US States Facing Water Impacts from Climate Change Doing the Least About Climate Change

And if you’ve paid any attention to this topic in the past couple of years, it’s not difficult to guess which states those are.  If your state tends to vote Republican in general elections, your state is among those that have planned the least for climate change.  Unfortunately, those states are also characterized by large human populations, agriculture, or both.

Take Texas, for instance, a state that demonstrates how little actual human affairs matter in a governance regime.  Texas experienced the worst drought in its recorded history last year.  It got so bad, many towns had water shipped in by truck because they previously drained their aquifers.  In the pursuit of runaway capitalism and to stick it to the black President, Texas is among the states which has done the least to plan or prepare for additional climate change impacts in the 21st century.  Perhaps they think if the secede from the US or rough up states that adjoin the Great Lakes, they can take care of their current and future water problems.

So what are the rest of us supposed to do?  As red states continue to scream at reality regarding anthropogenic climate change, they’re running dry.  Once cities start running out of fresh water, how should the rest of the country respond?  With benevolence and assistance?  For what purpose – red states already siphon more resources from blue states – blue states are supposed to be alright with additional resource greed?  Once the agricultural center of the country collapses due to intense decadal droughts, what are other regions supposed to do?  There won’t be viable acreage to replace the land that was mismanaged for decades.  The rest of the country will literally suffer from food scarcity because of the intensity of red staters’ belief system.  There won’t be any mea culpas from red staters as the “liberal elite” bail them out from the manifestations of their rigid ideology.  No, red staters will simply demand that it’s the responsibility of those elitists to fix problems that were forced on everybody.

Put another way – how much of your fresh water will you be forced to give up in 30 years because so-called conservatives were overly skeptical regarding viable climate science?

Good Article on Dust & Snow, Causes & Problems

The Denver Post has an article up from Scott Willoughby that very well could be one of the best I’ve read from a corporate media source on the shifting environment and its numerous impacts. I wish more reports would be presented like this. Alas, there is little controversy and no infotainment involved.

The issue: increasing amounts of dust on the snow in the mountains and what it means. Scientific studies have been conducted (since 2003) on the presence of dust and the impacts on snowmelt. In short, snow with dust on it melts quicker than snow without dust on it. It has to do with albedo and energy absorption. In the interests of those of us who drink and use water in the summer (all of us) as well as those who use snow in the winter (recreationists), snow that melts sooner is generally viewed as a bad thing:

In 2005 and 2006, dust-covered snow melted up to 35 days earlier than a purely clean snowpack would have in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. Last year — which included 12 measurable winter/spring dust storms — snow melted 48 days earlier in the same area.