Lake Mead and Climate Change

Mina said:
Lake Mead, the reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam, has been in the news lately, thanks to multiple bodies being found there, as dropping water levels reveal parts of the lake that have been underwater since it was originally filled after the dam was built. The sheer magnitude of the decline is amazing. We're used to seeing lakes dry up where the lake was fairly shallow at the best of times. But Lake Mead is now about 162 feet below the level it was at as recently as 2000. The West is drying out, and while we might get some intermittent relief, climatologists predict that on average it'll just get worse and worse, thanks to our failure to curb greenhouse gases.
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WRONG. The lake is being pulled down because of a massive increase in demand for water in desert and temperate states that are developing housing faster than they can keep up with utilities.

There has also been a series of temporary droughts that compound the problem. It isn't about climate change. It's about weather patterns and demand. :palm:
 
Celticguy said:
https://serc.carleton.edu/earth_analysis/image_analysis/introduction/day_5_part_1.html

as you an see, nothing new about lake levels dropping. has far more to do with excessive demand and snowfall / drought.


lake_mead_water_levels_500.png
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:thumbsup:
 
Dutch Uncle said:
No doubt climate change is part of the problem but the major problem is twofold, IMO:

1. Population explosion. Not just California either.*

2. California tree hugger laws that prevent building more water reservoirs to accommodate the increases in population. The water has to come from somewhere and Lake Mead is “it”.


* https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-population/
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The problem, though, is precipitation. You can do more to collect and distribute it, but it's largely a zero-sum game. Whatever water you're moving to areas of great need are waters that are no longer available where they were. With so much of the West and Southwest drying out thanks to climate change, the engineering and logistical problems will just get worse and worse.
 
Celticguy said:
it could but then again as the chart shows, sometimes it just happens (volcanoes etc).
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I accept the evidence from NASA. :)

https://climate.nasa.gov/

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
In Brief:
Human activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels) have fundamentally increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, warming the planet. Natural drivers, without human intervention, would push our planet toward a cooling period.
 
Mina said:
The problem, though, is precipitation. You can do more to collect and distribute it, but it's largely a zero-sum game. Whatever water you're moving to areas of great need are waters that are no longer available where they were. With so much of the West and Southwest drying out thanks to climate change, the engineering and logistical problems will just get worse and worse.
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Climate change is a problem and the Californians seem to be doing little to cope with it.
 
Mina said:
Lake Mead, the reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam, has been in the news lately, thanks to multiple bodies being found there, as dropping water levels reveal parts of the lake that have been underwater since it was originally filled after the dam was built. The sheer magnitude of the decline is amazing. We're used to seeing lakes dry up where the lake was fairly shallow at the best of times. But Lake Mead is now about 162 feet below the level it was at as recently as 2000. The West is drying out, and while we might get some intermittent relief, climatologists predict that on average it'll just get worse and worse, thanks to our failure to curb greenhouse gases.
Click to expand...

Speculation. There is no such thing as a 'greenhouse gas' except as a religious artifact. No gas or vapor has the capability to warm the Earth. You can't create energy out of nothing.

Demand on the water of the Colorado River is higher than ever. So many people are using this water now it is overtapped.
 
Celticguy said:
We use a lot more water than gas, thats why we have to have rivers to move it from here to there.

But China has been spending a shitload of money trying to do this with a fake river that they use pumps to send heavily polluted water in the south to the north.
Kinda shooting themselves in the foot because they water is not being made clean anywhere along the way. Desalination is what Cali needs to be looking into.


https://www.economist.com/china/201...lt-the-worlds-largest-water-diversion-project

20180407_CNP001_0.jpg
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Piping water from the Great Lakes across the States to Las Vegas is not practical.
 
Into the Night said:
Speculation. There is no such thing as a 'greenhouse gas' except as a religious artifact.
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There are a number of greenhouse gases. The one we mainly talk about in the climate context is CO2, but methane and water vapor are among the others. The change in the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere over the last century and a half is the biggest contributor to the unprecedented warming we've been seeing.

No gas or vapor has the capability to warm the Earth. You can't create energy out of nothing.
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The way they work is that they have resonance frequencies in the infrared spectrum. Because of that, they tend to absorb radiation in that range, which otherwise would have passed into space. The energy is being created within the sun, as a byproduct of nuclear fusion. It then travels to us as light. When it hits the Earth, some gets absorbed and then re-radiated in the infrared spectrum. What's going wrong is that the greenhouse gas increases in our atmosphere have lowered the rate at which that infrared light is escaping the Earth, altering the eventual equilibrium point at which outflows will again match inflows of energy... an equilibrium point that is now already going to be far above anything seen since the dawn of civilization, and which is continuing to increase over time. That will be environmentally devastating.

