Visiting Bombay Beach, mulling the Salton Sea's future

First, the background.

I've read Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert" (second and sadly last edition due to his untimely death) 10 or more times, with a heavily highlighted, underlined, and marginal-noted version in my hands.

Growing up in Gallup, New Mexico, my family may have, or may not have, stopped briefly at the north end of the Salton Sea on a return home from a SoCal vacation. We took I-10 on the way back and ate lunch at Palm Springs, that I remember. 

Anyway, I know well the history of the sea's formation, the geological background of the multiple Lake Cahuilla births and deaths and more. And, I knew the basics of Bombay Beach.

As an adult, I may or may not have tried to hit the west shore of the sea on a springtime visit to Anza-Borrego State Park when leaving it via east side. I know I did three years ago, on my second-last wintertime visit. Unfortunately, driving around an unfamiliar town (think it was Salton Shores) in the dark, I couldn't figure out how to get to the shore itself. In daylight, this trip, I realized much of what I was bumping up against was berms with Imperial Irrigation District no trespassing signs.

The birding part of the world is not dead there, as the avocets show.

That said, that's on the slightly higher elevated west side, which also has less agrichemical runoff as there's less agriculture there than north, south and east.

I did see the "peeps," sandpipers, on the east side, north of Bombay Beach itself. But no avocets, no grebes, etc.

South of Bombay Beach, the Sonny Bono/Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge may have sandhill cranes, along with other birds:

But it is artificially sustained with man-made islands as the sea shrinks, water diversions, and artificial plantings of various cereal grains. Dirty secret: a lot of NWRs are unnatural in this way, like Bosque del Apache south of Albuquerque and Hagerman near me in North Texas. And, as climate continues to change, this is becoming more and more unsustainable at more and more Western NWRs.

Anyway, before Bombay Beach, in what eventually evolved encompassing, albeit hit-and-miss, almost three-quarters of the sea on this vacation, I stopped at the northeast corner. And, got great sunrise alpenglow:

As I noted, that beach looks like the salt knobs at Badwater in Death Valley. But, it's not, as footprints sinking nearly three inches deep into semi-quicksand beach show.

I was walking to see this color-beautiful puddle:

But, as I note in the caption, who knows what agrichemical runoff is mixed with salt to produce that color?

I do know that you smell it.

Salton Sea doesn't smell like the ocean. It does have the salt smell, but it also smells of those agrichemicals. To put it another way, the smell is vaguely like the "produced water" that's becoming an ever-bigger part of the modern oil business, with the additional smell here and there of dead fish, to the degree the Salton still supports any.

Some nutters may still talk of swimming in the Salton Sea. Would you jump in this schlag?

Not me.

The talk of, if not restoring, at least arresting the decline, of the Salton Sea has been going on 15 years or more.

Not happening. Let's be blunt. 

Not happening.

First, having more direct experience with the Army Corps of Engineers and Texas A&M-Galveston and their proposal for an "Ike Dike," as well as remembering the basics of the proposed initial cost vs finality of the Venentian lagoon gates, I know that cost estimates for such massive environmental engineering projects are always massively understated, and often the work involved is lied about. (That's true here in Tex-ass, where Ike Dike proponents lyingly compare it to work done in New Orleans and to its south around the mouth of the Mississippi and the Louisiana coast.)

Usually, all "stakeholders" in such plans have vested interests in lying about the costs. And, yes, they usually know better at the start, so they're lying. 

ANY time the Corps of Engineers bigfoots into something, it's gonna lie.

With the Salton Sea, the state of California has a vested interest in lying so it can pretend it's really interested in doing something and can pretend that its bits of around the edges nibbling work really are doing something.

Largely upper-crust White environmental groups have a vested interest in lying about the cost of fixing the Salton Sea, as it lets them show their concern for the poor Hispanics who can't leave places like Bombay Beach and Brawley, along with the various bands of Cahuilla Indian nations who surround the sea and won't leave.

