A HISTORY OF INCOMPLETE DECISIONS

I was stuck in an airport with flight delays last week returning from being an expert witness in a water dispute. It was an interesting case valuing hundreds of millions in water where the other side was making the argument that the value of water would drop because the climate of the Southwestern United States was all going to mysteriously revert to cool and wet with a plethora of water. In other words, Arizona was going to become temperate and wet and that climate change was not a thing.

Never mind that Arizona has not been cool and wet since the Eocene Epoch and Mid-Cretaceous era, a mere 40 million and 70 million years ago (respectively). Never mind that there is no scientific support for such a belief, and never mind that people in the water industry are smarter than to believe such fantasies.

As I sat waiting for the World Series to start at Elways in the Denver airport (great burgers by the way), I happened upon a new documentary on Netflix entitled The White House Effect (2024, Directed by Bonnie Cohen, Pedro Kos & Jon Shenk). It’s a multiple award winning documentary on the history of the climate crisis. The documentary explores climate change, identified by both Republican and Democrats alike in the 1980s as a reality that could not be ignored (including then President H.W. Bush, whose background as a Texas oilman, didn’t preclude him from pledging to tackle what he labeled a crossroads that the nation had to address). And yet, that opportunity to confront the problem championed by EPA Administrator Bill Reilly and President Bush was undermined by the president’s own Chief of Staff John Sununu and industry.

It is a fascinating story of lost opportunity. Publilius Syrus, a writer-philosopher in 60 BC during the reign of Julius Caesar, wrote “A good opportunity is seldom presented, and is easily lost.” Such was the case.

In 1970, an astonishing 10% of the entire population of America marched on Earth Day in support of addressing environmental concerns. In the space of four short years, between 1969-1972, a bipartisan Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972). There were few nay votes. How did a handful of lobbyists defeat the will of the people, President, and Congress?

The answer is told well in the film. And, it is a timely story in today’s debate over the environment, civil liberties, and the role of the three branches of government. It all comes down to voice. The loudest and most persistent voice is unfortunately the one most people listen to. And, it is a story of how, in our democracy, everyone’s voice should and does matter. See it. It is inciteful no matter where you stand on the issues.

RUNNING AMOC

I’ve written before on the dangers that confront us should the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapse, but the release of a new report raises the stakes.

The AMOC is the Atlantic’s conveyor belt bringing warm saline water from the tropics (because of the higher rate of evaporation in the tropics, salinity is increased) to the North Atlantic. When that water meets the North Atlantic it cools, sinks, and starts its path back in a loop to the tropics. The action is critical in exchanging heat, nutrients, salinity, carbon capture (carbon sink), to maintain the ocean’s ecosystem. It is what keeps England and Europe warmer than their latitudes would otherwise permit.

Why is the AMOC a concern? It has been weakening dramatically. A few years ago, models showed the risk of its collapse at 10%. The new study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters assessed the numerous models used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The findings are alarming. Models now show that the tipping point where the AMOC shuts down is nearly inevitable. Even at low-emission scenarios, a 25% chance is assigned to the collapse of AMOC by 2100. The high emission model has those odds at 70% and not 50-100 years down the road but as early as 2050-2070. In our children’s lives.

What would happen? The result would be a shift in the tropical rain belt that hundreds of millions rely on for food production. Europe would face extreme cold, as much as a 10-15˚F shift. Winter ice could result as far south as the British Isles. In the United States, far colder winters would occur with disruptions to rainfall patterns interrupting the agricultural industry that is the backbone of the northern plains states. Adaption in parts of the Northern Hemisphere would be impossible forcing migration and the loss of traditional forms of agriculture. And the shift would occur rapidly. We aren’t talking the apocalyptic scenes from the movie The Day After Tomorrow, but a horror show it would be.