That's why these are talked about as greenhouse gases -- they are somewhat analogous to the way a greenhouse works, where the rate at which energy from the sun leaves an area can be decreased, resulting in that area warming up until it hits a new equilibrium point (where its temperature is high enough that out-bound radiation again matches in-bound). A greenhouse can be much warmer than the surrounding area through that process.

Demand on the water of the Colorado River is higher than ever. So many people are using this water now it is overtapped.
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Yet we know how much is flowing out of Lake Meade and there hasn't been a change that would account for the gigantic drop in levels, nor has the upstream use change been enough to account for it. What's accounting for it is a megadrought, which has resulted in far less precipitation hitting that watershed, decreasing how much is flowing into the lake. This also involves the issue of in-flows not matching out-flows, though in this case it's that in-flows have declined to the point where existing out-flows now greatly exceed them.
 
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Into the Night said:
Oil pipelines got cancelled by Biden, dude.

You don't seem to understand the resistance to flow that pipes create.
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Dude, Biden never cancelled any American Owned pipeline!

There are lots of American Owned pipelines piping crude and gasoline across the nation!

Try not to be an idiot! It just makes you look like an idiot. [Geeko Sportivo]
 
Geeko Sportivo said:
Dude, Biden never cancelled any American Owned pipeline!

There are lots of American Owned pipelines piping crude and gasoline across the nation!

Try not to be an idiot! It just makes you look like an idiot. [Geeko Sportivo]
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You are incorrect. Do you accept the official White House website itself as a source by any chance?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...d-restoring-science-to-tackle-climate-crisis/

Sec. 6. Revoking the March 2019 Permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. (a) On March 29, 2019, the President granted to TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. a Presidential permit (the “Permit”) to construct, connect, operate, and maintain pipeline facilities at the international border of the United States and Canada (the “Keystone XL pipeline”), subject to express conditions and potential revocation in the President’s sole discretion. The Permit is hereby revoked in accordance with Article 1(1) of the Permit.
 
Mina said:
There are a number of greenhouse gases.
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Nope... not a single one. "Greenhouse gas" is nothing more than a buzzword created to peddle a science-denying, math-denying, logic-denying religion.

Mina said:
The one we mainly talk about in the climate context is CO2, but others like methane and water vapor are others.
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There is no such thing as a "greenhouse gas". Here is where you define your terminology and provide the specific mechanism by which "greenhouse effect" "occurs" without violating science, math, or logic.

Mina said:
The change in the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere over the last century and a half is the biggest contributor to the unprecedented warming we've been seeing.
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Here is where you provide me with a valid dataset with regard to "greenhouse gas concentrations" over the last century and a half.

Mina said:
The way they work is that they have resonance frequencies in the infrared spectrum. Because of that, they tend to absorb radiation in that range, which otherwise would have passed into space. The energy is being created within the sun, as a byproduct of nuclear fusion. It then travels to us as light. When it hits the Earth, some gets absorbed and then re-radiated in the infrared spectrum. What's going wrong is that the greenhouse gas increases in our atmosphere have lowered the rate at which that infrared light is escaping the Earth, altering the eventual equilibrium point at which outflows will again match inflows of energy... an equilibrium point that is now already going to be far above anything seen since the dawn of civilization, and which is continuing to increase over time. That will be environmentally devastating.
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I suggest that you take a look at, and learn about, the laws of thermodynamics as well as the stefan boltzmann law... You are trampling all over them right now...

Mina said:
That's why these are talked about as greenhouse gases -- they are somewhat analogous to the way a greenhouse works, where the rate at which energy from the sun leaves an area can be decreased, resulting in that area warming up until it hits a new equilibrium point (where its temperature is high enough that out-bound radiation again matches in-bound). A greenhouse can be much warmer than the surrounding area through that process.
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This is where you peddle numerous false equivalencies with regard to Earth and greenhouses.
 
gfm7175 said:
You are incorrect. Do you accept the official White House website itself as a source by any chance?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...d-restoring-science-to-tackle-climate-crisis/

Sec. 6. Revoking the March 2019 Permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. (a) On March 29, 2019, the President granted to TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. a Presidential permit (the “Permit”) to construct, connect, operate, and maintain pipeline facilities at the international border of the United States and Canada (the “Keystone XL pipeline”), subject to express conditions and potential revocation in the President’s sole discretion. The Permit is hereby revoked in accordance with Article 1(1) of the Permit.
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The Canadians own the Keystone Pipeline!

Again- DON'T LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT!

I said Biden did not do away with any American Owned Pipelines!
 
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