In addition, has anybody asked the portion of these neoliberal-type environmentalists who live in Palm Springs, or LA itself, if they're willing to SERIOUSLY change their way of water life (or move) to help get serious about rounding up enough water to stave off the Salton's ongoing decline?

The reality, contra this sign:

Is that the sea is indeed sinking and that won't be reversed. It may be moderately slowed, but no more.

So, do we pay people to leave Bombay Beach if they want to? A lot of the neo-hipsters at not just it, but other places for which it's a stand-in, like Slab City, don't want to leave. 

They just want a fix that fixes them.

Fuck em. No matter your artsy-fartsyness at Bombay Beach (which it was fun photographing and photo-editing in detail):

That's the best thing we can say to them. Go back to Quartzsite if you're a snowbirder. Get back to where you once belonged, per the Beatles or try it elsewhere, if you're trying to semi-permanently live in the area. Or accept the consequences.

Otherwise, as a city? In my opinion, the present of Bombay Beach:

Is as good as it gets.

Nature bats last.

#ClimateChange and tree health — a vicious circle

Turns out that trees that fight the effects of drought rather than going with the flow may come out ahead in the immediacy but struggle in the next few years after that.

The effect is most noticeable in already arid climates. We're looking at you, Colorado Plateau and Desert Southwest:

Scientific models of the global carbon cycle –  which are important for projecting climate change – don't account for this slow-down in growth. "The models assume there is no lag, so as soon as climate is better, so is growth," says Nate McDowell, who researches the physiology of tree death at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. That means that models may overestimate the ability of ecosystems to store carbon – and underestimate the severity of future climate change. 

If droughts do become more frequent and severe, (forest ecologist Bill Andregg) says, as climate models predict, "this suggests that more forests are going to spend more and more of their time recovering, and become less good at taking up carbon."Anderegg estimates that in Southwestern forests, the lag could amount to a 3 percent reduction in their carbon storage over a century. That may not sound like much, but when it comes to squirreling away the emissions we stubbornly keep spewing, we need all the help we can get. 

 And, of course, we know that the Southwest is headed for a period of long-term drought, as well as global warming. Given that aspens "fight" drought a lot, by opening their stoma, and that they're less resistant to the effects of doing this than are juniper, 40 years from now, a lot of Rocky Mountain hillsides are doing to be aspen-denuded.

And, otherwise, Andregg is right. It's working at the margins, but 3 percent is 3 percent.

'The desert always wins': The last word on California drought

The quote above, whether most popularized by Cactus Ed, good old Ed Abbey, or someone else, is true indeed. indeed.

As Marc Reiser demonstrated in "Cadillac Desert," along with many others, some before, many since him, the Colorado River was highly overappropriated among its seven basin states because the 1920s were an outstandingly wet period within a larger wettish period. While Colorado River system water is not the same as the snowmelt from the Sierras that fills (Californians hope) in-state reservoirs, it too is snowmelt-based, with all that implies in our era of global warming, El Niño-related oceanic oscillation changes and more.

Let's not forget that the Los Angeles Aqueduct of "Chinatown" fame was built less than 20 years before the Colorado River Compact, also during a wet period. And, although the 1960s of California State Water Project fame were less wet than the 1920s, they were far wetter than today, or than long-term droughts we know hit the Southwest in the past and are likely to do again in the near future. And, while that megadrought is expected to center on the Four Corners, not California, it will have its "fair share" of effect on the Golden State. And, for students of paleo-American history, this drought is expected, at least in the Southwest, to be worse than the one that shuttered Chaco Canyon and destroyed Anazasi culture. In other words, anthropogenic climate change, while part of the problem, is not all the problem. Rather, it is, in part, intensifying what's more "normal" than European settlers thought, 100 years ago.

So, that leads to Abbey's most famous statement certified statement: "Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell."

