapping of the Lake Powell's water at what many consider to be an unsustainable level, has reduced its levels to only about 42% of its capacity.
Forecasting that there is an 80 percent chance of an extended drought in the area between 2050 and 2099 unless aggressive steps are taken to mitigate the impacts of climate change, the researchers said their results point to a challenging - and remarkably drier - future.
As Reuters reports, scientists from NASA and Cornell and Columbia universities warned earlier this year that the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains regions are likely to be scorched by a decades-long "megadrought" during the second half of this century if climate change continues unabated.
More than 500 feet (150 meters) deep in places and with narrow side canyons, the shoreline of the lake is longer than the entire West Coast of the United States. It extends upstream into Utah from Arizona's Glen Canyon Dam and provides water for Nevada, Arizona and California.
...
The peak inflow to Lake Powell occurs in mid to late spring, as winter snow melts in the Rockies. But since 2012, snow and rainfall totals have been abnormally low as the region suffered persistent drought.
As the following images show, all around the lake, strikingly pale bands of rock have been exposed by the receding waters...
»
- 174143 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Maybe McCain and Obola can send Arizona and California 40 million more illegals.
Wisconsin will never have a drought I used to live there. THat place is safe.
They used to say the same thing about Somalia.
I lived in Page AZ as a youngster about the time the first picture was taken in 1991. Lake Powell looks nothing like what I remember. It is kinda dumb to have the 2nd largest man made lake in one of the driest climates in the US. Oh well, the Navajo will continue on in their perpetual poverty driven by the US gubbimint.
Let them drink oil.
WHAT?!?!?! No more drunk hot babes in thong bikinis on Lake Powell for Spring Break?!?!? This MUST be corrected!
Fix Global Cooling/Warming/Hot-Babe-Elimination... NOW!!!!
More exposed rock for the drunks to hit their heads on. Oh well, less money spent looking for their submerged bodies. They will be out on the rocks getting picked clean by buzzards.
Get out there with a kayak full of propellers and sell, sell, sell!
Not a good place for a boating accident.
"We're having a multi-century drought." "Illegals? COME ON IN!! Plenty of room!"
(Maybe there's something to the Cloward--Piven conspiracy after all.)
When you put a buncha corrupt politicians in charge of the water supply, guess what happens? You run out of water.
If they had to manage a beach they'd run out of sand in 5 years and blame it on the ocean for not producing enough.
Land in VA and Illinois. We'll sell you fooz water for less than the price of oil, forevuh!
Show me the money!
"Not a good place for a boating accident."
Why not? The ambulance can pull right up to the boat.
I can't help but wonder whose brilliant idea it was to try and build a lake in the middle of the goddamn desert in the first place?
"Oh, this place is so dry and it never rains. I know, lets build infrastructure for our water supplies right here."
Climate change propaganda is not even close to the size of Reggie''s dick.
The largest pump of the ocean conveyor is where the cooled super salty evaporated water from the gulf stream winds its way south again, through the strait of Denmark and plummets down to the bottom of the ocean just off the tip of Greenland. It is so strong that it use to cause an observable depression where it sank. It has a trough just before the strait that was a reserve of the super dense water. This trough has been emptying for decades. The saltiness is diluted by Greenland fresh melt water runoff. The trough has been empty for a few years now. The cool water is pooling on the surface where it is causing a temperature anomaly. To emphasize the importance of this, understand that the ocean conveys 1000 times more thermal energy between the equator and poles than the atmosphere, and if it stops, this will result in two things: a much increased thermal gradient between the equator and poles, and also stronger winds to compensate for the thermal transfer. This is basically a recipe for a global dehydrator where increased temperatures at the equator evaporate moisture at a higher rate, and decreased temperatures at the poles lock up that moisture, and increase convection winds drive the process at an accelerated rate.
This lowers the top of the population curve with all the subtlety of concrete cliff-diving. With strained resources, what is the geopolitical prognosis?
CreepyCracker:
< WHAT?!?!?! No more drunk hot babes in thong bikinis on Lake Powell for Spring Break?!?!? This MUST be corrected! >
What the heck am I supposed to do with my scholarship money if there's no Booze & Babes?!