Again, what I want to stress is this isn’t a left versus right issue, it’s an economic and national security issue. It’s better to view these warnings in terms of stock portfolios, 401ks, the culture of the American farmer, and the costs of groceries than in left versus right terms. In the end we are all in the same damn boat (which we might need as a loss of AMOC is projected to increase sea level rise on the Eastern seaboard of the United States by as much as two feet).

Personally, I would go with the 25% rather than the 70% odds.

SWIMMING UPSTREAM

I wanted to write today on an important conference of nations set for November but feel the need to first write of how proud I am of our country.

Yesterday a reported seven million people exercised their Constitutional right to “peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (quoting from the First Amendment). The fact that there were no reported arrests or acts of violence by those who assembled to air their grievances makes me in awe of our nation and people.

The founding fathers knew that nothing is more patriotic than peacefully assembling to express an opinion or protest grievance. And nothing is less American than labelling those who express an opinion other than your own wrong, hateful, or anti-American. These rights and principles set our nation apart from countries who are less free. Those who would restrict these constitutional freedoms lack an understanding of our Constitution and fail to see the direction of the current of history.

Now on to the November conference. COP30 is organized by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Belém, Brazil between November 10-21. Its location is not an accident. Belém sits at the mouth of the Amazon, which is front and central in the conference as representatives from 190 countries discuss and formulate solutions in the form of climate finance, emissions reductions, resilience and conservation. After President Trump’s September speech before the UN where he labelled climate change a con-job and hoax, it is presumed that the United States will not formally participate for the first time in thirty years.

To many, like myself, I see missed opportunities to shape and mold solutions to a problem that should not be a left versus right argument. ExxonMobil, Shell, and a host of other energy companies typically participate. They see the flow of history and adjust their portfolios accordingly.

Renewable energy sources have replaced coal as the largest source of electrical production in the world. In the first half of 2025, renewables (solar, wind and hydro) contributed 34.3% of all global electricity generation, while coal fell to 33.1%. Markets and utilities see the direction the current is flowing.

The costs of operating coal source power plants is staggeringly high compared to wind, solar, hydro, and yes, high efficiency natural gas. It’s business sense. For example, Shell Energy is moving toward diversification with a strong commitment toward wind, solar and carbon capture technologies. Why? Perhaps they see which way the flow of history is taking the world.  

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

It doesn’t take a psychic to grasp what our future may bring when it comes to storm intensity, drought frequency, water demands, and the effect of a shifting climate on the nation’s economy. First, let’s dispel the notion that discussing and recognizing a shifting climate is a political discussion. It is not. To disregard, reject, and deny facts is not only to ignore reality but commit malpractice if you are in the water industry, an investor, banker, economist, or a farmer.

Every year between 2015 and 2025 has ranked in the top 10 hottest years on record. Heat equals energy. Stronger storms, more volatile weather patterns, lengthening of crop growing seasons (and air-conditioning seasons), increased evaporation, and drying of continental mass. The result is increased water consumption, expanding electrical demands, and fire risk. Even if one tries, it’s hard to ignore basic science. Heat is energy, longer and hotter summers result in larger electrical demands, and greater water consumption.  The following National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency graph, is telling:

Serving the water demands of an expanded agricultural growing season and expanded energy generation for residential and commercial cooling equates to what some have projected to be an increase in water demand of 8-10%.

Add into this mix are the compounding effects of increased energy and water consumption driven by technology, AI, and computing. Miniscule data centers arrived on the scene in the 1950s (not real data centers as we know them today, but mainframes). With the microprocessor boom of the 1990s and the birth of the internet, the first true data centers emerged. Fast forward to just the last five years (2020-2025). Data center expansion has accelerated at a dizzying pace driven by AI, cloud migration, and a digital economy. In the last few years, investment in data centers has nearly doubled. The demand for power by these centers has resulted in dramatic new electrical demands challenging an already outdated and fragile grid. Some have pegged electrical demands to rise by 20% in the next decade. With the exception of solar, wind and geothermal energy production, all forms of energy generation require freshwater (leaving non-consumptive hydropower out for obvious reasons).  With an average of two gallons of freshwater needed to generate one kilowatt, some of the largest data centers’ electrical  demand exceed 500 megawatts. That translates to 12 gigawatts/day. Water use to generate 12 gigawatts using coal requires 12 billion gallons of water; with nuclear, it’s 9.6 billion gallons; and high efficiency natural gas, its 3.6 billion gallons. That’s per day by the way.