This NYTimes graphic, from the linked story about
groundwater regulation, shows the amount of sinkage
in many areas; the largest red dots have shown
more than 100 feet of sinking. See story for more.

And thus, the quasi-rhetorical, yet seriously asked, question in this long New York Times piece has but one answer: "no." Relentless growth has limits. There is no perpetual motion machine in general and certainly not with water supplies. Meanwhile, even as Jerry Brown has imposed water cuts (that don't affect agriculture, don't affect oil fracking and don't start until July 1), there's really a bigger scandal in California water issues: groundwater, unlike in most western states (but, unfortunately, very much like in Texas) is currently not regulated at all, and under a weak-tea system the state finally, recently, adopted, will not be semi-effectively regulated until the 2040s.

By that time, the groundwater may be almost gone, with storage capacity, flow, and more of reservoirs irreversibly damaged.

(In turn, this is part of why I said last week that Californians should recall Jerry Brown.)

Now, Reisner did not directly cover these issues. But he did indirectly cover them when he wrote about overpumping of the Ogallala Aquifer.

Having grown up in New Mexico, and been the editor of one newspaper in that state, I personally know this.

Most Western states have a state water engineer, who is god and czar of the state's water supply, with the partial exception of any rivers that come under interstate compacts.

For example, in New Mexico, at least at the time I was editing there, if a person wanted to drill a new water well, they had to run an ad in the newspaper three weeks straight, giving a precise metes-and-bounds description of the well's location AND its planned depth. At the end of said legal notice had to be a date for a public hearing about that well. The regional office of the state engineer conducted that hearing.

From what I understand, even if California does have a state engineer, said office has nothing like that regulatory power.

Meanwhile, fallowing of the fields could damage the fields themselves.

Reiser, whether the water source was irrigation or groundwater, wrote about improper irrigation and the salination problems it caused to land. As California farmers are having to fallow more land, the salinity problems are apparently starting to show up in places in the Central Valley.

Add in that the current drought is worsened by climate change, and many Californians' blithe belief that the state will "escape again," like it escaped Enron gaming its electricity nearly 15 years ago, is kind of appalling. It's also a proof that blue states aren't exempt from the delusion of American exceptionalism.

Abbey addressed that, too:

“There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.”

So, Californians? (And, Arizonans, Nevadans, etc.?) It's time for a lot of you to move back to Minneapolis, or Cleveland, or St. Louis — where the water is.

And, speaking of Arizonans and Nevadans? Here's Part 1 and Part 2 of what's going to be a three-part series on drought in the Colorado River basin, from the Arizona Republic.

For those who think desalinization is the answer? In the Colorado River Basin, per that Part 2 link immediately above, maybe think again. In coastal California, even if the price drops a lot, and quickly, which is open to debate, you have the issue of thermal pollution from "wastewater" being dumped into a coldwater ocean current. The only plant currently under construction is only going to meet 7 percent of San Diego's needs, a drop in the bucket for overall California use. If desalinization in Florida is any indication, it will probably not run as well as expected, and be pricier than expected. (Right now, the San Diego project will deliver water at twice the current cost, and the same company that built that troubled Florida desal plant is doing the one in San Diego. It would probably be cheaper to move people back to the Midwest.)

Salvific technologism, as I've called it before, has no guarantees. Re-read those Abbey quotes.

#CO2: 2010 worst year ever

Carbon-dioxide emissions rose 5.9 percent last year, the worst recorded jump on record. And, we're likely not in for great news in future years:

The researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact.

They do not expect the extraordinary growth to persist, but do expect emissions to return to something closer to the 3 percent yearly growth of the last decade, still a worrisome figure that signifies little progress in limiting greenhouse gases. The growth rate in the 1990s was closer to 1 percent yearly.

The combustion of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions, the report found. 

If we connect the dots on paragraphs two and three, it's clear that China, followed by India, will fuel the surge in CO2 emissions in general and coal-generated CO2 in particular. Frankly, I'd be surprised (assuming the usual blather-and-inaction results at Durban, South Africa) if we hold that to just 3 percent over the next decade.

