
Mighty Rio Grande Now a Trickle Under Siege - kevinchen
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us/mighty-rio-grande-now-a-trickle-under-siege.html
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wahsd
Last I was at the Rio Grande, I was surprised that there were many spots where
you could simply walk across without really getting your ankles fully wet.

I wonder what the compounding negative effects of these actions will be. With
reservoirs and rivers drying up from over-pumping and drought, non-
regenerative aquifers are also being depleted being pumped along with the
regenerative ones, which only drys and permits greater thermal load of the
ground without a method for heat dissipation, which causes even greater net
loss evaporation and also prevents cloud formation and rain. It's really kind
of a positive feedback loop with a bad outcome.

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JoeAltmaier
That describes pretty much the entire American Southwest. The Mohave was a
grasslands when Columbus arrived.

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checker
Source for this? I did some quick digging and this seems to indicate that the
Mojave desert has been a desert for several thousand years.

[http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1007/geologic.html](http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1007/geologic.html)

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yareally
I couldn't find any source for the OP's statement either.

Really wish people would back up their statements with a quick reference when
it's proposed as a fact and not an opinion.

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JoeAltmaier
[http://www.ecoseeds.com/mojave.html](http://www.ecoseeds.com/mojave.html)

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rpcope1
This scares me a lot, especially living in Colorado. I hate to be one of those
"No Vacancy" people, but our aquifers simply can't support any more people
here. It seems crazy when you start diverting water from the other side of the
continental divide just to keep Denver growing. Same goes for California; just
because you want to live there doesn't mean you should, just because you want
to farm there doesn't mean it makes any sense and isn't incredibly
destructive. The land was never capable of supporting what they're doing out
there long term, and when you start diverting water from else where, you need
to sit and ask yourself, "am I doing something really stupid?"

For the amount of water and other resources we have in the West, I wonder
sometimes if there just are way too many people living out here in general.

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oigursh
Wouldn't the cheapest way to move water about just be a big pipe from
somewhere with water to spare?

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misnome
This comes up every time there is a drought in the south of the UK compared to
the north. It really is hard to mentally comprehend the colossal amounts of
water that a river is moving.

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eclipxe
Just make the pipe colossal. Or multiple smaller pipes that distribute the
load. Throw a node.js server behind it and you'll get scale! Don't forget to
use Mongo also.

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afandian
That could just work! You could probably serve every tap in the North of
England. As long as only one person wants turns their tap on at once.

