Western States Megadrought intensifies - predictions for bad Fire Season and severe water shortages for Colorado (Denver: earthquakes, to live in)
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Err... If you had the last administration's immigration policy for a couple of decades, the United States would quickly start losing population just like Asia and Northern Europe. Population growth isn't unavoidable. What is unavoidable in the United States is economic mobility where people move from places of poor economic opportunity to places of strong economic opportunity. A lot of that is driven by cost of living and quality of life. With Denver's 2021 cost of living and quality of life, it's unclear how long it will continue to grow at a high rate. The 5%er white collar professionals can afford to move to Denver but it's approaching the point where it won't be affordable for a 30%-er or 50%-er.
Even if we were to stop all immigration, the biggest population boom in American history is living out the longest life expectancy in history. America has had slightly-below-replacement-level fertility for 40 years now, yet population would grow in America for at least a decade or two more as the senior population grows faster than the younger generations contract. This is one of the main pieces to the puzzle of why there are labor and housing shortages nationwide.
But also, what exactly do you think fuels the growth of your retirement funds at the rates seen over the past few decades? Efficiency gains from technology only matter if there’s a customer base to grow, so new tech can only account for a portion of the gains. The very idea of macroeconomic growth is inextricable from population growth. Thus the existence of large populations of financially independent retirees implies population growth. I’d think today’s retirees and soon-to-be retirees would rather import labor than live with the realities of a top-heavy population pyramid, but it totally would be their style to let xenophobia poke holes in their financial asset bubble.
Anyway, it follows that since I’m right at the widest point of that “pyramid”, I have no expectation that I’ll ever have the option to leave the workforce. Maybe if I adopt two or three kids and one of them wins big at the Thunderdome and doesn’t hate me.
Even if we were to stop all immigration, the biggest population boom in American history is living out the longest life expectancy in history. America has had slightly-below-replacement-level fertility for 40 years now, yet population would grow in America for at least a decade or two more as the senior population grows faster than the younger generations contract. This is one of the main pieces to the puzzle of why there are labor and housing shortages nationwide.
But also, what exactly do you think fuels the growth of your retirement funds at the rates seen over the past few decades? Efficiency gains from technology only matter if there’s a customer base to grow, so new tech can only account for a portion of the gains. The very idea of macroeconomic growth is inextricable from population growth. Thus the existence of large populations of financially independent retirees implies population growth. I’d think today’s retirees and soon-to-be retirees would rather import labor than live with the realities of a top-heavy population pyramid, but it totally would be their style to let xenophobia poke holes in their financial asset bubble.
Anyway, it follows that since I’m right at the widest point of that “pyramid”, I have no expectation that I’ll ever have the option to leave the workforce. Maybe if I adopt two or three kids and one of them wins big at the Thunderdome and doesn’t hate me.
No. That’s not quite right. Millennials outnumber Boomers and the Boomers are dying off quickly. 26% of the 83 million Boomers are already dead. A couple million die every year. There are 72 million Millennials. Gen X should outnumber Boomers by 2028. Live expectancy in the United States just dropped by almost 2 years. The demographics of the bottom half of the Boomers is really lousy. They’re poor. They eat poorly. They have lots of behavior-induced chronic health issues. Most aren’t going to hit age 80. The wealthy, educated ones will outlive the bottom half by a decade and they’re not the ones who are going to be in Medicaid-funded nursing home beds.
The Social Security program is within 80% of being fully funded forever. It just recently crossed over into being cash flow negative. What we hear is political rhetoric from rich people who don’t want to pay the majority of that 20% shortfall. They own the corporations that pay the 50% employer contribution part. They’re the ones likely to pay when the program starts taxing high incomes and unearned income. They obviously want to delay all of that as long as possible. It isn’t much of an issue yet. It isn’t much of a tax hike to keep the program cash flow neutral forever. We just have to abandon the charade of the “Trust Fund”. That money has already been spent.
Now that we have established that the Boomer generation is quickly aging and and even more quickly dying off because that's exactly what they deserve, perhaps we could return to the original subject of this thread.
In the dying off department, Lake Powell has just hit its lowest water level on record. From Colorado Public Radio:
Quote:
Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the U.S., has dropped to its lowest level on record. The water and power produced by the system supplies millions of people in the West.
On July 23, the reservoir’s level fell to 3,555.09 feet. The previous record low was set in April 2005.
A 20-year megadrought and hotter temperatures with climate change have contributed to shrinking water supplies in the Colorado River...
Lake Powell is on the border of Utah and Arizona, but the reservoir is important to Colorado water managers because the state is part of a 100-year-old water-sharing agreement with numerous states.
The reservoir was created as a storage bucket to help states in the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — send enough downstream water to the Lower Basin, including Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada, to meet their obligations.
Colorado Water Conservation Board director Becky Mitchell spoke about the impacts of the drought at a recent board meeting...