And, no the West is not simon pure:

On the surface, the figures of recent years suggest that wealthy countries have made headway in stabilizing their emissions. But Dr. Peters pointed out that in a sense, the rich countries have simply exported some of them.

The fast rise in developing countries has been caused to a large extent by the growth of energy-intensive manufacturing industries that make goods that rich countries import. “All that has changed is the location in which the emissions are being produced,” Dr. Peters said. 

And, with that exporting, let's not forget the carbon dioxide emissions costs of shipping, too.

Although Americans cringe at the idea, our one hope may be for oil to get back to or above its 2008 high of $147 a barrel, and stay there, if that doesn't totally wreck the world economy. Folks like Walmart and its various suppliers have indicated that oil prices that high would put enough of a burden on shipping costs that a lot of production would have to be relocated to the U.S. to be profitable.

It's an even "tougher" version of what James Hanson said about how we absolutely need to get away from coal-fired power plants in the future. We're at least moving in that direction. Such oil prices, by lessening Chinese manufacturing, would idle some other coal-fired electricity.

Politically, there's theoretically one other hope. The U.S. imposes carbon taxes internally, which then gives it the legal right to impose carbon tariffs externally. But, don't hold your breath over that.

We need to have something, though. As Nature Geoscience shows, including with plenty of pretty pictures, the evidence continues to mount for both global warming and the anthropogenic cause of it.

Beyond the "feedback loops" in general, of a warming climate putting more water vapor, a greenhouse gas itself, in the atmosphere, and causing permafrost to release methane, yet another greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, there's other feedback loops.

For example, in the U.S., with the shift of more population to the hot, long summer world of the Sunbelt, we're talking more and more air conditioning use. That, in turn creates urban heat islands, which create a microclimate additional feedback loop.

Plus, in the Southwest, we're headed toward drier as well as hotter. That means energy for desalinization plants, deeper wells, and reduced hydroelectric power.

Now, it is true that the atmosphere may not be quite as sensitive to CO2 as previously feared. That said, other than being on the lookout for wingnuts claiming this is more reason to reject "the cult of global warming" (actually, it's just the opposite, as it shows climate scientists at their best), it's important to remember a few other things:
A. The difference between a 5F and 7F warming over, say, 100 years, isn't enough to use this as an excuse for inaction as normal;
B. This study does nothing to look at how current warming is starting to force methane out of permafrost;
C. This study does nothing to look at how modern pollutants like, say, nitrogen oxides, may contribute to the problem.

A chocolate toast at Chaco

This is very interesting news, and underscores that high-intensity trade linked the U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica centuries ago.

Researchers have found traces of chocolate in drinking pottery at Chaco Canyon, the renowned Anasazi ruin site in New Mexico.

And, interestingly squared, the traces were found in "commoner" pottery, not just fancy stuff.

The vessels they examined came from the elite burial sites at Pueblo Bonito in roughly A.D. 900, and from the platform mound site of Los Muertos in Arizona. The latter is believed to have been the residence of elites among the Hohokam, an agricultural people, in the 14th century. They also tested eight pots from small pueblos that would have been inhabited by common folks.

Researcher Dorothy Washburn, of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, believes turquoise was the primary exchange good for the chocolate.

Washburn said there also appears to be Mesoamerican-influenced design changes.

These two things, combined with trade of macaw feathers, may give more credence to the idea that Anasazi/Puebloan Kachina religion also came from Mesoamerica.

Tea Party schadenfreude, dried out and warmed up

Arizona is of course a hotbed of illegal (and general) immigrant stereotyping, along with being near the top in birtherism, and home to one of our biggest political hypocrites, John McCain. Well Schmuck Talk Express and others better find a way to get one-third more water to their area. Ditto for Orange County denialists, as California is already the most "overdrawn" state by absolute water numbers as well as percentages.