If you look at it purely through an economic and not a political lens, society must ask itself what it can do to balance available freshwater resources with demands and what are the economic costs of doing nothing. To ignore and deflect isn’t helpful. We can and we must become more efficient and smarter addressing what we can and planning for what we cannot.

A NEW WATER YEAR

October 1st of each year brings the start of a new water year in Colorado. The period October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025, was one doozy of a water year. With initial snowpack numbers looking good in late February (in many basins, above-average), reservoir planners released water to make room for runoff. Then March, typically the biggest water content snow month in Colorado, came and went with little to no snow and warm temperatures. April was worse, bringing little precipitation, warm temperatures and wind.

Wind is snowpack’s enemy stripping the snow of water content and depositing dust on snow surfaces which darkens snow surfaces and accelerates snow loss. The term for it is albedo, which is the degree to which light is reflected off a surface…or why one doesn’t buy a black car in Arizona. May received some precipitation but the damage was already done. Colorado’s runoff was meek. June and July were abnormally hot, dry, and windy creating a dangerous wildfire season that saw over 218,000 acres burned.

Now we enter a new water year that commenced October 1st. The answer to the question of what this winter will bring depends on the source you look to. There are generally three commonly relied upon: 1) The National Weather Service, an agency within NOAA; 2) the Farmer’s Almanac, an annual periodical that dates back to 1818 giving advice to farmers, ranchers, sportsmen, and conservationists; and 3) the Wooly Bugs. That last one I threw in. While there is no scientific basis that the band color on a wooly bear caterpillar predicts the severity of a winter (if their bands are rusty expect a mild winter; if their bands tend to the black, a severe winter is forecast), I know a few ranchers that swear by them.

People in the west, and Colorado in particular, look at weather differently. Our existence and livelihoods depend on weather more than the average person (farmers excepted). Colorado births the major western rivers from the Platte, to the Arkansas, the Rio Grande and the Colorado. Winter snowpack feeds these rivers. Aspen, Colorado receives on average just over 300 inches of snow per year. Areas of Colorado have recorded over 600 inches. The picture above, shot from my home, portends a snowy winter. So, what is expected?  

The National Weather Service three month model shows warmer and drier than normal conditions turning to normal winter conditions after the first of the year. The Farmer’s Almanac predicts a colder and snowier than average winter so the skiers, wildfire responders, and water managers must like that one. The caterpillar results aren’t fully in yet, but if I have first hand information from a person that’s friends with someone who knows a farmer, who saw one and the prediction is a snowy winter.

No matter what the outcome, let’s all remember that there is a difference between weather and climate. The weather can change day to day, month to month, and year to year. Climate is the long term average weather patterns over a 25+ year period.

THE RINGS TOLL: CANCELLING INCONVIENIENT SCIENCE HAS REPURCUSSIONS

Instrument based temperature and precipitation records in the American Southwest have just over a hundred years of data and then, source locations were few. These records are critical for water resource planners, wildfire scientists, and climate based science. Traditionally, to plan for the future, one reviewed the past to identify wet, average, and dry year water years and cold and hot years. But as expected, inadequate data generates incomplete conclusions. Enter the field of dendroclimatology.

Dendro (tree) based science is the study of tree rings and they show a very clear picture of hot, cold, dry and wet years in the tree rings of ancient trees. Trees like the Bennett Juniper in the Sierras live 2,200 years. Others live longer. The Gran Abuelo, a Patagonian cypress can live 3,600 years and Great Basin Bristlecone Pines can live an astonishing 4,850 years. That’s the time early civilizations were developing in Mesopotamia and about the time the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza commenced.