Because the reservoir’s level continues to drop, emergency releases of water from reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell are already underway. Releases from Blue Mesa Reservoir in southwest Colorado will begin in August, and will result in an eight-foot drop.
The seven basin states agreed in the 2019 Colorado River Drought-Contingency Plan that if Lake Powell is projected to drop below 3,525 feet, the Bureau of Reclamation can send more water to Lake Powell from these upstream reservoirs. The latest 24-month projections show that it’s likely to drop below that critical threshold next year.
Another upper basin reservoir - The Flaming Gorge reservoir on the Green River - will also be severely impacted by emergency releases to maintain Lake Powell. To paraphrase Aldo Leopold's quote from ”A Sand Country Almanac,” Emptying the upstream reservoirs is … like burning your furniture to stay warm.” It’s an act of desperation. Everything is breaking. We have exceeded the limits of nature.
The monsoons finally arrived and are sticking around. “Sticky” is the word for it. This is Colorado’s dirty little secret: It DOES get hot and humid. Not as bad as it gets in the southeast, granted, but it’s for real.
Still won’t fix the chronic drought problem. People are going to have to conserve, not just switch technologies or swap one environmental evil for a different one.
Rambler, I heard the first chorus of katydids last night, briefly. Normally they don’t start up till later in the summer.
Lots of down pours today in SW Colorado. Mudslides closed parts of McClure Pass and Unaweep Canyon. When it rains, it pours.
Some rain in Pagosa Springs, but still not enough to make a big difference so far. Most of the moisture has been in Arizona thanks to a slow moving low pressure system, which is acting more like a winter type of storm instead of what is normal during the summer monsoon. The most amazing part is that it was actually cooler in Phoenix than here the other day.
Some rain in Pagosa Springs, but still not enough to make a big difference so far. Most of the moisture has been in Arizona thanks to a slow moving low pressure system, which is acting more like a winter type of storm instead of what is normal during the summer monsoon. The most amazing part is that it was actually cooler in Phoenix than here the other day.
Here in the Phoenix area it's been in the mid-80s for a few days now, with humidity to match. Lots of heavy rains on east side in the Scottsdale area with lots of trees and power poles blown down. Same for up north in the Flagstaff area. Usually the daily average here is 105F so we're a good 20F below the average highs. More of this monsoon needs to get up into Colorado . . .
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The monsoons finally arrived and are sticking around. “Sticky” is the word for it. This is Colorado’s dirty little secret: It DOES get hot and humid. Not as bad as it gets in the southeast, granted, but it’s for real.
Still won’t fix the chronic drought problem. People are going to have to conserve, not just switch technologies or swap one environmental evil for a different one.
Rambler, I heard the first chorus of katydids last night, briefly. Normally they don’t start up till later in the summer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by COcheesehead
Lots of down pours today in SW Colorado. Mudslides closed parts of McClure Pass and Unaweep Canyon. When it rains, it pours.
I LOVE this monsoon weather we've been getting. More please! I gotta agree with pikabike about the humidity, though. I'm used to a semi-arid climate and this humidity weighs me down like an anvil. I can remember monsoon seasons back in the 70's and 80's and they were nowhere near as humid as today's monsoons have become. I believe that part of the reason for this comes from an overall rise in temperatures. Warm air can hold more water, thusonce arid Colorado is now becoming sticky Colorado - at least when the monsoon hits.
As refreshing as it is to finally get some rain, I'm afraid the monsoon is not going to have much of an impact on the Western drought. Many regions of the West don't even have a monsoon and these states continue to be dry, dry, dry. The water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead continue to drop. What would make a true impact on the drought would be a series of COLD, snowy winters that build up a good snowpack in the mountains and temperatures which are cold enough to prevent an early spring runoff which barely gets a chance to sink into the soil before it evaporates.
Time will tell, but I don't see the current trend reversing itself any time soon.
"The Tier 1 shortage will hit hardest in Arizona, which agreed decades ago to “junior rights” to the river in exchange for federal funding for an aqueduct that delivers water to Phoenix, Tucson and other central parts of the state. Users of that pipeline must reduce use by 512,000 acre-feet of water, one of which is equivalent to about one foot of water spread over a football field. Arizona says that represents about 30 percent of the pipeline’s supply, 18 percent of the state’s Colorado River water, and 8 percent of the state’s total water use."
"Even if precipitation returns this winter, it will take several wet (and preferably cooler) years to make up for the water shortage in reservoirs and rivers to fully end the drought across the region. Arizona provides a case in point — the state enjoyed a particularly wet summer monsoon this year, which improved the drought conditions measurably. However, 87 percent of the state is still in drought, with 40 percent of the state in severe or worse drought conditions."
"... flows in the Colorado River have been declining steadily over the past 20 years and had approached the threshold for a basin-wide water shortage declaration even before this drought first emerged."
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Southwest drought isn’t going away