The thumbnail is here.

All the details on how climate change will affect the Southwest are here (PDF).

Nothing short of cutting ag use by nearly 50 percent AND hiking prices by that much to push non-ag conservation will really help.

Going by value, the ag answer is simple - eliminate hay growing, at least the irrigated variety. Change rice to winter wheat followed by rapid-grow summer corn. Cut back on beans, which do OK as a dryland crop anyway.

The bottom-line question about water is not whether adaptation is difficult or expensive, compared to doing nothing. Rather, it should be compared to buying several trillion dollars worth of water over the next century; adaptation is a bargain that the region cannot afford to ignore. The implication for climate policy is similar: although doing something about greenhouse gas emissions is expensive, doing nothing would cost even more. Among the benefits of global emission reduction is a savings of hundreds of billions of dollars in the future cost of water, or the avoidance of water scarcity, in the five states of the Southwest.

Part of my solution?

Let's not try to "repair" Nevada's casino-based economy. If Federal job training includes moving people out of that state, with the nation's highest per-capita residential use, do it!

Second, find a way to undercut economic development corporations that don't adequately price water as part of their recruiting pitch.

That said, the authors wrote their study while ignoring the Colorado River Compact, and admit they did that as a simplifying measure. In reality, the "project" is even more difficult than they paint.

Mickey Mantle, JFK and recent book reviews

Here's sneak peeks at some recent Amazon reviews.

First, Mickey Mantle:

"The Last Boy" is a borderline 4/5 star book in my estimation, and, could easily be bumped downward, were it not for all the 1- and 2-star reviews who can't seem to think of Mantle as anything short of God. I was going to 5-star it, but then moved back to 4 ...

Specifically, the one major new thing in this bio -- Mantle's childhood sexual abuse suffering -- is exactly what they most object to, and what I find one of the strengths of the book. That said, because Leavy chooses NOT to write a more traditional, fully chronological biography, we don't get this information until near the end of the book. Too close to the end, in my opinion; Leavy, without a chronological style, could still have introduced it near the start of Mantle's post-playing life, rather than when the book is 90 percent done. And then, she could have built on it more, more thoroughly interweaving it with his womanizing and his alcoholism.

Speaking of, that's her major sociological error. AA is NOT the only way to get support to quit drinking, and I hope that Ms. Leavy doesn't perpetuate that myth in another book about a hero with feet of clay. There are plenty of "secular" sobriety support groups out there. I suspect that AA influenced how Leavy viewed the sober Mantle in general.

On to environmental issues:

I've often thought of the tragedy of Marc Reisner dying fairly young. I have no doubt he would have written a third edition of Cadillac Desert, had he lived long enough to have the hard science on global warming issues that we're getting today.

Well, short of that, we have James Powell writing "Dead Pool," a worthy successor to both that and Donald Worster's "Rivers of Empire."

Finally, refuting JFK assassination conspiracy theories:

First, "The Kennedy Detail" doesn't claim to be a "tell-all."Nor does it claim to be historical in the sense of an exhaustive investigation.

That said, NOTHING, not even a voice from Sinai with two tablets in hand, will satisfy conspiracy theorist. And, Jerry Blaine, in discussing how the rise of the Camelot myth/story is part of what drives many conspiracy theorists - simply being unable to believe a lone gunman could topple Camelot - knows this.

What this book does give you is the most thorough, and most honest, in-depth discussion of the JFK assassination from multiple members of the Presidential Detail.

Jerry Blaine never specifically says he had this book put in the third-person to avoid putting too much spotlight on himself, but that may be part of why.

The "star" of the book is Clint Hill, talking in print in detail for the first time since the assassination. Hill, wracked for years by guilt at a high level even among the Secret Service, had been the chief agent for Jackie Kennedy, and the agent seen leaping, but just too late to save Jack, on the back of the presidential limousine.