Good freakin question. I use to love going on keg tows here:
http://watchdog.org/wp-content/blog/files/2013/06/elephant-butte-and-cab...
Won't somebody on the pay of the Koch brothers please debunk this global warming catastrophism? I rely on their comments to feel good about my life. Thanks in advance, Pinch.
Nice Poe's Law.
Almost like this place is a desert or something?
Let the COMDEX have control, and we will have all the paper water to satisfy everyone on the planet!
You angry white people make me laugh. All you care about is money and water. You don't care about your minority brothers and sisters. For shame.
Lemme get this straight...people pissing and moaning over a man-made lake drying up...and they're blaming man? Umm, if it was man-made...it wasn't meant to be there in the fucking desert to begin with...right?
'Da fuck we bitching about?!
Turn that dumbass frown up the fuckside down! New land available, go get it!
If you want to commit suicide, buy a gun and blow your brains out. Don't drag others into it.
Ok, if yoiu insist:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/californias-his...
California and the south west have had droughts spanning 200 years or so, and not a million years ago, and not just once.
Nothing to do with GW, just the way it has always been in that part of the world.
sounds like a perfect environment for making jerky.
and NONE of their prognosis has been correct!!! Hmmmmm
.
Gubmint, who else?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Powell#History
Building the lake is not the problem. Continuing to build the cities during a drought, now there's a problem. That would be topped only by lending or borrowing for such construction during said drought.
A huge El Niño is in the works, the strongest of its kind in over 60 years.
If it ain't the strongest since Lehman... It ain't shit ;) Long El Nino!
Ho hum. If this ever becomes AN ACTUAL PROBLEM, the great lakes to southwest pipeline will be built. For a TINY FRACTION of what bank bailouts cost.
Don't bother about conflicting treaties or land rights. The rule of law is just a god damned piece of paper.
America sucks, Who cares.
OK, OK I'll pay a carbon tax....
<bends over>
Megadrought for the ENTIRE UNITED STATES!
... and someone gets paid to write this sheeeeit. Why did I ever have a real job????
And what is going to be done RIGHT NOW? What's the magic pill that is going to make it start raining like normal again and poof make all the ice come back? We keep hearing that we have to stop climate change! Who's "WE"? Last time I checked my rain dance needs some work.
Oh, wait...I KNOW! If we just give more of our money to those trustworthy politicians who follow the gospel of "settled science" it'll all be fixed. Pfft...whatever.
I've come to realize that the biggest problem with the human race is that we think we're significant.
" We keep hearing that we have to stop climate change! Who's "WE"? Last time I checked my rain dance needs some work."
Dorughts Comes in Cycles, in the 1930's we had the Dust bowl. Global warming should increase rainfall globally. Warmed oceans = more evaporation = more clouds = more rain. The only arguement would be increased severe storms, but that hasn't happened since 2005 (10 years ago). Also the global has been warming since the ice age.
These comments aren't helping me feel good about the drought. I'm going to write Charles Koch and complain about the poor quality of denial I'm seeing. FFS!
Settled science says that the 20th century was the wettest in California in the last 7,000 years. Algore's recency bias says the last 3 year drought was caused by his sacred cow farting too much methane. Logic says that if you increase the population in a desert by several orders of magnitude in a near ideal climatic environment, when that environment reverts to the mean you will pop the greatest real estate bubble in history.
Short SoCal, NV, and AZ.
No need to short anything. We have many areas in this country that are very wet and flooded on regular basis.All needed is infrastructure to move that water to areas that need it.
Imagine the construction projects!!!
Why politicians are not pushing this is curious.
Seems like an ideal pork barrel project and a way to satisfy every one of their cronies.
Might be a good place to hang out with a metal detector.
Did they find anybody sleeping with the fishes yet?
WHAT?!?!?! No more drunk hot babes in thong bikinis on Lake Powell for Spring Break?!?!? This MUST be corrected!
Fix Global Cooling/Warming/Hot-Babe-Elimination... NOW!!!!