Wider tree rings show wetter and warmer years, while colder and dryer years yield less growth. Scientists from the UCLA published findings in the journal Nature Climate in 2022 that the 22-year period 2000-2021 was the hottest and driest period in the American Southwest since 800 AD. (A. Park Williams). Similarly, scientists from the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research and Colorado State University’s Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research Center and Biogeography Lab confirm, the West’s “mega-drought” may signal uncharted territory in that critical dry years are now occurring in hotter years (the years 2000-2025 are the hottest years of record). That perfect storm of temperature rise and drought forecasts sustained uncertainty.

What does this mean to the average person. Rising utility costs, rising food costs, and increased wildfire risk (think increased insurance costs) to name a few impacts. An example of the impact of incomplete data: The Colorado River that serves as the source of agricultural and municipal water for over 40 million people across seven western states and Mexico, was divided up by a contract, ultimately approved by Congress, in 1922. The Colorado River Compact’s assumption was the river flowed 16.5 million acre feet/year on average. The Upper Basin States (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and a sliver of Arizona were allocated 7.5 million acre feet. The Lower Basin States, Arizona, Nevada, and California were allocated another 7.5 maf/year. A later treaty guaranteed Mexico 1.5 maf/year. It all looked good on paper. The framers used empirical climate records for the 22 year period 1900-1921. Tree ring studies now demonstrate those 22 years were among the wettest in 1100 years. Turns out the basin yields closer to 13.2 maf/year not 16.5 maf/year. Ooops. Good science matters.

This week, the world heard climate change called a con-job. A comprehensive effort is being made to cancel the inconvenient scientific evidence of a changing climate, with websites, studies, raw data, and words literally being censored and removed from public view. A cancel culture of scientific evidence will not solve problems, any more than defunding the National Weather Service will make hurricanes and extreme weather events go away. For those of us that rely on good scientific data to help make opinions, means, and methods to ensure that industry, municipalities, and economic prosperity is not impaired by a lack of water supply, it’s dangerous.

WATER WASTE

Everyone gets that wasting water is wrong. In many states low on water, it’s actionable, even illegal. But what exactly does the term waste mean?

Tomorrow, I argue a case in the Colorado Supreme Court on the doctrine of waste and who may complain about the inefficient use of water and its consequences. For obvious reasons, I won’t get into a discussion of the case, but suffice to say, if it gets to a state Supreme Court, people pay attention to the wasting of water.

Over-application of irrigation water led to the salinization of agricultural lands in Mesopotamia that contributed to the collapse of empires. More recently Soviet era mismanagement of water led to the drying (and toxification) of the Aral Sea in what is now Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Mismanagement has consequences.

Wise water management is key to ensuring water for the nation’s expanding water demand. I’ve previously written on the dramatic demands projected for water to supply energy and cooling demands of datacenters and the growing AI field. Those demands are competing with the impact of an exponential increase in the world’s population and its resulting demand for water needed to generate energy, food, and all the amenities that will be needed.

Water management is largely local and when I say local, I mean state and local, not federal. The federal government has a limited role in the water field and for good reason. Every state’s water issues are unique and the very last thing that would be productive is to inject politics and Washington into local water planning. This has largely been understood by Washington and the preamble to nearly every piece of federal water and natural resource legislation is a caveat that federal law is not intended to usurp state laws on water allocation and use.  Instead, the federal government has largely played a productive role as data provider, information resource, and source of scientific expertise.

Wise management of water is to identify, develop, and regulate water so that it is available now and for future generations. To do that, techniques and regulations that encourage conservation and avoidance of pollution are the goalposts. Historically, that has not entailed allocating benefits based on subjective opinions of what uses of water are worthy of water. The question has traditionally been is the water being used efficiently for that use? But for future generations, when freshwater scarcities increase, will the question become, is it a use worthy of water at a specific location? As a society, should we grow rice, almonds, alfalfa in the desert? Should we locate mega-datacenters in the desert Southwest? And what incentives (I’ve never been one for the stick, preferring carrots) can be offered to locate those uses in more water-rich regions?

