Dead pool status
Two of the largest reservoirs in America, which provide water and electricity to millions, are in danger of reaching ‘dead pool status,’ a result of the climate crisis and overconsumption of water, experts say.
Lake Mead, in Nevada and Arizona, and Lake Powell, in Utah and Arizona, experienced their lowest ever levels last year. ‘Dead pool’ status would mean the water level in the dams was so low it could no longer flow downstream and power hydroelectric power stations.
The Lake Mead reservoir, which is the largest artificial body of water in America, was created in the 1930s by the construction of the Hoover Dam, an engineering masterpiece. Lake Powell, the second largest, was created in the 1960s with the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam.
“The conditions in the American west, which we’re seeing around the Colorado River basin, have been so dry for more than 20 years that we’re no longer speaking of a drought,” said Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “We refer to it as “aridification” – a new very dry normal.”
Other people just call it the desert.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell not only provide water and electricity to tens of millions in Nevada, Arizona, California, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico, but they also provide irrigation water for agriculture. Experts warn that as the crisis deepens, water cuts will need to be introduced, but this may not be enough.
Ya think?
Arizona, California (Southern), Nevada, Utah… Amazing how all these places human beings shouldn’t live are becoming even more inhospitable.
Elon says if people don’t have more babies, civilization will crumble. So let’s put more pressure on the environment and infrastructure that allows people to live in inhospitable environments, shall we? Then we can send the excess population to Mars, because Mars needs to have people living there (ask any Martian).
If civilization is that fragile, then maybe it should crumble. I would note, however, that the most civilized places seem to be those with the lowest birth rates…if by civilized we mean something like having a decent social safety net, taking care of people, etc. Of course, that’s not Musk’s idea of civilization.
He has no idea what his idea of civilization is beyond some vague intuition that it should be made up of smart people that have lots of kids. He seems to think genetics are more important than the successful reproduction of cultural memes but he’s wrong about that.
When I was born, Earth’s human population was about three billion people, less than half of the current number. If I’m not mistaken, I believe that “civilization” existed at that time. I’d say the massive increase in our numbers since then is much more dangerous than the gradual decline that seems to be worrying Musk.
Barring the catastrophic collapse of our population through some combination of climate tipping points and biospheric degredatation (both of which are made more likely through higher human impact on our planet’s finite capacity to provide what we need, and absorb what we throw away), our numbers will decline much more slowly than they rose. If we survive the current crises, we’ll adapt to lower numbers of humans; nothing will “crumble.” Sure, different countries will experience falling birthrates and aging populations in their own way, but it will be many years before the total human population of the planet levels out and declines.
The current population is approximately eight thousand million people. It has tripled in my lifetime, and quadrupled in my mother’s.
The nineteenth century started with a worldwide human population of little more than ONE thousand million people, and we could hardly say that civilisation was collapsing back then!
There are too many people on the planet. It can only support a certain weight of animals, and our increased population means that other species are dwindling or even vanishing altogether.
Men, like Musk, who are decrying the low birthrate in Western democracies aren’t really worried about civilisation. They are racist and sexist, worried about having to compete for supremacy with people not like them, and want their own white wives to be confined to the home, tied down with lots of children.
In fairness to Musk, I don’t want to compete for supremacy with Hindutva or Islamist arseholes either, I just don’t think that “outbreeding them” is a useful option (especially since my whole project is endless miscegenation). It is a problem that people who don’t share the values of Western civilization (which in my mind also includes pricks that Musk is backing, like J.D. Vance) outnumber us and increasingly matter more in deciding what happens to Terra, but what makes a Westerner isn’t down to crude “make more babies” math.
The golf courses and pools in those areas are not helping. And now there is a surf pool (and more planned, apparently), which I recently found out about from an article in the last issue of Technology Review. Talk about a water hog. According to the article, some of the supporters/promoters are saying that since the golf courses were allowed, the surf pools should be too.