#DrunkHotBabesInThongBikinisLivesMatter
Amen!
Lets loot some stores and burn down a few neighborhoods over this...
"Fix Global Cooling/Warming/Hot-Babe-Elimination... NOW!!!!"
I think you'll need to fix the Feminist movement first.
Good. We can now shut down the NSA data center in UT.
Well I have to call bullshit. At least where I live, it was one of the rainiest summers I have ever seen. My tomato plants did not do well because they just got to much water, lots of fungis issues. It seems to me the people having issues are the idiots that bought property in the middle of a fucking desert and thought they would never have water availability issues. Same reason you hear about people moving to Florida and then they complain to the government about hurricanes. idiots.
Long "fungis"
where do you live seattle
Or "Where do you live? Miami?" Since both have about the same rain....
Seattle gets less inches of rain than many major US cities. But, it rains significantly more days per year.
I thought we were getting alot of rain until I saw the people putting up "Voluntary Water Restriction" signs all over labeling it "Stage 1" like a cancer.
In Seattle it rains most of the fall winter and spring but it is not a heavy rain. It's just a constant depressing drizzle that makes you understand why music from this area is so fucking depressing.
It does not help that the city has one of the highest concentrations of fruits and nuts outside of Kalifornia....but many of them are migrants from there.
..and Seattle is not a good place for growing tomatoes. Not hot enough..
Num your down votes can only come from stupid fuckers living in the desert complaining about the government controlled rain or chem trails. It's the fucking desert and it will be the fucking desert for at least thousands of years.
GeoEngineering is real. If the CA drought ends, its because they want it to.
Sam???? Sam is that you?
Rained its ass off all over Texas and Louisiana this summer.
Short Vegas.
They'll kneecap St. Louis and take their water. Long Vegas.
A Meyer Lansky town. Sheldon Adelson too come to think of it.
Of course. The broke frackers will cheer it on as a jobs program.
Yes, but what will bring people to Lost Wages? The entertainment, or the good food? People have little left to gamble away.
Was in Vegas on business and went to the local beatdown casino, El Cortez for $5 blackjack. I got to talking to some of the locals after a few hands and they were there literally trying to win money for a new pair of shoes, an Xbox for their kids, etc. All of them worked in the service industry in some capacity. It was totally tough times there. Other than being a little depressed for their situation I enjoyed the time there better than being at the big money "tourist" casinos. Free booze helped me rationalize their plight.
Meanwhile, at the major tourist casinos like the Wynn and Bellagio, you wouldn't think we were in the worst recession since Lehman. Packed casino floors and people gambling like the money is free. Man, it was a weird juxtaposition.
They wanted to remove that dam anyway, lake will be stilted up in a few more years
Vampy...excellent..."man made lake in one of the driest climates in the US." This is very important to understand as the global warming claims avalanche continues.
Jeezus, you people are fucking tarded. You don't build something to store water in a wet area. You save what water you can in a dry area.
Why is this so hard to understand? The IQ level here must be well below idiocracy levels.
As long as there is enough water for douche and making beer, Americans won't care.
The low water levels are revealing the beautiful Utah canyonlands that were covered up.
Sorry, you know how many lakes, rivers, and rain that place gets. Trillions of gallons a year. Plus it all freezes every year. The thing that will suck is the new ice age there, many will die.
SHTF for real, competition for resources in MN will be short but the fiercest in the country, old man Winter will do most of the fighting and the FSA most of the dying. It is like a muzzie moving to Sweden for the welfare state and then the welfare stops oh my...
Chicago covered with 2 miles of ice can't be all bad.
But once spring arrives, all the gangbangers are dead and thawing
That is the fucking surviving gang bangers problem.
"SHTF for real, competition for resources in MN will be short but the fiercest in the country, old man Winter will do most of the fighting and the FSA most of the dying. "
Damn, You dog gone spilled the beans!. That was the plan. To get illegals and FSA to move to MN and let nature take its course!
It's not much better upstream at Lake Powell.
Powell is at 51.3% full pool and Mead is at 37.3% full pool.
"upstream"...huh.
I live in the area, and am planning to spend the next week at LP.
