Depending on where in the world you live, you probably don't know about the Colorado River which is the source of irrigation water for many many farms in several states in the Southwestern US.
A drought which happens from time to time has greatly effected the snow pack in the Rocky Mountains, and the traditional rainfall rates cannot keep up with extraction and evaporation which has created a situation where reservoirs and large dammed artificial lakes in the river system are running at record low depths. Implications? Well, Arizona will experience a 760,000 acre feet reduction in supply. Nevada and California will experience enormous infrastructure costs to go deeper and add more subterranean pumping from depleting aquifers. This in turn will accelerate the future loss of available water for crops. Agriculture consumes 80% of the basins water supply. A sort of Red Queens effect.
How on earth did we get here? Must be that pesky climate change that data centers and their point source of green house gas emissions seem to be immune from - no?
Virtually all of the agricultural areas this system supported were once upon a time hyper-arid, very hot desert environments that no one lived in. Imagine that, setting all the agenda driven noise aside, the idea of reversing the natural environment which was in tune with the way the climate had established its natural rhythms was temporarily altered by man made irrigation for 100 years. This applies to some notable areas like the Imperial and Coachella Valleys in California and the farms surrounding Yuma, Arizona. Before the big idea diverted Colorado River water into agricultural irrigation less than 3 inches a year of rainfall was the norm. There were dollars to be made in watering the desert. Cheap land became very expensive land and for a time, enormous crop yields were produced. So money has been made! That seems to have been the goal without regard to biophysical economics.
If we look at maps from the early 1800's these areas were actually identified as deserts! Just add water and shazam - name changes! Only there were problems from the start. Deserts tend to experience very high evaporation, so water has always been needed in copious amounts to keep the desert from returning. The margin of safety against crop failure was so thin that even from the start a light winter with little snowpack meant farming went bust. So to double down on teaching the Earth how to behave, "entrepreneur$" added dam$, well$ and reservoir$. So the drive for economic growth once again super-ceded common sense. Lets see how this evolved...
Climate does change, geophysics is indeed dynamic and consequently the impacts of our weather has always influenced the stability of human populations. In the history of the Colorado River and its evolution we refused to acknowledge the power of natural forces. In 1922 something called the Colorado River Compact was published. This "science" (Remember to just follow the science?) was built on a mathematical fiction. Yep, publishing misleading papers is a time honored skill. The prediction of being able to produce 15,000,000 acre-feet of water was based on hydrologic data that captured the wettest decade in 1200 years. So with this version of the truth, a fantastic revenue generating idea came into focus: selling real estate, building roads and towns, farming, building towns and all that infra-structure that goes with it in all of these states... billions of dollars made speculators wealthy humanoids. All based on a misleading premise which now has ballooned into a potential tragedy of national proportion. With an overhang of millions of people, their property and livelihoods, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. But hey, lots of people made fortune$!
The physics hadn't changed. Building an irrigation system with dams and reservoirs based on a once every 1200 year decadal cycle of rain and snow was obviously never sustaining. So to keep the bad idea going, enter - drill baby drill. Pump water out from deep aquifers. All finite life adventures, none of which is sustainable. Once again, humans aren't good at non-linearity. Or the big picture if emotionally attracted to wishing rather than accepting facts. These aquifers are all going dry.
But wait, there's more. As the large damed reservoirs evaporate hydro-power generation goes off line, possibly forever. The famous Hoover Dam is nearing what is called a dead pool level. Thats when water level drops to the point that generation is no longer possible. Currently The Hoover is 30% below peak output as head level drops (water pressure reduces and turbines can't drive the torque needed to hit full rate generation). If the dead pool scenario eventually happens, millions of acres of heavily irrigated crop land will lose their primary source of water. What does manage to flow will be cooked by the desert heat and algae blooms not seen in a hundred years will return with fish kills and toxicity of various sorts.
The resulting power generation loss has already caused skyrocketing electricity (energy drives it all) bills which effect almost every cost associated with life. With no real back-up fossil fuel generation must increase to keep the enormous populations who now depend on electricity to keep cool and life functional in these places.
So the scheme to turn the desert into a cornucopia struggled and was kept alive by adding deep wells for a few generations, but alas physics - geophysics, wins again.
Have we learned anything from this? Sadly I think not.
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