We’re not there yet, but our grandchildren may be.

THE FARMER KNOWS BEST: GETTING BY WITH LESS

With the world’s population exponentially growing at an alarming rate (8.2 billion as of this writing, contrasted with 2.0 billion one hundred years ago), our planet is hungry. Food scarcity is fast becoming a destabilizing influence on the world stage and a hit to the pocket book for the average US consumer.  Contrast the growing demand for food stocks against the growing scarcity of freshwater supplies and the world needs a little common sense and ingenuity.

Seventy percent of the world’s freshwater is used for agriculture production. In the arid western United States, that figure climbs to as much as 80%. So, what are the solutions?

In past articles, I’ve spoken (dare say ranted) about the lack of wisdom of growing cotton, rice, almonds, and other highly water intensive crops in arid regions suggesting incentives to grow those crops in less arid regions and incentivizing less water intensive crops in drier locales. Like the siting of water guzzling datacenters, location is important. People have said that I’m  dictating what a farmer grows and that such encouragements would amount to government overreach, but the agriculture industry has long been intertwined with governmental mandates, crop subsidies, agricultural loan guarantees, and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) assistance programs. Those programs are good. They’ve returned the investment many fold. They have benefitted the American farmer who the country relies on to put food on the table. I put the American farmer at the top of the list when I think of admirable occupations and am proud to say my son is a farmer.

Agriculture is in a state of transition, the likes of which we have not seen since the horrible days of the 1980s, when American farming teetered. With tariffs, trade wars (China, historically the largest purchaser of soybeans from US farmers has not signed any (zero) contracts this year for American soybeans), drought, and interest rates, how does the American farmer put food on everyone’s table?

The answers are many and complex, but I’ll stick to the issue I know, water. The Ogallala aquifer that supplies ag-water to much of the Midwest is declining. In areas that have suffered sustained drought such as the American west, water is often shorted while climate change has increased crop water demands, increased evaporation, and lengthened growing seasons.

Agribusiness has long been predicated on cheap water, intensive tillage, chemical fertilization, and monocropping. Farming has historically endorsed water conservation and increased efficiencies of transporting and applying water. Now it is beginning to endorse other techniques to get yields with less water. Enter regenerative agriculture. While forms of regenerative agriculture have existed since the days of the dust bowl, small farmers have endorsed it with dramatic results.

What is regenerative farming? The practice focuses on rebuilding soil organic matter to upgrade soil structure. This is done by winter cover cropping, mulching, rotational grazing and no-till farming. Some have equated it to creating a sponge. The result is that the soil structure is able to retain far more water providing drought resilience. Studies have shown that a mere 1% increase in soil organic matter can increase soil moisture retention by 20,000 gallons/acre.

In an era where every drop counts and every penny is watched by farmers, it holds the same hopes as water conservation tools such as laser leveling, drip irrigation, soil moisture sensors, and sub-surface application.

CONTINENTAL DRYING

The northern hemisphere is experiencing what scientists label extreme continental drying. Stated simply, an alarming loss of freshwater from northern hemisphere land masses. Storage of freshwater on land (terrestrial water storage) is found in creeks, rivers, and lakes, groundwater, soil moisture, ice in permafrost, and water held in glaciers.

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), and its successor follow-on (GRACE-FO) missions assessed water loss during the period 2002-2024. A recent paper published this summer in the journal Science Advances details the results of this US-German mission. The findings should concern us all.

Water is being lost from the northern continents at alarming rates as a result of  increased global temperatures and its consequences such as longer growing seasons, increased evaporation, increased water demand of plants (evapotranspiration), dramatic increases in groundwater pumping, and loss of glacier water.  Remembering the hydrologic cycle,  water is not consumed but is redistributed as precipitation. With seventy-one percent of the Earth covered in water, most precipitation falls upon and becomes seawater or eventually flows to seawater.