That dammed weather

Large dam-impounded lakes may be changing rainfall patterns in areas where they are common. OTOH, this doesn't appear to be enough to address the overall drier weather in the U.S. desert Southwest.

NY decision may save desert from power lines

A decision by a New York energy consortium, dropping plans for a massive expansion in electric power line construction, may have good news for the Desert Southwest, too.

The consortium, New York Regional Interconnect, cited a ruling made on Tuesday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington upholding a review process that demands that each such project be subject to a cost-benefit analysis and receive the support of 80 percent of the beneficiaries.

The parallels to massive lines crossing the Deert Southwest from solar projects so8nd strong. More on the court ruling behind this all is here.

Major bankruptcy may be headed to Vegas

If Dubai World, as threatened, pulls out of a partnership with MGM Mirage on Vegas’ City Center, it could have a domino effect on the whole Strip.

With other construction projects there on hold or shuttered, and Vegas near ground zero of the subprime bubble, this could be the last straw for Sin City.

Which, in a sense, is fine by me.

I have no problems with gambling.

But, there’s already too damned many people in that spot in the Mohave Desert, and the Colorado River’s about to run dry in its lower stretches.

Vegas could stand to lose about half a million people. At a minimum. Probably an even million population loss wouldn't be too off the mark.

Climate change killing Western trees

In the western United States, especially the Southwest, where the area is in the grip of what seems to be the longest drought since the last days of Mesa Verde, global warming has brought dryer conditions – what seems to be climatic, not just weather – with it. And the combo, both directly and indirectly, is killing Western trees.

Trees are more susceptible, now, to pest like the various bark beetles, as well as drought itself, and certainly to foreste fires. Plus, they’re able to absorb less carbon dioxide.

Hands off that saguaro, cactus rustler

Saguaro cactus theft is getting so bad, despite it being a crime, the government is looking at microchipping the suckers.

RIP Tony Hillerman

Natives and near-natives of the Southwest will mourn the loss of one of its greatest voices.

Novelist Tony Hillerman, official friend of the Navajo (he received the "Special Friend of the Dine" award in 1987) and, far beyond a Louis L'Amour, a culturally and socially accurate (or maybe not, see below), as well as geographically accurate, surveyor of the West -- but with Hillerman, the modern West, or a slice of it -- has died at 83.

Here's his take on the reasoning behind his murder mystery protagonists, Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer (later Sgt.) Jim Chee:

"I want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated."

For more on Hillerman, here's the NYT story.

Having been on the Big Rez, and the smaller Navajo reservations at Ramah and Canoncito (hell, Gallup was surrounded by "checkerboard" land), having been to the Hopi mesas and Zuni -- including Shalako -- more than once as well, he did know what he was writing about. As a bilegaana, I don't think he revealed too much about Navajo myth, legend and ritual. Nor do I think he was too earnest or moralistic in his promotion of Navajos as a people.

You did a damn fine job, Tony. You're already missed.

Update, Oct. 26, 2025. You didn't do such a damn fine job after all. Upon re-read of several books, you botched some things, and to link it separately, in "The Wailing Wind," you blew up your own schtick of authenticity about Navajoalnd Sitz im Leben. 

Smithsonian blows another story

This month’s gaffe?

Omitting hugely important relevant information about Judaism in its story on the alleged Hispanic Jews of the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado.

A bit of background.

For generations if not centuries, rumors have swirled that some Spanish the original territory of Mexico, including the Mexican Northwest or our Desert Southwest, actually were Marranos — descendents of Spanish Jews who were “passing” to avoid the Inquisition.

Per the story, I agree with Judith Neulander, an ethnographer and co-director of the Judaic Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (and many others) and disagree with University of New Mexico prof Stanley M. Hordes. These are Spanish-Americans who picked up some type of Adventism, whether from today’s official Seventh-Day Adventist Chruch or elsewhere; they’re NOT marranos. 

