Weather disasters: An artful graphic looks at the whole shebang

Look at this newspaper graphics package. Then get ready for the next high wind, thunderstorm, etc.

New books focus on the Southwest and water

My wife’s dream was to move to Tucson. We even looked at houses there during one of our two trips to Tucson in recent years. Anyway, the two books reviewed in this article paint a picture of water scarcity and drought for the future. When you really think it over, i.e., how did Phoenix happen, you realize that the Sonora Desert – a land of 100-plus degree weather again and again – is hardly the place to put such a megalopolis.

With deaths of forests, world losing climate protectors

This in-depth science feature, from the NYT, spells it out in quiet detail. I wish, though, that the authors of the feature had also talked about how sprawl development and attendant road-building is fragmenting and destroying native forests. Hell, I saw this kind of thing going on all the time while living in northeastern Pennsylvania, a region that had already lost much of its native forests from anthracite coal-mining stripping operations over the decades. And still, the public motors on as is if there is no harm to their carbon dioxide-creating activities.

Texas drought will harm wildlife habitat for years

Try a “decade or longer” for the headline. Now that would be more accurate. In any case, Texans and Oklahomans and many others in the Midwest just don’t get one of the chief underlying reasons for the lack of rainfall: Climate change.

What drought looks like – and sounds like, too

Those are the feelings one gets after watching this video report from parched Kansas.

NY Times blows the Dust Bowl story

And the paper of record nearly failed to even alert readers of its feature-length piece on Oklahoma’s Panhandle that Boise City is pronounced “Voice” City, unlike Boise, idaho, which is pronounced “boysee.” In any case, the Times blew its coverage of the panhandle’s ongoing drought, as this article nicely explains. And what about mentioning Timothy Egan’s recent book on the Dust Bowl? Or did I just miss it.

Water managers in West brace for more dry times

The restoration work along Sandia Pueblo’s section of the Rio Grande is just the latest effort by tribal, state and federal water managers as they grapple with persistent drought across the West, the uncertainties of climate change, endangered species concerns and growing demand for a limited resource. Add non-native invasive plant species to that mix, as well. Like water-sucking tamarisk. Read the whole report here.

University of AZ reseearch: Big stretch of U.S. coast at risk of rising seas

And human-caused climate change is the trigger, as this article illustrating research at the University of Arizona makes clear. So, what will humans do? Continue burning coal, most likely

In the drying West, dams are no longer the answer

That’s the headline over this op-ed from the pen of Congressman George Miller, D-calif. It appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle a few months ago, but remains a great read.

Drought turns Nevada into disaster area

It’s been a long while since I was last in Nevada (the Jarbidge area of northern Nevada). That’s high desert country with mountains ringing the vallays and snow capped peaks in the distant. To learn just how dry the state is today check this item I found in today’s Santa Fe New Mexican.