Should we be sounding the alarm about Lake Meade?

[Heather MC]

I just happened to be YouTube surfing and I came across this video.

I had no idea that lake Mead, it, was a man made lake that was feeding water into Vegas and other areas in the desert.

What happens to the West Coast when lake Mead is gone?

And if this was a man made lake? What exactly did they do to get water to the lake. And can that process be repeated somewhere?

Or is this just a ticking time clock, and it's just a matter of time before this artificially made lake dries up?

And what happens to the country, When this lake is no longer a viable Water source for the region🤔

[EYESORE 9001]

1. Some people on this very website advocate piping water from the Great Lakes to the desert southwest

Yeah, no, that’s not gonna happen. Global climate mandates making hard choices, among which are abandoning vast areas as they become uninhabitable. You want water? Come where it is!

[intrepidity]

3. Be careful what you wish for

Soon it will be "Go back where you came from!"

[EYESORE 9001]

6. Winter in the Great Lakes region is a self-limiting factor against runaway growth

I expect winters will remain intolerable for some people a few more decades.

[PortTack]

4. Exactly...four of the great lakes are also in Canada..so we can't just do that. Also there's the

Great Lakes protection act, not getting around that.

no doubt the MW, or at least parts will suffer drought eventually, so you pumped all the water out west, dried out the last remaining bread basket so ppl in the desert can water their lawns and grow alfalfa to ship to Saudi Arabia for a few more months….really?

[Chainfire]

15. Exactly, destroy the most important water system in the country so that more people can have lawns

in the desert. When water starts costing more than gasoline, people will get the point and move.

[LongtimeAZDem]

16. Lawns use less than 10% of our water; most of it is used so the rest of the country can

have cheap lettuce, spinach, etc.

We need to stop irrigating the desert so everyone else can have salad in the winter.

[Chainfire]

17. Tell me again about that "cheap" spinach, what is it about to cost the citizens there?

It is arrogance of man to farm deserts for profits. Climate change is just contributing to the message.

[LongtimeAZDem]

18. It's not going to cost us much at all; agriculture accounts for less than 2% of income here

And I agree with you about farming the desert. We should have stopped a long time ago.

But the deserts of Arizona and California produce a huge amount of the country's winter vegetables, so people will have to learn to live without them.

[Chainfire]

19. I was speaking of running out of water because of the farming practices. That is not going to

be cheap for the residents.

[LongtimeAZDem]

21. The farming will end; people aren't going to abandon their lifestyles to benefit 2% of the population

It's already been happening; we used to be a major citrus producer. That's pretty much gone.

[PortTack]

24. If you live there, you know the Saudis raise tens of thousands of acres of alfalfa, the hungriest

Water plant raised there. That alfalfa is then exported to Saudi Arabia to feed their cattle. Why is that allowed? Agri business uses more water than any other.

As far as lawns out door watering and water waste by the average consumer, EVERYONE needs to pitch in.

[LongtimeAZDem]

26. It should never have been allowed, and needs to stop. Worse, they're using groundwater.

As far as everyone pitching in, I completely agree. I let my lawn die off years ago, none of the plants in my back yard have been watered in 10 years (and are doing fine), and I have low water use fixtures in my house.

That said, everyone knows that home use is the lowest percentage, so people rightfully get pissed off when asked to cut back while agriculture squanders 70%-80% of it.

[intrepidity]

2. The Hoover Dam created the lake, on the Colorado River nt

[2naSalit]

5. Mass migration.

It's already begun. And it's about ten years late to start sounding alarms.

Lake Powell is also man-made.

The majority of the water in the west comes from the northern Rockies of the US and we're having a nasty drought up here. Plus, it's a rather fragile ecosystem where the water comes from and that's where everyone is moving to, and that will accelerate the decline of the ecosystem. We can't seem to help ourselves when it comes to planning on avoiding catastrophe, we always put it off until we are forced to respond to catastrophe.

[Jim__]

7. James Hansen sounded the alarm in 1988. We're still, generally, not paying attention.

From Grist (should be available without a subscription):

...

On June 23, 1988, in the sweltering heat, Hansen told a U.S. Senate committee he was 99 percent certain that the year’s record temperatures were not the result of natural variation. It was the first time a lead scientist drew a connection between human activities, the growing concentration of atmospheric pollutants, and a warming climate.

“It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” Hansen told reporters.

Scientists first expressed concern about possible climate change more than a decade before Hansen’s testimony. The most-publicized report came from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. It warned that average temperatures may rise 6 degrees Celsius by 2050 due to the burning of coal.

...

The incoming [sic - should be outgoing?] Reagan administration responded to Hansen’s predictions by cutting funding for GISS. But Hansen, encouraged by former Friends of the Earth president Rafe Pomerance, continued to raise the issue. “It was truly important for him to be heard. The issue had no traction at that point,” said Pomerance, now president of Clean Air Cool Planet.