See all the details here.

(Note to Mr. Hordes: Outside the American flag, two hundred or even one hundred years ago, six points was the normal way to make a star; that’s NOT the Magen David, necessarily, on tombs. At least some Adventists officially practice circumcision.

But, that’s an issue of interpretation, not the gaffe I’m going to talk about.

Here’s where the story blows it. And, if the author, Jeff Wheelwright, was that ignorant of Jewish groups and distinctions, he shouldn’t have been writing this story in the first place. And, if the Smithsonian can’t have an editor pick up on the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, then the mag really is in trouble.

Because THAT’s the gaffe.

In a nutshell, the alleged marranos of San Luis have been found to have a higher-than-statistically probable rate of a breast cancer precursor gene, 185delAG. The story notes that “the genetic mutation that caused the virulent breast cancer had previously been found primarily in Jewish people whose ancestral home was Central or Eastern Europe.”

Well, beyond the bare bones of geographic separation, those Jews are Ashkenazi; the Jews of Spain are Sephardic.

Of course, there’s argument that the genetic mutatin is not limited to Ashkenazi. If that’s true, well, then the story is wrong in another way, and Wheelwright shouldn’t have written what he did.

In the title, I noted that Smithsonian blows another story. This has become a recent problem.

In recent months, on straight history it has claimed the Acoma Indians built their Sky City pueblo for protection from Navajos 400 years before Navajos arrived in the Southwest, and misidentified a Canyonlands National Park picture as coming from Arches. (It corrected the photo mistake, but did nothing about the far more egregious error.)

On news analysis, it picked the wrong 20th-century political conventions as the top four of the century, and so far, at least, hasn’t even deigned to look at 19th-century ones.

I had hoped things would get better with Lawrence Small finally getting a well-deserved boot as Smithsonian secretary.

Instead, the magazine, at least, gets worse, and the Institute has the gall to send me a fundraiser e-mail last week on top of this.

On the coffee table – ‘The Great Warming,’ by Brian Fagan

In “The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations,” Brian Fagan does an excellent job, with the knowledge we have today, of illustrating what lights paleoclimatology may be able to shine on today’s global warming, with sufficient warnings for the humans that are causing it.

Specifically, the flight to the Sunbelt, especially the Desert Southwest, with its low-density sprawl and little mass transit, on the one hand, and demand for air conditioning, on the other, continuing to fuel anthropogenic global warming, Fagan would be excused if he didn’t serve up a whole plateful of Schadenfreude crow for the largely conservative denizens of this part of the U.S. to digest.

He didn’t, but he could. Why?

Based on paleoclimatology, it appears likely that this part of the country will experience the same long-term drought that wracked the Anasazi at Chaco Canyon, then later at Mesa Verde. Of course, the nearly 20 million of Southern California’s Southland, the almost 5 million of the blot called Phoenix and the moving toward 1.5 million inexplicably in the Las Vegas area are a lot more thirsty for water than the Anasazi were.

But, move beyond the U.S. to sub-Saharan Africa … (see my complete review as part of my Amazon book reviews for more.)

Gas prices hit rural areas hard

Earlier today, I noted how Midwestern rain was pushing corn futures strongly upward, and added that this wasn’t even taking gas prices into consideration.

Well, here’s the gas prices story.

The rural south, Desert Southwest and High Plains are hardest hit. The story notes that, although nationally, people spend about 4 percent of their income on gas, that figure hits 13 percent in the Mississippi Delta.

Why? Because of the poverty there, obviously.

The interactive map shows the correlation pretty clearly.

California officially in drought

Der Governator is blamed by some for not declaring a drought earlier; others blame the federal courts and environmentalists for blocking more water withdrawals from the Sacramento Delta. Doesn’t matter, Californios; after the driest spring in 88 years, you’re definitely and officially in a drought.

And, I’d say, get used to it.

