Dear Editor:
Perhaps you remember when there was enough water to launch a boat from the ramps on Lake Powell. Or when CPW didn’t have to close fishing streams because the water temperature was too high. Or when forest fires didn’t explode, launching embers that started spot fires two miles upwind. Or when the spring up the gulch was still running cool and fresh.
We heard the first warnings 40 years ago. The climate models had it right even back then. Deadly heat waves. Melting ice caps. Increasing wildfires. Sea level rise. More extreme weather events. Crop instability. Except things are getting worse even faster than the models forecast. Among them, the latest regional model (Talsma et al, 2022) shows our little corner of the world 30-40 years from now likely will resemble present day southern Utah. Think Blanding or Bluff. Think sand and rock and scattered brush. You may have passed through on the way to Powell. When it still had water.
Unless we find the political will and corporate sense to make the switch to a carbon-neutral energy economy, we face catastrophic ecosystem and social collapse.
Reference: Talsma, Carl, Katrina Bennett and Velimir Vessilimov. 2022. Characterizing drought behavior in the Colorado River Basin using unsupervised machine learning. Earth and Space Science.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EA002086
Bob Dorsett, MD
Meeker
