Posted 6:21 PM by Gene

Water trouble in the Desert Southwest:

The Colorado River Basin is more prone to drought than had been thought, a panel of experts reported yesterday, and as the climate warms and the population in the region grows, pressure on water supplies will become greater....

The panel, organized by the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Science, noted that the water allocation agreement for the basin, the Colorado River Compact, was negotiated in 1922 based on river flow records dating to the 1890s, when gauging stations were established. The agreement assumed that the annual river flow was 16.4 million acre feet — enough to cover 16.4 million acres to a depth of one foot.

But for some time, the panel said, researchers have known that the early 20th century was unusually wet and that 15 million acre feet was a more accurate estimate of the flow. Recent studies based on tree rings put the figure lower still — as low as 13 million acre feet — and suggest that “drought episodes are a recurrent and integral feature of the region’s climate.”

Because trees grow more when it is wet, scientists use tree ring size as an indicator of water abundance. The report says the federal Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies requested the panel’s review in the wake of the new findings.

So to get an answer about climate we have to ask more questions, each question merely leading to new questions. So "the early 20th century was unusually wet." Why was that? Did that have anything to do with man and climate change? Scientists use tree rings to measure these things. How can we be sure things like tree rings are that reliable? And note that we only have definitive measurements from the Colorado Basin from "the 1890s." What of the eons before that? Dread global warming will make things worse, we're happily assured. But why couldn't global warming bring on heavy rains? It's allegedly done it elsewhere. It's "caused" frigid weather in many areas. We're getting to the point where global warming is a catchall scapegoat for unusual weather, when unusual is often the norm in weather (thus saith the first cliché of weather reporting).

Why do we suspect for all its hardware (satellites! Doppler radar!!) in many ways meteorology is one of the least advanced of the sciences? And how can we trust people who are essentially the theologians for throbbing-bunyon TV weathermen, performing a function just one step removed from politics?