"Reno urged to prepare for worse as earthquakes continue
By MARTIN GRIFFITH – 5 hours ago
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors.
More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.2 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.
We can't put a number on it, but the probability of a major earthquake has increased with this sequence," Smith said Saturday. "People need to prepare for ground shaking because there's no way to say how this will play out."
Among other things, scientists urged residents to stock up on water and food, to learn how to turn off water and gas, and to strap down bookshelves, televisions and computers.
"It's getting a little bit frightening," Daryl DiBitonto of Reno told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I'm very concerned about this increase in not only activity, but also in magnitude."" LINK
Showing posts with label Nevada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nevada. Show all posts
Lake Mead, headed out? 50/50 odds. Thirsty?
Well, this is why it's a bad idea to move to a freaking desert.
"What are the chances that Lake Mead, a key source of water for more than 22 million people in the Southwest, would ever go dry? A new study says it's 50 percent by 2021.
"Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest."
The researchers also noted that their estimates are conservative — in other words, the water shortage is likely to be even more dire than they estimate.
there is also
A 10 percent chance that Lake Mead could be dry by 2014.
A 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. "
A 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. "
Link (thanks to Nat!)
Best. Article. Ever. on the Western states water crisis.
Man, I do love me some good Salon writing. Much as James Howard Kunstler's amazing book The Long Emergency ( a must-read for any Doom readers!) predicted, the unsustainable idiocy of building sprawling, lawned suburbs in the freaking desert has led to trouble. Of course, as we all know, the residents of Nevada, Arizona, etc. are looking north to the Great Lakes, rationalizing that if oil can be piped from Alaska, they can have golf courses in Scottsdale. Fail.
This article takes the whole bloody fiasco to the only rational answer- these people have to move back into the emptied cities of the industrial north, where the effing water is.
"Bill Richardson, governor of arid New Mexico, had his region's plight in mind when he told the Las Vegas Sun that Northern states need to start sharing their water: "I want a national water policy. We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water." (emphasis mine)
Sun Belters, there's a man in Detroit with the answer to your water problems. "They can have all the water they want," says Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council. "All they have to do is move here." There's plenty of room. Some Detroit neighborhoods are so bereft of houses that pheasants hide in the vacant lots. And the cost of living is unbeatable. Earlier this year, an auctioneer was trying to unload a bungalow for $18,000. When no one would bid, he reminded his audience, "You get the land under the house, too."
OK, so Detroit's a tough place to find a job. How about Cleveland? It's half the size it used to be, which means 500,000 people are driving on freeways built for a million. Commuting is a breeze. Syracuse would love to have you, too. They've lost a higher proportion of young people than any other city in the U.S., perhaps because they engineered their own demise, being the headquarters of Carrier Air Conditioning, the appliance that made the Sun Belt possible."
Read this article, please- funny, concise, and dead on point. We can't keep doing this anymore.
Link to fantastic article.
This article takes the whole bloody fiasco to the only rational answer- these people have to move back into the emptied cities of the industrial north, where the effing water is.
"Bill Richardson, governor of arid New Mexico, had his region's plight in mind when he told the Las Vegas Sun that Northern states need to start sharing their water: "I want a national water policy. We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water." (emphasis mine)
Sun Belters, there's a man in Detroit with the answer to your water problems. "They can have all the water they want," says Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council. "All they have to do is move here." There's plenty of room. Some Detroit neighborhoods are so bereft of houses that pheasants hide in the vacant lots. And the cost of living is unbeatable. Earlier this year, an auctioneer was trying to unload a bungalow for $18,000. When no one would bid, he reminded his audience, "You get the land under the house, too."
OK, so Detroit's a tough place to find a job. How about Cleveland? It's half the size it used to be, which means 500,000 people are driving on freeways built for a million. Commuting is a breeze. Syracuse would love to have you, too. They've lost a higher proportion of young people than any other city in the U.S., perhaps because they engineered their own demise, being the headquarters of Carrier Air Conditioning, the appliance that made the Sun Belt possible."
Read this article, please- funny, concise, and dead on point. We can't keep doing this anymore.
Link to fantastic article.
Water management in the west - yeah, this isn't goiong to be good.
At left, a fishing pier at Lake Mead.
"Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.
In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns.
The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.
Preparing for worst-case outcomes, the seven states that draw water from the Colorado River — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico in the upper basin and California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin — and the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the river, are considering plans that lay out what to do if the river cannot meet the demand for water, a prospect that some experts predict will occur in about five years.
“What you are hearing about global warming, explosive growth — combine with a real push to set aside extra water for environmental purpose — means you got a perfect situation for a major tug-of-war contest,” said Sid Wilson, the general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which brings Colorado River water to the Phoenix area." LINK
Maybe it's not a drought. Maybe the recent weather pattern in the Southwest is normal.
In that case, oooops! All the fools out there building golf courses made a big, big mistake.
"The Colorado River Basin is more prone to drought than had been thought, a panel of experts reported yesterday, and as the climate warms and the population in the region grows, pressure on water supplies will become greater." LINK
And that is seriously bad news for the millions of people who have moved out to the Las Vegas area. Now, I'm seriously tempted to just let loose and rip on people who move somewhere so obviously unsuited to habitation- somewhere where you need air conditioning to live, somewhere that cannot sustain unirrigated agriculture (the rule of thumb is 21" of rain a year). But then I think of all the articles I've read about the people who have moved out there or bought homes out there and they're (obviously) not ok people. It's a place for second chances, it's a place where people who have no where else to try because somehow they managed to screw up living in Florida or something. They're ill educated and socioeconomically marginalized, so it would be totally cruel to point out that they've just moved from the frying pan of their previous messed up life to the fire of living in what seems likely to become America's biggest folly- a false mirage in the desert. Who the hell moves to Las Vegas. Jesus.
Well, apparently a lot of people move to freaking Las Vegas. "Nevada's Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, saw water use double from 1985 to 2000."
"The 25 million Americans who rely on the Colorado River for water should expect continued — and even worsening — drought spells and water shortages as rising temperatures and growing populations create a double whammy, experts warned in a new report." LINK
"The Colorado River Basin is more prone to drought than had been thought, a panel of experts reported yesterday, and as the climate warms and the population in the region grows, pressure on water supplies will become greater." LINK
And that is seriously bad news for the millions of people who have moved out to the Las Vegas area. Now, I'm seriously tempted to just let loose and rip on people who move somewhere so obviously unsuited to habitation- somewhere where you need air conditioning to live, somewhere that cannot sustain unirrigated agriculture (the rule of thumb is 21" of rain a year). But then I think of all the articles I've read about the people who have moved out there or bought homes out there and they're (obviously) not ok people. It's a place for second chances, it's a place where people who have no where else to try because somehow they managed to screw up living in Florida or something. They're ill educated and socioeconomically marginalized, so it would be totally cruel to point out that they've just moved from the frying pan of their previous messed up life to the fire of living in what seems likely to become America's biggest folly- a false mirage in the desert. Who the hell moves to Las Vegas. Jesus.
Well, apparently a lot of people move to freaking Las Vegas. "Nevada's Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, saw water use double from 1985 to 2000."
"The 25 million Americans who rely on the Colorado River for water should expect continued — and even worsening — drought spells and water shortages as rising temperatures and growing populations create a double whammy, experts warned in a new report." LINK
Wow- Rhode Island near the top of a sad, bad list.
"Nevada had the highest share of its population homeless, about 0.68 percent. It was followed by Rhode Island, Colorado, California and Hawaii." LINK
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