Have you people ever been to the lake or even have a clue about the geography and geology.
Here's some data for you about upstream from Lake Powell dumbfuck http://www.water-data.com/
Geezus, ZH has really gone to shit with this one....fucking dumbfuck twats who think you know it all but don't know FUCKIN' DICK ALL....fuckin loser
Somalia is in Wisconson, silly.
THE DROUGHT IS 100% MAN MADE.....
HAARP/IONOSPHERIC HEATERS AND CHEMTRAILS
In the name of God folks, wake people up before its too late....
www.geoengineeringwatch.org
Whackadoo Alert...
Flak's back.. How about that Antarctic ice, 35 year high... How many UN's you have now?
"They used to say the same thing about Somalia."
Perhaps Detriot or Chicago would have been a more appropriate response. eh?
Sam Kinison put it best...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNoJ2BzSRU
Standard Disclaimer: "You live in a desert"
<-- Plenty of sunshine but little water (West & Southwest)
<-- Plenty of water and moderate sunshine (Midwest)
Please vote honestly for your choice of living conditions.
Beaches, lowest property taxes in the U.S., plenty of water, and varying seasonal weather (Sussex County, Delaware)
Yes, it's a conservative county in a leftist nut-job overall state (they were stupid enough to vote for Little Joey Biden as one of their Senators before he VP'd) but you can't have it all.
Oogachacka Oogachacka Ogallala
Hooked on a feeling?
You won the intertubes Billy. Good catch !
Billy don't be a hero,
don't be a fool with your life.....
North West is very high water, very low sunshine.
Couldn't vote either way, due to the faulty premises.
I'm not sure what you are considering the "Midwest," but if it involves any of those places reliant upon electrical pumping of aquifer waters from the Oglalla ... well, just Google it.
As for lumping the Southwest and West together, ahhh, no. The Rockies (West) are different from the Southwest which is different from the Columbian Basin which is different from the Pacific NW.
You fresh in from Brooklyn?
Sorry, Neh... I'm not Elmo Roper. I just wanted to get a simple picture of preferences - that's all.
Except the murder rate is exploding in the Milwaukee metro area.
Flash flood warnings again at this minute in northeast Illinois and south east Wisconsin.
HAARP can fix.
Anyone want to buy a boat?
As a matter of fact I do. Mine sank with all of my gold on board.
rather than banning nuclear weapons testing and development, they'll pass a carbon tax on breathing-for the children!!!
Top climate change scientists' letter to policy influencers
Quantitative analyses show that the risks associated with the expanded use of nuclear energy are orders of magnitude smaller than the risks associated with fossil fuels.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scient...
Tell that to the people of Chernobyl & Fukushima. Scientists belong in gold fish bowls. Well, at one time the "scientific concensus" was that the earth was flat and that the earth was the center of the universe.
Funny how I got downvoted for pointing out the obvious insanity of AGW scientists. Oh, well.
Down-arrow for a perfectly stupid comment.
Always have to blame the dark-skinned peoples for the underlying schemes created and set in play by the non-dark-skinned folks.
No better irony can be seen than in the golf courses in the SW. Yeah, sucking up precious water so that the non-dark-skinned folks can chase around their little balls. Meanwhile the dark-skinners get to manicure all that grass; the "illegal" kind (like any of the xenophobic dick-heads here could tell the difference- just what TPTB want, keep 'em divided; well played you fucking idiots!) are best because they keep the greens fees down!
Anything to get a cheap shot.
Multiple down-arrows for a insanely stupid libtard comment and for misinterpreting the world based on skin pigment.
Anything to get a cheap shot.
Yeah I am amazed at how ZH has been ran over with Drudge / Fox News types here. Amazing … every fucking thing is blamed on illegals. There are no illegals taking my job – wish they were….. sick of working every fucking day. The only thing illegals do is gut the chicken I eat, cut my grass or finish the cement ……
Got a guy working for me now (Mexican) had to bring him up from Mexico (legal) because couldn’t find anyone here …… white boys you ask ha ha ha …..always thumbing on their phones lazy POS. Funny part is the Mexican is smarter than any dumb ass lazy obama hater drudge scum I have ever meet.