The result is a dramatic transfer of mass from the continents to oceans, leading to additional pressures on sea level rise. On land, the effect has magnified competition for scarce water resources, threatened food security (with food production being the largest user of freshwater) and impacted sustainable drinking water resources.

We are at a juncture in our ability to reverse or even slow the effects. Having information and technology to monitor threats is essential to food security, agribusiness, and wise water planning. Yet, cuts have been announced that would eliminate fully functioning in-orbit climate satellite missions like MODIS, OCO, Terra, and Aura, that carry out high-resolution imaging, measure solar radiation, precipitation, and detect wildfires. Besides from the unwise decision to eliminate fully functioning paid for infrastructure that gather critical data, the vast percentage of the costs of these missions has already been spent. NASA missions are front-forward cost projects with the bulk of the costs incurred in research and development and launch. The costs of maintaining a satellite in orbit and collecting data is pittance in comparison. The logic is unclear. Many see just another attack on climate science and a head in the sand mentality.

Ultimately, it will be up to the US Supreme Court to assess the power of the executive versus the Congress to fund and defund. How the Court rules, could impact our world for a generation.

A PICTURE OF A DRYING PLANET: SEA RISE AND FOOD INSECURITY

Nearly three-quarters of Earth’s surface is covered in water. Somewhere between 2.5-3.5% of the Earth’s water is freshwater and a far smaller fraction of that is economically recoverable water. Less than 30% of that is groundwater.

With such a precious resource, why is it then that its regulation and administration is so haphazard and the resource is so misunderstood? Even in the one of the most developed countries, the United States, fifty states have fifty legal frameworks that are often conflicting and archaic. Some of the most water short states regulate water the least. Why? Primarily, politics and a lack of understanding of science.

Take, for example, knowledge of the resource itself. Some states which have a history with oil and gas, treat water essentially as just another liquid hydrocarbon sitting in place waiting to be extracted beneath land. And at least one state, Texas, with its “rule of capture” doesn’t care whether pumping affects the neighboring parcel. Other states literally believe that drilling a well outside the bed and banks of a river has no impact on the river. But that’s not how water exists.

Water is moved by gravity. It is seldom sitting in a pool or static aquifer. It’s always on the move above and under the ground flowing by gravity through sands, pores and fissures in rock. On the surface, it’s heading in one place, the ocean.  

Most groundwater is interconnected with surface water. The rivers and streams we see are fed by groundwater and sometimes feed that groundwater. It may take scores or even hundreds of years for that impact to be felt, but the connection is present, Breaking or ignoring that connection has consequences.

Extensive groundwater monitoring and modelling reveals groundwater is declining across the world as a result of overuse and climate change. A warmer, drier planet means longer growing seasons, greater evaporation, and greater water usage. Water extracted is evaporated (and transpirated by plants) and 88% of that water falls back as rain on oceans, converted to seawater. With climate change, freshwater on land and locked in glaciers flows at alarming rates to the sea rising sea levels and forever lost to freshwater reserves.

Then, there is the elephant in the pool: Population. In 1700, the world population was around 650 million. By 1900, it was 1.6 billion. By 2000, it was 6.1 billion and today it is 8.2 billion. That population needs water for food production, electrical generation, sanitation, and drinking water.

The largest consumer of water in the United States and worldwide is food production. As freshwater supplies dwindle, competition for water increases. Commercial, industrial and domestic users require far less and are able to pay far more than agricultural users setting the stage for food insecurity.

The solutions are science based and culturally driven. Efficiency of water use is key (due to efficiency standards, the United States uses roughly the same amount of water today, at 345 million, that it did in 1970 when the population was 200 million). Regulating wise water use must occur. Datacenters and AI threaten to consume more water than the entire population so why site these facilities in water short areas?

With knowledge, solutions are achievable.