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How a 100-year-old miscalculation drained the Colorado River

Posted on by Lone Candle

“the Colorado River is drying up.
The river’s flow is down by about 20 percent, compared to the 1900s, and the two largest reservoirs it feeds are less than a third full. The water in Lake Mead, the nation’s biggest reservoir, has dropped more than 150 feet in the last two decades, leaving little water for the more than 40 million people who depend on the river.

Part of the reason why the Colorado River is shrinking is the dwindling amount of snow and rain. The West is in its 23rd year of drought, which research suggests could be the driest period in the last 1,200 years, made worse by climate change.

Then there is the sheer number of cities and farms that are sucking down water. About three-quarters of all water that humans consume from the Colorado River goes toward irrigating farms, which, among other things, supply nearly all of the nation’s winter veggies.

But a key reason why the Colorado River is running out of water has more to do with math than anything — bad math.

One hundred years ago, government officials divvied up water in the Colorado River among the seven states that rely on it including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The agreement, known as the Colorado River Compact, was based on one critically important number: the total amount of water that the Colorado River can supply yearly.

Ignoring the best science of the time, officials claimed the river could provide about 20 million acre-feet per year”

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“That number was way too high”

What’s so scary about a transgender child?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Are there people who later regret transition? Yes, but the data shows that the vast majority of people who pursue transition do not regret it. In the handful of studies conducted around this question, an average of about 2 percent of respondents express regret. A separate survey questioning why people detransition found the most common reason was social pressure, often from a parent. Many of those detransitioners retransitioned later, when it felt safe to do so.”

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“The medicine we use to treat trans children today — often dubbed “experimental” — has, in actuality, been used to help trans youths transition with the support of parents and doctors since the mid-20th century.”

J.D. Vance Seized His Chance, but the New Right Had a Bad Night

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Vance, who admits to being a “flip-flop-flipper” on Trump, may seem like a counterexample to this narrative. In 2016, he tweeted that the then–presidential candidate “makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible.” Responding to the Access Hollywood tape, he lamented, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man.” He deleted those tweets, and others critical of the 45th president, while bidding for Trump’s endorsement in the Senate primary, which he eventually received. (Trump then publicly joked that Vance had “kiss[ed] my ass” to get his support, proving that no act of abject fealty goes unpunished.)”

America’s increasingly atrocious access to maternity care, explained in 3 charts

Posted on by Lone Candle

“about 900 Americans died in 2020 from complications related to childbirth. Another 50,000 or more women experienced severe pregnancy-related complications. Four of five of those deaths were from preventable causes. In terms of scale and rate, America’s maternal mortality dwarfs the issues of other wealthy countries, and these gaps in maternity care shoulder much of the blame.”

Why OPEC’s cuts shouldn’t have been a surprise — and may not hurt as much as you might think

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Gross’s take is straightforward: Arab states are simply pursuing their self-interest in keeping oil prices high. She cautioned against seeing the OPEC+ decision as a choice by the group between the US and Russia. Today is not like the Cold War, when many Middle Eastern states balanced between Washington and Moscow, seeking to extract maximum benefits from both superpowers and hedging in case either bloc won.
Besides, although the cut might boost oil prices, Gross says the prospects for Russia’s future oil revenues are potentially quite dim, as the G7 and the European Union prepare to implement new measures that could substantially reduce Putin’s proceeds from oil. Moreover, the actual production cut is likely to be around 1 million barrels per day — not 2 million — because many OPEC+ members weren’t meeting their quotas anyway, according to Gross.”

The next frontier for climate action is the great indoors

Posted on by Lone Candle

“what happens inside doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Furnaces and water heaters have to vent their emissions directly outdoors, for example (stoves and ovens face no such requirements), and that pollution doesn’t just disappear. The consequences are exacerbated in communities of color, where homes tend to run on less efficient appliances and communities already bear the burden of greater outdoor particulate matter. One analysis by RMI found that Black Americans are 55 percent more likely to die prematurely from the impacts of fossil fuel appliance pollution compared to white Americans. Another study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, found residential gas combustion and commercial cooking to be the largest drivers of the racial disparity in pollution exposure for people of color compared to white people.”

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“As the grid is getting cleaner, buildings hooked up to electricity will also have a dwindling footprint and, hopefully, use less energy overall with more energy-efficient machines. But a building that runs on gas will always burn a fossil fuel for its heat. And today that footprint is considerably large: 13 percent of the nation’s climate pollution comes directly from these gas-burning machines.”