Go ahead haters I dare you to ask me what job the Mexican does that I can’t find anybody qualified here to do.
Having done many different jobs under the sun, I'm curious.
What is it your Mexican is willing to do for wages that you couldn't find a native born American to do?
Work.
Screw his fat ugly ass wife.
Fanuc?
it is disappointing that our work ethic has been degraded so, but we all respond to our values and our environment. The open door immigration has seen many easy entry trades overwhelmed. With each economic downturn, workers are laid off. Lack of demand pushes labor costs lower so when the economy picks up, illegals are standing there more than willing to take those lower paid wages. People, especially locked into debt cannot easily cut back to these lower wages so they settle for entitlements augmented by cash work. This racheting down of wages has destroyed our productive urges and drove a wedge between owner and employee that our ass fucking government happily puts to its own uses. Hispanics work ethic is turning as we see them persuaded of their entitlements and oppressed conditions, with growing dependency on these entitlements. They have come here from socialist countries so it will continue to be an easy sell. Working in Texas makes the projects of hiring a white person more difficult, especially in woodworking, but my small crew is still predominantly caucasion. Unfortunately some more of them are old leftists who have never done anything but hold a job and complain about employers.
Lots of engineers I went to school with could have done that, but the U.S. Was far behind in demand, so they went overseas where the demand was greater.
Glad I opted out of robotics and went for specialized electrical engineering instead - I was able to stay in the country of my birth.
I hope your employee and you have a mutually beneficial relationship and that he finds this country to his liking for him and his family.
Worked for a company that made block and brick. We had PLC for palletizing finished products. Only PLC guys we could find were old white guys, or guys from MX that had some engineering degree and moved to the states for their kids. PLC are a bitch to program correctly. Young people probably feel like it is stone age stuff and don't want to be in a plant envuronment, hot/cold/dusty/dirty when they can sit in the AC and pretend to work while on their smart phones.
The cheap fucker is hiring a Mexican because he
wants to pay shit wages.
Quantum Physicist?
Java / Oracle developer?
Dis nigger be craycray!
Aren't you a Canadian citizen?
Well, if they can't, Germany can.
Not A Single Accuracy. NASA. Plenty of water. Just how to get it to rain where humankind would like it. It falls upon the just and unjust alike. Until the unjust completely outnumber.
Just superstition though, so you better go back to your bars, your wall street temples, your massage parlors....and never mind the timestamp on the heel.
Real Estate Developers must be LICKING their chops at ALLLLL the new land that just became available.
"There has never been a better time to buy" -Sponsored by the National Realtors Association
So tens of millions want to live in a dry desert area and are surprised at the lack of water???
Water is the new gold ...
You must really like liquid investments. How long before we're trading paper water?
put in on the COMEX and they will naked short it out of habit
GeoEngineering. http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
It is the weapon of the 21st century and also genocide according to the geneva convention
ALL wars are about resources.
Food, shelter and water. The wise will position themselves accordingly.
Wrong.
Some wars about about religious ideology.
Shia versus Sunni.
Talmudist against everyone else...
ZD1 - Mohamed upset the PTB hierarchy. Sunni Islam is their attempt [mostly successful], to get it all back, so - No soup for you! It was about resources.
Wrong, it's about puss. The other stuff just paves the way to the honey hole. Maslow was full of shit, he put food clothing and shelter on the same level as puss.
And they just keep on approving more new residential and commercial construction in California...
Dude, I grew up not two blocks from where the "Apple Spaceship" is being built. Most of that land was old HP headquarters and next to it, a whole lotta open space. Now the open space is all gone, construction everywhere, multi-story apartments being finished. Guess what the rent for a two bedrooom apartment in that place is going to be - my aunt just told me this morning... SEVEN freaking THOUSAND dollars, for a 2br/2ba apartment. Just because it's next to Apple.
I guess if you can afford that kinda shit, trucking some water in aint a "big deal."
Big headquarters, company names on stadiums and largest sky scrapers are often the beginning of the end.