Global warming-associated climate change says the Desert Southwest is going to get drier as well as hotter. That means even less water from the Colorado River and less snowmelt in California’s own rivers from the Sierras.

As for conservation, yes, farmers could do more, but, it’s obviously residents who have to tighten their belts.

The answer is NOT, contra Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and avocado grower Al Stehly, building new reservoirs:

“It's not a water problem; it's a plumbing problem. You can't get it through the delta,” Stehly said. “I don't know what they're doing in Sacramento. They're sitting on their hands.”

Schwarzenegger implied as much yesterday, calling on legislators to approve his proposed $11.7 billion water bond, which would pay for more reservoirs and help restore the delta.

But, with California already billions of dollars in the red, even with Ahhnold using another bond to avoid budget cuts or tax hikes, can California even afford this?

And, if you’ve to less water flowing into rivers, what good does it do to build more reservoirs anyway? Isn’t that almost literally pounding sand down a rathole?

AIRPLANE WING ALPENGLOW

Airplane wing alpenglow,
Traces of sunset at 35,000 feet.
Fleeing an ever-receding western horizon
Orange fades to salmon then wingtip gray
As the brushed aluminum of aerilons
Begins to merge with the duskening twilight.
At ground level, with evening full arrived,
Scattered lights delineate civilization,
In the vastness of the intermountain west,
The tenuous human claim on desert lands.
While the occasional larger blob
Or highway-hugging sodium vapor strip,
Only services to emphasize the solitary vastness.

Climate change will leave Texas drier and Southwest worse yet

About 10 percent drier, according to this New York Times map of watersheds.

Of course, Texas should be thankful it’s not the Colorado River basin, projected to be 20 percent or so drier.

Since much of eastern Texas is non-irrigated agriculture, this has major farm and ranch fallout. If it’s four degrees warmer, and you also have four fewer inches of rain a year, well, plus more evaporation from higher temperatures, you’re looking at more crop failures.

That’s still better than the lower Colorado River basin. Since the river itself could be at 500-year low flow and Lake Mead could disappear by 2020, Southern California and Arizona farmers may not have ANY water for their crops by then.

Back in Texas, in west Texas to be precise, without more stinting use of water (and setting aside nuttery like transporting water to east Texas) the Ogallala Aquifer will probably be about played out at about the same time.

But, Ed Abbey told them 40 years ago that the desert ultimately wins. Heck, John Wesley Powell halfway said that more than 100 years ago.

The full report’s home page is here, with PDF links to individual sections.

Say goodbye to the Colorado River as you know it

As the U.S. Southwest is expected to heat up faster than the world average during the coming decades of global warming, what’s that mean for the lifeblood of the Southwest, the Colorado River?

The U.S. Geological Survey says it could hit a 500-year low in its flow.

Between that and reduced snowpack in the Sierras, 40 percent of SoCal’s water supply could become vulnerable in the next 20 years. Farmers will either get pressured to sell more water rights to cities (which I contend is illegal under the Newlands Act, which established the Bureau of Reclamation; read Marc Reisner’s excellent “Cadillac Desert” for more on this in particular and Desert Southwest water issues in general), or else pony up the money (which SoCal’s big corporate farms can easily afford) to get more efficient with irrigation, like folks like the Israelis do.

Remember, the Colorado is NOT the Mississippi or even close to it. In fact, it’s closer in size (and geographic setting) to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers of (the former Soviet) Centra Asia, the Oxus and Jaxartes of Alexandrine fame. (The Amy Darya is shown at right, on the Afghanistan/Tajikstan border; doesn’t that just look like the Colorado Plateau?) And we all know what has happened to the Aral Sea as a result of too much tapping of these two rivers.

The USGS has predicted a 25-30 percent chance of a basin-wide water shortage by 2020. That’s the basis of the prediction, made last month, that Lake Mead could dry up by that date.

USGS scientist Gregory McCabe, the author of the report, is due to testify to Congress next month. Stay tuned.