...[div]

[Aussie105]

8. Lake Mead?

Consider it gone, consider all that depends on it gone too.

Human history is littered with civilizations that depended on a steady supply of water to grow crops to feed the people.
Once the water supply became unreliable, those civilizations dwindled and faded away.

Strange no one saw the possibility, the vulnerability in all that. Or learnt from history.

Expect mass migrations, expect ghost towns. I include Las Vegas in that.

And pray for rain. Lots of it, in the right place.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

9. Lake Mead is fed by the Colorado river

Which is in turn fed by snowmelt. Part of problem is there hasn't been enough snow. The other part is too much water is being drawn from it. Southern Nevada, including Las Vegas, recycles the vast majority of the water that is used indoors. Nevada's allocation of Lake Mead water is actually the lowest compared to the other states. California gets the the most. With California being right next to the largest ocean on the planet they should more build desalination plants on the coast. And then extract lithium and rare earth elements from the desalination brine to help support EV battery production.

[Aussie105]

10. Should have, could have . . .

Too late now.

Here in little old Adelaide in South Australia, we know about droughts that go on for years and the water restrictions that go with it.
We have a lovely desal plant right on the coast, all set to fire up when the next one comes.

Yes, expensive to build, expensive to maintain when not fired up. But it represents future water security.

At full capacity, our reservoirs can hold almost 200,000 megalitres of water - just under a year's supply for metropolitan Adelaide.
Our reservoir's levels are at 69% at the moment.
Daily consumption, yesterday, was measured at 346.89 ML
It's the middle of winter, one of the wettest on record. Wait until people need to start watering their gardens again.

Our only river in this state, the Murray river, is used so heavily by this and upstream states the outflow to the sea is usually zero.

[LongtimeAZDem]

11. We've been wasting our resources so that the rest of the country can have salad

We need to stop growing lettuce altogether; people can live without it in the winter.

Agriculture only makes up 1.7% of our GDP, and we have plenty of water for non-agricultural uses.

[Aussie105]

12. Lettuce? lol

A tiny part of the problem.
Try: no more agriculture, stop watering your garden, no washing your car, no showers.
No swimming pools, ration domestic use.

But by all means "sound the alarm bells over Lake Mead" - about a decade too late!

[LongtimeAZDem]

14. Irrigated agriculture uses 75% of Arizona's water, accounts for less than 2% of income

It's not a "tiny part of the problem"; it's the bulk of it. Southern California and Arizona produce 90% of the nation's lettuce by irrigating the desert.

Pools and lawns use about 50% of the municipal share, or about 12.5% of the state's total.

We stop production of lettuce, alfalfa, and hay, and we have all the water we need.

[multigraincracker]

22. More than enough if we cut our diets of meat by 75%.

All that land and water, most of it is for forage and animal feed. Wouldn't take much to grow enough vegetable protein and high nutrient veggies. Might help our health and reduce disease too.

[LongtimeAZDem]

27. We need to stop all of it; lettuce, hay, almonds, cotton, etc.

[Warpy]

13. Here's one from yesterdau

There are a few people out there doing videos every week or two. This one was the latest posted.

[Cassidy]

20. Had to stop watching about 3 min. in when he speculated that it is the earth tilting on its axis

that is causing massive drought in the west.

It is climate chaos
caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere
caused by burning of fossil fuels by humans!

How do any people still not know this?

[Warpy]

23. He did say that later

Scientific brain trust he's not, but his video illustrating just how far the lake has gone down was great, especially since it used to come right up to the back of that swanky hotel and now it's way off in the distance.

Give it another chance, just turn the sound off for the first couple of minutes, you'll be fine. It's a good video.

[CoopersDad]

25. There's talk about just saying goodbye to Lake Powell to save Lake Mead

“We're reaching a point where this structure might turn into more of a liability than an asset,” Eric Balken with the Gen Canyon Institute said, looking over at Glen Canyon Dam.

Balken thinks a radical solution may be the best solution.

If the lake was drained and the water was sent downstream to Lake Mead, it may end up saving more water in the long run.

“We need to start thinking about life beyond Lake Powell,” Balken said. “The Bureau of Reclamation is going to extreme measures to prop up this reservoir. Even with these extreme measures being taken, this reservoir is still going to be running a deficit.”

The plan is this: open all the valves at the dam and let the water run out. The lake would drain downstream through the Grand Canyon and end up in Lake Mead, which is also at its lowest level in history.

The water would fill Lake Mead, which is the last stop before it’s diverted to the Southwestern states.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/regional/scorched-earth/receding-waters-why-a-once-thriving-resort-on-lake-mead-has-all-but-disappeared/75-0fa9bc0f-601e-4645-b9af-ca6c3d9716f7