This may be before your tim but Borland software was hot s**t back in the 1980s or early 1990s with Phillpe Kahn. They had a version of C++, a spread sheet (Quatro?) and a few other things.
They built a $120 million HQ in Scotts Valley not that far from you. It sold for $12 million in 2013 bought by those scum bags at Lennar.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/25/former-borland-campus...
Borland started falling apart just before the building was done. I wonder if Apple will start falling apart with ghay Tim Cook.
The question is whether their phone business is a long term annuity that they can milk or not.
And you popped into your local Egghead Software store to buy Borland C++.
those were great times. programming was fun. today all the software is free for download and no one has a job.
Borland missed building office in unix
I Guess software compilers were produced just to sell something, not for anything productive or useful in the world.
+1
I knew some younger geek programmer guys who used to go to Fry's in Palo Alto or Sunnyvale to try out the latest gadgets and stuff. they would buy it, try it out and usually return it.
Fry's eventually added restocking fees and changed their return policy. Freaking good programmers too.
ahhh...the palo alto frys with the most bizarre entrance parking lot. spent half my life in frys in seattle and phoenix and austin. boy they sold some crappy electronics. half the shit never worked but it was the biggest shop in town.
....ah, I remember driving 17 past the Borland Bldg. as it went up, the stock went down. I would wonder whether they would top out the building before the stock hit 0.
The best way to pick a short in SV is to just follow who is putting up a new mega headquarters. Nortel was also a classic. I think Ampex was the company that kicked this off, followed by Memorex.
+100
Yes. Not always just Silicon Valley. The Borland building was a real big deal back then but this Apple thing is insane.
Jobs and all this socially responsible BS. Paving over Silicon Valley.
The coolest factory I have seen is the Ferrari factory where they have trees inside the factory and it is pretty spotless. The exterior is not some overdone nightmare too.
Go to 24:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFYeP6AXCA4
The Romeo and Juliet robots dipping rings into liquid nitrogen baths is pretty incredible.
Far more impressive than Apple's shitty phones.
thanks for that link to the Ferarri factory. I've been in manufacturing for over 36 years. Its always nice to see a 1st rate operation.
Memorex! I used to work for them...told the VP of service that I was seeing green screens and MF tapedrives on pallet for the dump and Gateway's and Netframe servers on the dock going in. A shift was occurring in business computing.
He informed me in front of 200 others that my story was ancedotal and that mainframe technology was stronger than ever. I replied that my remote area was not cutting edge so it was happening everywhere.
I got certified in LAN technology and left the company.
They folded about 2.5 years later.
So, is it the "illegals" fault here too?
Semicondutor Manufacturing Plants can use as much water as a small city.http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/semiconductors/design/semicondutor-manu...
Most of the semiconductor plants are in Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants
Asia doesn't have a big problem with illegals. The welfare is sooo much better in California.
they have so many cheap slaves in Asia, that's why they make semiconductors there and sell mostly elsewhere
For water usage in a desert, try this: "the plant itself will use up to half a million gallons of water per day,"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/07/darcy-farrow/
Remember ObjectPAL ??? I had a lot of fun with that !!!
Noticed that in Dallas. When the skies are full of cranes a recession is near at hand. As I build custom furniture for these big egos, my business follows these cycles...severely. Remember doing a large boardroom for Pagenet 20 years ago. The owner was building mega mansions all over the country and then one day...he wasn't. Remember pagers? I bet he does. I do work for top brass in some of the world's largest oil companies, and they have turned off the spigot on new projects. And I feel it. Probably 80% of my work last year was oil companies and the rest was sub prime auto loan corporates. Not doing either this year.
Skateboarder sez:
"my aunt just told me this morning... SEVEN freaking THOUSAND dollars, for a 2br/2ba apartment. Just because it's next to Apple."
Well, for 7000 freaking dollars, I might just splurge and buy two. Hell, why not? A bit overpriced just because it's next to the rotten Apple, but WTH? :) /s
Rent.
Ah, my bad on the reading comprehension:)
That is insane!! I guess my mind couldn't comprehend something that astronomical for a rent cost.